Are These Anygood?

Jonny D

Some nice stuff in there Al, i think i'll pop off now to my local garden centre and see what i can find. Who no's i might bump into another bonsai enthusiat along the way (doubtful).

cheers jonny.

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Paul Braid

Some good potential material in there.

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bonsaial1

Well.. I took the five maples and really beat them up. I chopped the snot out of them and repotted them into squat five gallon containers. Two of them I left rather tall and three of them I chopped for future shohin materaial.

The short ones were chopped down almost to the root base. I chopped them with an axe. I just chopped right thru the container and everything. I cut the cookies of roots off and discarded them. Then I sawed the trunks down to the appropriate size, in this case about 2 inches, giving me a 1 to 1 ratio. They will grow taller and finish out at 7" in height. I cut them back to a leader or the closest branch growing at the base. I wanted to keep something green on the wood to get the thing going in the spring.

These will be left to grow untrimmed for at least 2 years before the next chop. The sawed area was smoothed with a grafting knife till it was perfectly smooth and then covered with putty for healing. Very smooth cuts induce scarring and the building of repair tissue faster then jagged cuts. Sometimes jagged cuts will just quite growing and you have to come back and reopen the wound and dress it up to get the wood growing again.

Attached Images

chop1.jpg (43.6 KB, 364 views)

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bonsaial1

No. 2

The nebari under the soil was huge on some of these. Up to about 7" across. If I can get them to root properly, I could have some of those hideous oil slick trident maples that OMC hates so much. Of course they would never fit into the correct Shohin pot.

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chop2.jpg (51.2 KB, 352 views)

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bonsaial1

No. 3

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chop3.jpg (59.9 KB, 345 views)

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bonsaial1

Not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket I decided to keep a couple a little taller. I will use these in future forest projects with trident maples. I have a few dozen coming along for a future project. These will serve as maybe mother trees.

I know what your saying, "Al, you chopped this one way to high, that tunk goes on the same size forever, and it will never have the correct taper."


Ahh, but what if my chops do not pull through this spring. I have a better chance of these not so drastic cut trees of making it through the winter and then budding out in the spring. At that time, if they look promising I plan on taking the tops out of both with air layers. That way the chop will be lower and I can get the trunk better proportioned..good plan ehh... We'll see.

Al

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bonsaial1

Just popping this to the front. Update in the morning!

All is good so far!

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pdbbonsai

Hi Al,

Was wondering if you would use your handy new backdrop to take photos of these. Purrrrty Please? I would love to get an "uncluttered" look at these gems.

thanks

paul

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bonsaial1

These trees are not going to be much to look at for a few years. The reason I will show you these at this point, is to show how powerful these tridents are and how they tolerate abuse quite well. I started with five. I chopped down three of them to about 2" tall. The other two were left at about 18" tall.

Two of the chopped ones and the two that were left taller responded at springs bekoning call with abundant growth. Remember I cut these trees from 5 gallon containers that had grown into the groung for about 5 years. Some of the roots that I dug and cut away were about 1" across. When I got home I replanted them in new cans, after cutting the root balls with a square point shovel and axe. I did not make clean cuts and I was not nice to these plants.

So.. the first plant. These had only one samll bud on the trunk when I chopped them

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A tree a day...thats all we ask.