Bonsai Made Easy Rosemary Bonsai
[WATCH VIDEO} Bonsai Made EasyI have to laugh I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist I knew that would end up as a bonsai tree and what a fortuitous break of that side branch almost like luck with playing on your side LOL I would be sneaking that as a bonsai plant myself.
I have been thinking about a rosemary bonsai for a few years now, I might just have to give it a go! Maybe strike some cuttings from the one I cook with, as it is developing a big trunk.
Hmm… Rosemary… The kits I got for the kids came with rosemary seed… Perhaps this winter I will grow those out 🙂
hi everyone nigel saunders here today we’re going to start by trimming up this rosemary and repotting it this is my wife’s rosemary and it was going from a small cutting about the size of this and it’s three years old now and today i’m going to prune it up my wife wants it more compact so it takes up less space in her greenhouse i’m going to start by pulling out some of the weeds there’s some grass growing in here like that over here is some clover growing i came out with a big taproot i’ll save that my wife might might want to plant that somewhere else and then over on this side there’s some catnip i believe the catnip is a type of mint i’ll see if i can pull that out that came out with roots and all in the soil so i’ve put all that in a bucket of water it looks like there’s a few cuttings in here that didn’t make it so that part is alive and doing well and this part is alive and doing well a few more weeds at the back here on this rosemary you can see how it’s been growing towards the light over here and it almost looks like a wind-blown tree i want to get kind of all the plant within the perimeter of the pot so nothing’s sticking out over the edges so it doesn’t take up as much space so all this kind of the tree that’s over on this side is also planted on that side of the pot so i’m going to move this plant over to this side of the pot and try and keep some of that foliage within the confines of the pot so that’s why i’m repotting it it’s this pot it’s in is plenty big enough i’m going to put it in a slightly smaller pot here there’s a look at the two pots together i’m going to prune the rosemary’s down before i repot them so it’s always safe on a tree to you know keep some of the foliage on the branches if you hard prune a rosemary back to like bare wood it might recover fine or it might wither away and die it might sucker up from the roots or something so it’s always good to keep green foliage on your branches it’s a nice safety measure so we’re only going to prune it back so far because i want to keep some green foliage on here if i hard pruned it right back which i would probably do if i was growing this as a bonsai it’s a little risky and so with your wife’s plants it’s always to be safe than sorry so that’s the reason i’m i’m taking it back quite conservatively to some green foliage and then relocating this plant over to this side of the pot and maybe changing the planting angle so more of the green foliage is within the pot parameter i’ll place the rosemary on my spinning tree bonsai turntable i’m looking at the overall styling now so i’ve got a fairly vertical trunk yeah it’s uh again this isn’t supposed to be a bonsai so i’m just going to kind of prune it back and i’ll start you know just keeping it quite long and then maybe i’ll prune it back even further [Music] so there comes some cuts so my other rosemary bone set i had they were doing fine in the basement over winter and then the temperature went really cold and they died which was too bad i was very sad to lose them that was that little kind of tray i had with moss and i think there’s three rosemaries growing on kind of a clump style however we’ll get some more going with these cuttings i do like rosemary as a bonsai they’re a temperate tree so they need a cool period in winter but not so cold that yeah too much cold and they’ll die i’m gonna go right back to here some of these branches are quite long and there’s no foliage well this one has a bit back here actually it has some here so i’ll take take it off there and this one even has a bit down here so i can take that off this one can come back to here so that’s really shortening this side of the of the rosemary bush now it’s really looking good i’ll come in with a few my scissors now and just tidy up a few of these tips getting it even a little more compact that’s looking pretty good there and then there’s this big branch that comes off i think it’s from the same plant possibly i don’t know i see some ants in here it’s coming off this direction and it needs some pruning back too so we’re gonna come right back to here that’s looking pretty good there and then there’s this big branch that comes off i think it’s from the same plant possibly i don’t know i see some ants in here it’s coming off this direction and it needs some pruning back too so we’re going to come right back to here down to here yeah it’s quite a bit more compact now and i’ll bring this back and it smells beautiful nice if this were a bonsai you know i pruned it here i would wait till i get more back budding on this branch and then i would reduce it even further to get rid of these long straight sections with no taper or movement to them you know even this trunk line is very it doesn’t change in taper and it’s very straight without any movement it’s not straight but it’s there’s no abrupt changes of direction in it it’s very sweeping so there’s some odd branches here you know it goes out here and then 90 degrees but you know it’s not a bonsai so this is just a kitchen herb maybe someday it’ll become a bonsai i don’t know but all right let’s get it out of the pot next i’ll put all these cuttings in water there’s a look at all the cuttings i put them in a bucket of water with the catnip and the clover down there somewhere i put some wood chips in the bottom to cover the drainage holes and then i’ll add some used bone size soil i’m going to use the soil for my k-poc or carpo trees they died once again this winter this i let the temperature get too low so they can’t go below about plus 10 degrees celsius maybe plus eight minimum anything lower than that they die so the first year they died i thought it was because they must have frozen the greenhouse the second year they definitely didn’t freeze it was minus eight at the lowest and they died and they looked perfectly healthy before that so they’re definitely they definitely can’t take the lower temperatures so i was sad to lose them once again but i learned something from it i now know you know plus eight is the absolute lowest they can go so once again i was getting the roots sorted out on these trees and they were just getting nice yeah well all right let’s get this in the rosemary’s pot so a lot of bonsai techniques can cross over to regular gardening your soils conditioning your soil soil so it has more drainage um pruning techniques to keep your shrubs and your herbs in nice shape your hedges and your bushes everything okay so there were a lot of roots in the bottom of this peapock planting it’s too bad they died that was sad to see them go sometimes with trees you know it takes a few trials before you learn how to take care of them i’m the same with desert roses i’ve killed quite a few of them but now you know i’ve been doing a lot of uh watching a lot of videos from we are the bonsai supply um reading up on them and i think i now have the knowledge to keep them alive so i’m going to try another desert rose in the future okay that’s plenty of soil in this pot it’s time to get the rosemary out of the pot now so i did see some ants crawling on the surface so i suspect there might be an ant nest in here all right so here i go i’m going to tip it on its side pull gently there it is get it on the turntable here we’ve had a lot of rain lately and you can see the soil is holding too much moisture it’s very very wet and it’ll rot the roots out for sure rosemary’s like it a little more on the dryer side so a good kind of coarse soil like bonsai soil with frequent watering will keep the rosemary really happy there’s some more grass growing out the back so i’ll get out my root rake and i’ll start raking up the soil here breaking out the roots see what’s going on here with this kind of twin trunk if it’s two or one there’s another branch back here that’s died it’s off that might have been a it might have been a bunch of cuttings stuck together i don’t know yeah the soil is far too wet it’ll like the new bone size soil yeah this the roots aren’t even going into much of the soil because it’s just too wet it was a little drier the roots would be growing out into all parts of the soil filling the pot but it’s just not it’s just sitting there it’s too wet i think the roots get too rotted definitely some ants in here yeah this soil is more like mud actually but i do see there’s a bit of bonsai soil on the bottom you can see there must have been a drainage layer of bonsai soil so maybe that saved the plant from you know rotting all the roots so i’ll get a little more of the soil out then i’ll take it over and wash the roots so it’s definitely all one all one plant you can see this branch comes really skinny and then it dropped down roots and then beyond the roots it’s really thick so it’s kind of like an aerial root on a ficus it drops down and then the thicker part over here thickens up excuse me thickens up there’s ants crawling all out of here so i don’t know where the ants were living but somewhere in here they’re all over my hand now okay i think i’m ready ready to wash the roots all right into the water it goes well that gets it a lot cleaner there’s actually a good trunk on it here maybe if i get all those cuttings growing i can keep this and develop this into a bonsai that would be nice and then my wife would be quite happy with the cuttings because all she wants it for is the leaves so okay that’s got it oh this is breaking off here not very strong all right well we’ll remove this and plant this separately i’ll separate it over the bench there i think that’s got it that’s my neighbor’s motorcycle you hear in the background you think bonsai is an expensive hobby wait till you have to buy one of those all right i’m going to separate this branch now cut it off here like that and i can plant this separately so yeah this would make you know quite a nice upright tree so i’ll do a little root pruning i’m going to get rid of the you know really long ones that’s not bad there okay and on this one uh it’s quite fibrous back here so i’ll take the root back to there i’ll just i’ll leave the other one the same or as it is it’s got a lot of fibrous roots there and i’m sure something will develop over this side eventually okay so they’re ready for planting i’m digging out a pocket to plant the trees in okay so i’ve got my two trees here and i’m thinking maybe planting them kind of nesting against each other kind of filling in this between where there’s no branches on this side huh still ants crawling around they must live inside the trunk or something they’re biting me too so yeah i think together like that and then there’s a lot of weight on this side of the tree so i’ve got to push it to this side of the pot so maybe take a bit more soil out here now that’s pretty good height most of the roots are in the soil so i think that’s good i think i can start filling in the soil here’s a look at the rosemary so i’ll start working the soil into the roots i think the image of it looks fine i think it looks like a more tree-like now i might have to get some more soil to put on top also so this has some sedum planted in it which would look nice underneath the rosemary it wouldn’t matter if it got too high and started spilling over the edges because this is just going to be used as a herb so and there’s a bit of moss here i can put into it so some good additions to the rosemary and best of all i got some soil here which is good soil it’s just you know maybe a year old got a few roots in it but that’s okay all right so i’ll top up the pot here i have a lot of repotting coming up there’s be a lot of ficuses i’ll be doing my scheflera maybe my sarissa i had a sneak preview of the pot that’s being made for my saressa very exciting so i did go with a rectangular pot and the size will be in between the old pot and the new pot so it’s pretty exciting well i think that’s going to do it let me uh work the soil into the roots a little more all right i’ll get the soil worked into the roots i mentioned in the other video i got my second shot for kovid and i felt okay the first day the second day not so good i had an upset stomach i felt really tired i had a headache just you know and joints ached it felt like i had the flu it was kind of a horrible day yesterday and it also poured rain all day yesterday the power went out we played monopoly with candlelight that was kind of fun and then today this morning i went to the dentist got my teeth cleaned and oh man that hurt she really went at it right down to the gums so yeah it’s been a rough kind of last couple of days but today i’m feeling a little better i still feel my stomach’s still a little upset i not my usual vigorous self but i’m sure by tomorrow i’ll be fine that’s the way it was the first shot too i felt really tired the first kind of day and a half i’ll give the rosemary a watering now and i’ll spin it around as i’m watering it so you can see it from all angles so here i go so it’ll be pretty hard to overwater this rosemary now that it’s in bonsai soil i think it’ll do much better so the water’s coming out the pot but it’s not running very clear yet so i’m going to keep watering it clean the lip of the pot off here give it a misting for our watering foliage yeah so that looks pretty good i think that’s going to be really happy in this new pot the water’s running out nice and clear now too so that’s good i hope this has kind of inspired you to start your own rosemary bonsai a very practical bonsai you can use it when you’re cooking potatoes or whatever you use rosemary for so i think it looks pretty good for uh you know a plant that’s not really supposed to be a bonsai so i i’ll let it fill in and we’ll come back and give it another pruning before this summer’s out the next step will be to get my wife out here and see what she thinks get a reaction all right here comes my wife what is she gonna think of it well smaller smaller yeah more tree like yeah it looks it looks pretty actually yeah it looks nice i put a little bit of sedum in the bottom too oh okay so you can grow a pot of sedum and yeah should look pretty nice it can still stay in the same window and everything like yeah you just gotta rotate it around more so it’s not all lopsided like it was is that from growing inside in a window yeah okay yeah yeah so there it is it’s in the sun repotted in bone sized soil so you can’t over water it yeah it looks very very tree-like yeah i don’t know maybe rosemary isn’t true i think it’s more of a shrub okay they can grow quite big yeah so there we go it’s done good yeah i get the cuttings yeah yeah the cuttings they’re all down here in water hopefully they’ll root yeah this here i’ll just catnip i’ll just toss this away no one wants this right i don’t know i thought you might wanna okay i’ll put it uh in the back and it can yeah it can grow if it wants to all right and i think there is the clovers in there too oh i saved that at the clover okay all right i guess the uh rosemary was a success i’m going to get out those little baobab seeds and seedlings now and get those planted let’s head to the greenhouse i’ve got all the the succulents back in the greenhouse because it just seems to rain once or twice a day it’s been doing that for a long long time so i’m keeping them you know on the dry side otherwise they’d just be that’s so i’ll just say stay soaked all the time so in here i’ve got my baobabs right here they’re in this cloth so i’ll bring the wet cloth out to the bench and we’ll see if we have some living seeds that i can plant [Music] i’m gonna give each little seed its own pot i think there’s only two that germinated but two is better than none there it is there you can see the green oh oh there’s three okay there’s three in there this is exciting okay three have germinated oh that’s exciting okay so i’ve got to get those into a pot wow awesome i’m going to mix up some new bonsai soil for these bababs so i’ll keep them covered just loosely covered until i get the soil mixed up i got all my succulents moved out of the greenhouse at least all the ones that were on the floor and back out onto the benches because it looks like it’ll be sunny at least for today over here on the benches i did an update the other day and i forgot to mention one tree back here my black walnut that i’ve never been successful in getting a black walnut to grow so over here i pulled up a black walnut from the backyard and i stuck it in the soil here and it wasn’t doing anything and it didn’t look very good and it was quite late summer so i pulled it out of the soil and then i noticed well the roots still look okay on it they didn’t look like they were dead so i put it back in the soil again and sure enough it sprouted you can see down there there’s a little bit of green on it so that’s exciting that’s my first black walnut that i’ve ever been able to get to grow we had another brutal rainstorm last night and once again the moss survived the root over rock it didn’t wash away which is just amazing i don’t know how this stuff works but yeah i guess it’s just like a really fine silt like a clay almost and it just doesn’t wash away and maybe it’s because the moss holds it together i don’t know but boy it’s gone through some really really hard rains and it’s just looking fantastic it’s not washing away it’s doing the job keeping the tree all these roots alive growing against the rock here and it’s just a thin layer on top it’s only you know a thin thin layer of of this uh kind of clay-like mossy silt it’s from the cracks in the sidewalk so i imagine like the fine dust would blow across the sidewalk and then settle in the cracks so it must be like composed of really fine dust and then the moss starts growing in it because it holds so much water and it’s just fantastic stuff for these root over rocks and you see the top of the tree is just fantastic good to see so the reason i moved all my succulents out was to get to my safety zorb back here and my perlite so i can mix up my new soil got my montreal canadian pants on that’ll give them good luck hopefully i try and get about 50 50 but by volume but you know it doesn’t have to be exact whatever [Music] all right let’s get that mixed up okay that looks good i’ve got my three pots prepared here draining screens in the bottom just because the holes are a little big my soil will pass through so i i put a finer mesh in there all right let’s get a base layer of soil in the pots now there i go [Music] all right let’s have a look now i think i said i had three of them yeah three right here hopefully they’re not embedded into the the wet cloth too much yeah that one’s not attached to the wet cloth at all okay so that can go in the soil now so i’ll dig a little hole and i’ll put it right in the middle and the root is kind of you know a bit doesn’t go straight down or anything but we’ll see what it does in the future okay and then i’ll cover that up like that just leaving the green poking out and i will water it because that root is used to having moisture around it like that okay so that one’s planted keep that in the sun let’s do number two now so here comes little now i think these two are growing into the cloth which isn’t good so i gotta separate it somehow i might have to look on the back side yeah the roots have grown through the cloth so what i’m gonna do is i’m gonna cut the cloth out and i’ll just plant it with the cloth and the cloth that’ll decompose over the years ahead except i’m not having much luck cutting here yeah i’m not having much luck cutting now okay so i’ve almost got it out i’ve never had to do this before but you know you have to adapt to whatever happens okay come on now i’ve got to separate the two little seedlings so there’s the roots sticking out the back side can you see those so i’ve got to cut between them to separate them because i don’t want the two growing in the one pot okay so i’m gonna come in here i don’t know if this is gonna work i hope it does okay let’s see if the root’s intact yes it is i wonder if i can even pull it out from the cloth now maybe i would risk breaking the root off i better not i’m just going to plant it with the cloth i don’t want to risk breaking the root off if i had a lot of these i might risk it but i’ve only got three that germinated so okay so i’m planting this now so the green is just sticking up like that [Music] and i’ll give that a good watering all right here we go with the water in that one okay here goes number three so again i’ll dig a hole for it put my cloth and everything in there and then fill it back up that should be good plant it in there nicely all right i’ll uh water that [Music] i find when the soil is brand new it dries out quickly because it’s not fully saturated it takes a while for the water to soak in the clay particles and the perlite so you got to water them a couple of times okay that’s good i’ll give my seeds a water and i’ll cover them back up and put them back in the greenhouse you never know i mean i had two yesterday now i have three so i’ll cover it back up and see if any more germinate i’m going to put the baobab seedlings back in the greenhouse now and we’ll keep track of them over the next few days and see how they do here’s a look in the greenhouse so i’ve got the three bababs right here you can see the green on them and here and here so if they stay green for the next few days that will be very good oh i hope they make it there’s no movement on the cashews yet here’s my other baobabs they’re growing nice and strong now trunks are thickening up on them too so i should repot those soon get them into you know separate them get them into their own pot the two pines are doing really well there’s that one the new one and here’s the other one so they’re doing really well i get a lot of people asking me about my to prom temple project it’s back here you can see the cement there it is um i don’t have time to work on it right now it’s going to have to wait until next winter it’ll be another winter project finishing that off i did see a great big pot that would really fit that well i saw it at chris henry’s and i thought should i buy it now and it was a lot of money so i might buy that big pot for it it would be like a it’s huge it’s like it’s like the square one that my uh penjing is in this uh city pensing but it’s bigger it’s about another third bigger so it’s a great big flat rectangular shallow oval pot so i think that would be good for the to prom temple planting yeah so i might get that in the future my cyrissa here is definitely getting new growth on it now you can see all the little tiny leaves coming in so i’ve pulled off a few of the really old ones like here’s an old yellow one these are indoor leaves so i just pull them off here’s another one that’s kind of yellowy just making way for the new growth i don’t want any of these big older leaves on the tree i want them to be all new new and improved yeah so that’s coming out quite nicely i don’t think it’ll be long before it’s lush and green once again and it’s got that new pot coming for it which will be very very exciting why is his mouth open is he just hot or did you eat something big hey are you eating strawberries hi quackers look how big you’re getting hey i had a really fun afternoon working on the rosemary and the baobab trees and that’s all for today i’m nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone
It turns out, he’s the real deal…
