How to Take Care of a Bonsai Tree
In this video I take a customers pine and maple bonsai tree and create something quite different from the material. I even surprise myself at times. Enjoy!
Let me show you how to take care of a bonsai tree. This was a pine growing in this pot a mugo pine a tall one which came for repotting and i was just going to put it in the spot but it didn’t look interesting enough so i got a piece of driftwood a dead juniper branch and i’m going to make it like a tanuki so that it appears to be an old tree growing on this dead wood so let’s see what we can achieve from this and we will try and create something beautiful out of something which is not that interesting so it is like you know dressing dressing the tree up to make it look prettier as i say there is no right or wrong in this game as long as the end result is okay that’s all that matters and by strapping it around this dead wood the shape of the trunk will assume that position and in due course it should be okay watch this gradually pines are fairly flexible branches and trunks so we are able to do it with this with deciduous trees for instance like maples or hornbeams you wouldn’t be able to do it even if the trunk was as slender as this so this in fact is what we call japanese folklore is that animal which is always trying to fool people so we’re trying to fool people into thinking that this is an old tree with driftwood i can’t get it to mesh as tight as this but given time gradually we will be able to get it to mesh that slightly different angle i was going to put a rock because the client wanted to use this spot and this spot is really too big for this tree so i thought of putting a rock with it but i said to myself i put driftwood it may make it more interesting do you like it okay so there you go we’ve made an uninteresting tree more interesting with the driftwood and it looks as if the tree has a thicker trunk so you know we have another little problem here i’ve repotted a customer’s tree but he has asked very rightly what if it is made a shorter tree by cutting it there so let us see what happens if it were to be cut so i always like to use my bag trick so the bag trick enables you to see what the tree would look like with the thing cut so that is how it would look it doesn’t look bad because it’s got quite a nice line coming here whereas the original tree because it’s tall that is very straight so giving it a line makes it more interesting so it is possible and because we shortened it i think all these will also have to shorten this is a very healthy tree hence it’s growing so strong uh i think it is an ordinary mountain maple i’m not sure until the leaves come out i wouldn’t know but this is where i could do either i could continue to grow it in a roughly conical shape or dome shape or cut it here to get a chunkier shorter tree so the choice is up to the customer if customer is happy i will go ahead with it and i know for a fact that the result would be quite acceptable it wouldn’t look that bad so you got to tell me what you need would you like me to do it okay that’s what i like i don’t like people who dither i can’t make decisions i like people who can make decisions because i make decisions so here we go with the sauce this is the third of march so we are well into the very early spring and this is the ideal time to do this sort of job there you go we can’t put it back we can’t put it back but look at the tree it doesn’t look bad now this is a bit long now so what do we do let us see where we can cut it i can cut it in stages cut it there and this is also a bit long i’ve cut it back so everything has been reduced in scale and i think you’re absolutely right it looks better for it when i sold this treat two years ago i did point out that this was an option and he is remembered so here we are so i don’t think that was a bad decision at all so this is where sometimes we’ve got to what we call bite the bullet which we’ve done and i think the tree will look better for it now you’ll get new shoots coming here so don’t worry just be a bit patient you’ll get new shoots coming here and this will be the triangular shape i will just do a little bit of pruning with all maples and in fact all the citrus trees if you keep doing this by stopping the ends the analogy i use is like putting your finger on the end of a hose pipe and if there are little holes in the hose pipe it will force the little uh holes to let the water through so this is exactly what we’re doing by stopping the ends you’re going to force more growth to come from other places so this is a job you have to constantly do especially during the growing season as you get the new long shoots if you cut the ends you will then force new shoots to develop many people are reluctant to cut and as a result it gets bigger and bigger and less manageable i will now just tidy the end of that tree just finding a branch cutter pruning maples and silver birch at this time of the year uh you will find that they lose a lot of sap because the sack is rising but don’t worry after a couple of days it will stop [Music] you
