Nebari Work On My Maple Bonsai
Hello everybody if you’ve been a subscriber for a while you might recognize this bundle of sticks as a field maple fusion project which hasn’t been a a particularly unparalleled uh success in fact well we’ve definitely got fusion we do have an odd an odd shaped tree indeed but we have got some fusion at least at the base um lots of odd strange wire scars which will need taking care of over the years and why i’m wearing these big gloves is we’ve got a bunch of stinging nettles that have moved in over winter um which i need to get out and they’re going to fight me which is a nuisance because i didn’t want to have to repot this tree um today i was hoping to leave it another year i still might i just guess i’ll just have to put on the gloves every now and again and pull out the stinging nervous and if i can get all the root out not too bad i think i’ve got most of it so if i just keep on top of it [Applause] that shouldn’t be too terrible what i’m going to do is i’m going to remove this piece of wire at the base um which goes against what i did with the oaks when i moved that parts of the tree moved away but you know i’ve got almost complete fusion all the way around that i can see now so i’m gonna pull it off and get rid of it if i can find my wire cutters [Applause] there they are [Applause] so yeah i’m gonna pull that piece of wire off if i can see there there it is and get the white cutters in there and i should be able to just pull it away fairly easily i’m gonna have to deal with this stuff at the top here before it pokes me in the eye [Applause] let’s just trim everything back that i’m not wanting in my eye so that’s all the work i’m going to do to the top of this tree um not detailed work it’s just part of a longer term plan what i’m going to try and do now is graft in and unfortunately i don’t have a dremel to use as kenneth did but uh grafting some of these field maple seedlings which are just waking up into the base of the tree to help fill in some of these gaps and create me a nice nebari with some radial roots so how am i going to do that i’m going to start by removing the surface soil of this tree of this tray rather and uh giving me some roots roots sometimes my words come out they wrong they do um give me some room to put some of these young trees in okay so that’s got rid of i guess i’m at the top inch into the soil and um just remove a few of these roots that are sticking up out of the way and as you can see in particular here and this side we’ve got gaps um so i’m going to try and put some trees in and around to fill up some of these gaps and uh as i say create a a radial root radial root pattern even i can [Applause] i think that’s a bit of a stinging nettle root i can tell because it’s yellow i’m stinging that over it’s a generally quite a bright yellow color okay so i’ll get the tray out of the way and start getting some of these young trees into place [Applause] so i have a tray of uh filled maple seedlings here which are just bursting into life and what i’m going to do with these is i’m gently going to tease them out as best they can doing too much damage um until i have a little seedling like so and then i can just give it a little snip there and i’m going to try and graph these into place now with this being a surface root now to aid that what kenneth did and what i’m going to do is to get these roots together in a little bundle all going in the same direction i’ll wrap them in some toilet tissue like so and then we have a little pliable root and trunk that can be put into place wherever i feel i need a root and wherever there is a gap i want to fill so we have a gap here you can just tuck that in like so around these other branches which are fighting me every step of the way like they do much like i could do would be in that side of it now i have a surface root there and a tree that can be grafted into place there now camel kenneth used a dremel or even ken or used a dremet take your pick um sorry kenneth but i’m not going to do that because i i don’t have one which is a very good reason not to do it of course and i’m just going to basically lay those in place and then once i’m they’ve been in place for a little while when they’re starting to grow well i will um take them with some grafting tape for the rest of the season so it’s just a question of tease out a tree take away roots going in the wrong direction that are too thick tees into the right direction wrap it in some toilet paper and then i’m just going to place them into position all around the tree so that’s going to get boring for you to watch so i’ll speed it up a little bit um that one’s no good they can go in the bucket of water so they don’t dry out completely i could i’m gonna lose that one those two together like so now the paper will rot away leaving the roots situated in place that radial pattern so i’m gonna turn the camera off continue on and we’ll come back when we’re done okay so yeah i’m not sure quite quite what to say now so just looks something like out of a revenge of the mummies or something these little bandaged up roots that i then need to tie in but before i do that i’m going to fill in with some soil to try and keep the roots in place [Applause] just out of reach of those roots i don’t want it on top of those roots [Applause] release fertilizer okay so then we’ll start to fill in some soil over the top of these roots hopefully that will weight them down a little more to get them to stay in condition and [Applause] nice and tight then and then assuming all these lifts they will graft and [Applause] try not to get soil behind behind the seedlings that’s that’s not what in the ceiling that’s a piece sticking out okay um [Applause] that should hold those roots in place for now a little bit more for some extra weight and then we’ll spread that over the rest of the pot and then we’ll try and get the grafting tape on this stuff is biodegradable supposedly can be left on and on and on so it’s also supposed to stick to itself but in my experience it really does to begin with but we can get that in and down and get those trees tucked in that’ll be the magic trick once you get it going once you get it going it does start to stick to itself but it is quite brittle [Music] i may put a piece of wire around it to hold it in place and then put the tape over the top sounds like a plan okay unfortunately um yeah that should do it that should hold them in place long enough for the grasping tape to go around there’s a couple of places for example here where the tree has got a hollow um that it’s going to take a little while for the the trees to fill out but that’s okay under there and then hopefully these roots will splay out and those pieces will fill in that hollow okay so that wire’s holding that let’s go okay so there you go thanks to kenneth again for the idea uh hopefully it’ll work i’ll put a link to his channel in the description and then you can go across and see what other good stuff he does no idea which is the front of the stream which is the back of this tree um time will tell whether this fusion project will actually work it’s getting there slowly i suppose anyway i’m going to put this back where it was by the pond and let it grow on for another couple of years and we’ll come back and visit just to see how these little seedlings look over the summer okay so it’s the 28th of april today and uh this big uh field maple fusion project is uh living its life in this pot by the pond and uh all these new trees that i put around are all shooting away and so i’m hoping that this experiment will see them fuse to the trunk over the next few years and give me that radial route pattern that i hope for only time will tell anyway the tree is growing away really strongly and fusing nicely so much for watching [Music]
