Bonsai Care At Herons Bonsai Nursery • Bonsai Made Easy August 2021

We are almost three weeks into april and i just show you all sorts of bonsai care chores that i have to do on the nursery i don’t do just one video all about watering i will just do videos about the sort of chores i’m doing so you can see that i’m watering the nursery this is the back greenhouse and now that we are well into the third week in april we have to water these trees virtually every day sometimes twice a day and this this process or this chore goes on right up to october or november and of course being a closed greenhouse it’s not exposed to the elements it doesn’t get the rain so i have to water it right through into winter as well so this is how i water nothing special i put my thumb over the hose pipe don’t get the camera wet and i let it fall gently on the trees the way i do it i make the water go in an arc like this and fall i don’t jet the tree like that i’ve seen some people jetted you mustn’t do that i just let it fall very gently on the trees coming in an arc and then falling down and as you can see everything is looking beautiful nice and green i’m going to talk about the trees in a minute when i put this post pipe down so this is what i’m going to do right through the nursery watering this greenhouse takes usually about maybe 15 minutes to do everything and i make sure every pot gets its fair share of water it’s not just efficient to water the leaves and call it a day you’ve got to make sure every pot gets a fair soaking of water so this is how we water the trees okay i’ll move on to something else now i always think that spring is perhaps the most exciting time of the year by the way although i’m wearing this hawaiian shirt i’m cheating in a way because underneath her hawaiian shirt i’ve got my sweatshirt and i’ve got my woolly fleece because in england the temperature is not as warm as you think it to be although it’s bright and sunny the outside temperature is only like 10 degrees and it may rise to about 12 degrees but it looks warm and sunny but in the greenhouse the temperature in here is probably about more like 17 to 20 degrees and because of that the trees grow very fast and they have like a two month head start over everything so if i can just show you each of the trees in turn and explain to you what’s going on this was an air layering of a horn beam this was severed last september and i potted the thing into a bigger pot and you can see the growth in the last two weeks it has made this much growth two four six leaves all this is new growth since i would say march so this all what we call soft growth same with the bonsai maples this is another alien air layering of arakawa and you can see the flowers that are growing on it and i will also point out i had done a video about aphids on these trees so you keep getting aphids and i did spray a few days back and because i sprayed these aphids are now dead you see all these black spots they are dead insects so i’ve sprayed them so they should not be active but they do come back again and if they come back again i spray again i will now take you through each of these different trees just to show the states of these trees you can see these beautiful flowers these are the crab apples and because they’re in the greenhouse they’ve been flowering about two or three weeks earlier than the crab apples out in the open i will show you something else which i like to show and this is what happened when i put this tree out in the frost last week we had frost in fact every morning we still have frost the temperature goes down to minus two minus three and i forgot to bring it back into the greenhouse because this emerged in the greenhouse and this is what we call frost damage so what you do when you get a bonsai tree that is damaged by frost so all i do is i cut these leaves in fact i can cut all the leaves off and it will produce a new crop if you don’t remove these damaged leaves these leaves are in fact dead you will not get new leaves coming from that point so you have to remove it if you are to get new leaves so it is an early leaf pruning in effect you see that the frost only damaged certain parts this part must have been sheltered by something else so in fact i’m going to remove every single leaf and hopefully in about three weeks time i will get completely new leaves on this tree so don’t worry when you get frost damage to the leaves of maples it is quite common for it to happen but you just got to accept it and deal with it okay now let’s look at some more trees which are very interesting here by the way you notice that i have three tools with me these are the standard pruning shears or scissors the japanese call it satsukishias this design of shears is called satsuki shears these are really for root pruning but i like the handle i like holding the handle like that so i do most of my pruning with this and then of course the trusted falco number two secateurs i use as well so i carry these three tools around with me now let’s look at another tree look at this tree look at the growth that has happened you must be wondering what’s happened it’s gone crazy now all these shoots from here to there have been produced in the last four or five weeks just shows how vigorous maples can be all in the last four or five weeks these shoots have grown now why am i growing them like this i’m growing it because i want to make the tree strong but if i wanted to make more refinement because this is a very nice bonsai really look at the trunk on that one and if i didn’t want it to get stronger i will show you what i will do to this bonsai tree i will just cut it back and this is how we produce ramification a lot of people say can you show a video about ramification ramification is not rocket science all we are doing is pruning the ends of the trees and by pruning the ends i cause more uh development that means every shoot i prune it produces two new shoots at the end of that now this top i’m not going to cut out because i wanted to be the new leader so i’m going to grow this tall pull it up and hopefully it’ll make a thick strong leader so this is how i would deal with this tree but as i said i can also leave it completely to just strengthen the tree so you don’t have to do anything to that and while we’re looking at the maples to show you how strong these maples now look at all that growth this 30 centimeters or 12 inches has all grown in the last two weeks all this is soft growth so maples are exceedingly strong trees same with these look at that all these shoots here are new shoots and they’ve all been produced in the last two weeks this is a deshojo and the deshojo has turned from that bright red color and is turning slightly green and while we are here these are root cuttings from the field maple or is it elm i’m not sure so these are root cuttings that we’ve made and these are seedlings that i planted so there is a mixture of cotoneaster seedlings and this is i can’t remember what plant this is uh lovely heart-shaped plant which i use for accent plantings and then this is another ah this this tree has finished this is a chinese japanese quince the flowers are finished now this one is the golden or full moon maple this is a acer japonicum and it is just coming out into leaf so different maples leaf at different times and if we look at this little tree this is a english field maple and if i’m not mistaken this was produced from a root cutting that means i took a root this was the root and the rest of it grew from there so it can show you just how simple it is to make plants from root cuttings and if i keep pruning the ends i get more ramification and this is how we get trees virtually for free i think i can spend hours just hanging around here because there’s so much to show you okay there’s another old tree this one this another case in point look at that one this is arakawa or rough park maple and i’m just showing you because we grew it in sphagnum moss this is growing in sphagnum moss and look at the vigor of this tree all these shoots this is about 70 centimeter long has grown since i would say the summer of last year and the new shoots are these about 30 centimeters these were grown this much was grown in the last two weeks and all this has grown since last september and you can see how thick this arakawa is and i’m growing a new leader and hence i’m keeping this long i’m growing all the branches because i want to strengthen the tree so this how we change the shapes of trees and alter the shapes of trees just by making them grow long and also using the peter chan most trick where i grow things in moss and when i grow it in moss i make sure they are fed as well i’ve just passed by another bonsai plant which is very interesting look at this this 60 centimeters all this year’s growth all this from here to there is this year’s growth these are maples growing ah i’ve discovered another treasure in case people don’t know what this tree is this is called elyagnus eliagnus and the japanese call it gumi lovely yellow flowers beautifully scented they smell like jasmine and they carry little fruit and those fruit i believe are edible so that is iliacness which you don’t often see as bonsai it’s used a lot in in japan now while i’m passing by this is an old san jose that i’ve cut back hard and i’m regrowing it the purpose of showing you this is these are all the new shoots that are coming these are new shoots you see the difference between the old shoots and new shoots so this is a sign that is recovering fast so we could spend hours in here if we just turn our backs around now this is japanese you and look at the beautiful new shoots that are coming on this view this was apparently a 200 year old tree that i imported from japan many many years ago well some of my stuff forgot to water this tree so minus marks for them see there’s such a big place that they don’t see everything okay so this is an old tree you can see the trunk and because it was suffering i put it in a large flower pot in just ordinary peat a peat type soil and bark and i’m regrowing the tree so can you see the vigor all these long shoots have grown i would say in the last two weeks but what do i do at this stage i’ve got the vigor back but i don’t want to cut them off straight away i wanted to grow more because i wanted to pull the sap strengthen the branches and trees and maybe in about two months time i’m going to do this i’m going to prune these shoots back so that it buds back further into the branch so this is what i’m going to do later on i won’t do it just yet because i want to strengthen the tree so this tree you can look at the overall tree there’s so much new growth on it there’s so much new growth beautiful new growth so that is that tree some of these trees these were grafted red hawthorn and of course the top has died you don’t always get everything hundred percent and because the top has died it’s done me a favor and i’ve got a small beautiful little bonsai there red hawthorn i have another red horse on here and you can see the beautiful far flowers which are coming on this so we grow these here for fun uh this was a casualty i like to show you my casualties as well for some reason this may have got neglected and not watered so we do get some mistakes on the nursery what am i doing here these are cuttings i don’t waste anything these are san jose cuttings in water and cryptomeria cuttings which i brought back from my plants at wesley so i’m going to make cuttings with these so i’ve got my work cut out as they say this was an air layering which we put in a pot so that is the transition from the moss ball then it was planted in moss and now growing there this is mulberry being regrown zelkova new shoots again about 35 40 centimeters of new shoots in the last two weeks this is a very beautiful maple i can’t remember the name it could be possibly kihachijou look at the beautiful leaves on this this is just a general tour of the nursery look at the delicate leaves so you can understand why i love maples because there’s such a wealth of plants so many different varieties now behind me here people who come onto my nursery they sometimes think i’m either mad or doing stupid things but there’s meth method in my madness why am i growing these bonsai maples long like this you see the plant is here these are seedlings they’re about maybe 12 year old seedlings could be more and i grow these long shoots because should i want to in arch a plant into another tried maple i just take that tray and in arch it and like graft it there and when it’s taken i cut it off so i leave these long shoots for a very specific purpose so i sometimes get a bit cross because my staff go around you think oh this should have been pruned but they don’t realize what i have in mind to do they all have a purpose this is another case in point if you look at these trident maples here now these were wired into that s shape now why am i growing 70 80 centimeter long like that it’s ludicrous i’m growing it because i’m developing tape i want to make more taper and then i can either use it for cuttings or whatever so what you see is not necessarily uh you know just neglect or something else it is all done with the purpose in mind i will also show you some my ficuses i keep it in this greenhouse although it’s not that warm it still grows better than in the living room unfortunately those of you who grow ficus in the home the living room conditions cannot be as humid as you would get here so do be warned you know when you grow things in a warm unheated conservatory with lots of humidity you get better growth while we’re passing by let’s look at some of these our air layerings these are chinese juniper air layerings we have some huge chinese junipers which grow in our field and these were air links which we took last year and you can see they are planted in moss and they’re well on their way they’re all about over a meter tall with thick trunks about two three inches thick and they layered and they’re just waiting to be transferred now into ordinary soil this is some more heirlooming this is crepe myrtle crepe myrtle i’ll show you the parent plant from which is taken so these were air layings which have rooted very small air layings these haven’t started budding i hope they’re not dead but these are air layerings but i will perhaps take you to the mother plant and show you where the mother plant came from uh while i’m talking i did a video about a week ago showing how to deal with aphids where i spray all these maples because they were infested with green fly and black fly so there are still some more green flower black fry coming but i did spray it completely and got rid of it so even if you do spray your plants it’s largely clear they do come back and infest the trees so in early spring early summer you got to keep a close eye on maples because they’re very prone to infestation of aphids that means green fly and black fly this tree was also covered but i’m happy to say that i don’t see any signs of aphid on this another tree which we had a lot of if it was this airline this massive airlaying of deshojo was completely covered with aphid but i think we’ve got rid of the aphid now and talking of earrings there’s another massive air layering of european horn beam we select the shapes and then pot it up and now this is going to be put in a bonsai pot if we had grown this in the field in the ground it would have had some very thick roots in fact let me just see if the roots may be stuck at the bottom line you have to cut it off yeah i see look there’s so much root there i have to cut that off to get it out of the pot so this is ready to be put in a bonsai pot so these were produced in literally just six months let me show you the crepe myrtle from which this tree was taken while we are passing look at that beautiful asahi zuru i love this tree but during the summer it’s nothing only the spring color is interesting so this is the crepe myrtle this crepe myrtle i’ve had for years and years but it has never flowed maybe i don’t have warm enough climate for it so this is the airline i took from these branches there’s another one which hasn’t rooted so i didn’t take it off so crepe myrtle is very easy to let’s see where i cut them off you see what a lot of new shoots are coming this tree is much too long in branch so i’m going to cut them off but this is used as a parent plant for making air so that is why we leave it like that see look at that’s a new shoot about 70 centimeter long all produced in the last two weeks so you can see how vigorous the trees are absolutely vigorous ah this is a japanese holly i like sirata it has red berries but it’s deciduous i will go over there and show you the flowers of chinese quince cydonia sinensis because not many people see it in flower they’re mainly imported from japan look at it beautiful flower and they have these large pear-shaped fruit and this tree is being grown in a pot because i want it to grow bigger and stronger and what can i show you this unfortunately died years and years ago but i think the base is still alive i hope it’ll sucker from the base that was chinese quince as well so sometimes you get failures but it’s not a complete failure there’s still some hope in it uh while i’m passing by these are the oak trees you remember the video bonsai for free i dig these little seedlings up from the garden and this is how we make the bonsai from these little oaks and they’re cut down hard to make into small bonsai let’s have a little quick run around the nursery these trees are being regrown so that they become strong these are satsuki azaleas they’re grown in here because we want to change the shapes of these trees that is a great big maple that we air lid laid in 2019 september 2019 it was seventh so it’s been here for now 12 for 16 months and it’s raring to go i need to take it out of the greenhouse and this is the large airline hopefully it’s growing well larch is very difficult to earlier but i was successful with this one so i’m very pleased with that oh now this is the famous tree the one that had no hope a lot of people asked what happened to this tree did it live or did it die and this is the one i don’t want to return to the customer until i’m completely satisfied that it is growing well and if we look at this carefully so which was the front even i can’t remember which was the front i think the front was like this isn’t it okay so this is how it was planted and the signs of growth are here if you come here you see these are flowers in fact so it’s producing flowers but the color is not perfect i still want to keep it much longer to make sure it is absolutely spot on before it is returned to the customer so this is a tree which we did in that video and it has more than i think four hundred thousand or five hundred thousand views on that particular project this is unusual tree this is a chinese celtus sinensis it’s not a particularly pretty tree but we grow it for novelty and these are projects we did last week customers trees that we worked on and you see many maples around here and these are the double double chai uh japanese quince with these beautiful flowers these are not for sale but we keep them here because we propagate from it we make cuttings both shoot cuttings and what we call root cuttings from those trees so this is just a quick tour of the nursery look at those horn beams growing so well they’re all in leaf and on the left there that’s a chinese quince but that one is very shy to flower for some reason but it’s got a beautiful trunk and this is my famous windswept lodge which is now like a semi cascade this was made in 1974 and it has appeared in all my books it’s such an old tree that it is really struggling to survive but it’s still alive i have to make gins out of some of these dead branches so this tree will evolve these are the tanuki’s we did lots of new growth and that big one as well so these are projects ongoing projects and this is the tree the other half of the tree that i split with the chinese cleaver this is the small thin portion and it’s become a short tree the big big half is out on the nursery i’ve shown it many times before when a san jose juniper is growing strong it should look like this so i’m going to make sure that that no hope a tree will become like this before i return it to the customer ah this was also these lots of youtube videos i’m sure you will recognize so this is just a little quick tour of what i do in the spring and i hope you’ve enjoyed [Music] it [Music] foreign [Music]