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Post by garrett on Jul 18, 2012 21:53:11 GMT -5
thinking bout it.on a budget from hell.lol can i plant native? do i need expensive pots? soil requirements? can they stay outside in texas?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2012 7:56:44 GMT -5
thinking bout it.on a budget from hell.lol If a Chinaman who lives in a flat the size the size of our average postage stamp can keep a tree on his back porch (Zeko Nakamura kept hundreds on a couple card tables) and he did it through the upheaval of WW-II, with no money, you can too. Thats where I would start. Like? Oh to name just a few; huckleberry, elm, bald cypress, bear oak, azalea, crab apple, quince, Tx Ebony, Japan maple. I'm sure I'll think of more. Every tree in this short list collects better when foraged (read free). Um ah this is sorta like; "Do I need a new truck"? Well ya' if you think you do. You do. For everybody else we drive what we can afford. For the first couple years any paper-white (daffodil pan) will do, or any one gallon (or bigger) tree pot will do for bigger collected trees. Fancy (shallow) ceramic pots don't even come into a trees needs till about year five, to ten. Most of my pots came from yard sales. Only the biggest did I buy and those were specifically cause they bounced when dropped, as a consession to my MS. Now here is where if you want trees to prosper in two cups of dirt, then that dirt has to be perfect for their needs. This is not IMO a day-one need for a guy growing trees from seed, but become more one when training pots or shallow trays are being used. Bonsai grow out of doors from Bangor Maine to Bankok (Thailand). There are wrinkles in this. Many bonsai growers want to grow trees that can not live outdoors all year round. My larch would fry in its own oil in Texas. Your texas Ebony (pithelcelobium flexicaule), limped along even with a protected (indoor) lighted box in frosty New Hampshire. Why do tree guys grow trees that don't live where the trees like? Um, maybe their mother dropped the tree-guys (on their heads) when they were babies? I don't know, we just do. Sometimes we are even successful at it. Here is a site that lists some pertenent questions and solutions. howto-bonsai.com/
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2012 10:03:18 GMT -5
Perssimon. Yea thats another one you already got. Citrus with smaller leaves could be another. Pomegranite, its like an eating disorder, I keep thinking of another one...
Sheesh.
Post script: peaches, plums, cherries are all bonsai candidates...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2012 13:42:02 GMT -5
I walked into bonsai bass akward. Long ago an' far away I roomed with two men with developmental disabilities. At that residence was a very mature Japan Maple. It threw off countless thousands of seeds (and seedlings).
One of our jobs was to care for the yard--lawn. The lawn was littered with the prettiest little red-leafed seedlings. Learning how to care for those baby trees set me on my path for growing bonsai.
One persistant thing I got wrong was to plant and try to maintain really tiny trees in small pots. A small pot helps keep a tree small. It also needs soil that is perfect for growing a tree small. To cut to the chase, that means soil of about half granite chicken scratch (grani-Grit is one brand name) and half crushed bark mulch. This soil looks about like All-Bran cereal, or maybe granola.
It has just about no organic fines in it.
Now if your tree babies are going to feild straight away you don't need to tinker to the same degree as I did in '94-'95. I didn't need to either, but I perisited in keeping tree babies in pots far longer than I needed to. I never said I was smart, just persistant.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2012 8:37:28 GMT -5
You already are growing (from seed) several pretty good candidates for bonsai training.
I am not a purist like Nobukana Kajiya, who had to grow each and every tree from seed only in shallow pots, for each and every year of its life. I think its a fun project, but not a practical one. (takes too d**med long).
Like just about every grower who emigrated from Omya (Japan) to here; I coppice trees short. Odds is if you train some of the trees you already have started, your gonna stump yours too. Its that or your grandchildren will complete your work...
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Post by garrett on Jul 23, 2012 0:29:42 GMT -5
grins.thanks copp soaking it up.smiles
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 4:32:26 GMT -5
A tree local to you: bald cypress wants to grow inna swamp, but will grow in pretty up-land sites if there is sufficient rain (to keep any tree alive).
Good points that make it a good bonsai candidate: Dormant semi-hardwood cutting root easily buds back well imature examples have exfoliating bark heals over coppicing wounds quickly tolerates profound root pruning tolerates wet soil
The ideal locally hearty tree for bonsai training, should survive being mistreated. You can not hit a tree with every kind of misery and expect it to survive. B-u-t you are likely to not fully hear your trees speak, and miss stuff.
If you can get cutting well rooted, and water them as well as you would your apples, this tree will do well for you.
Why cuttings? Because they're free. Nice people ask permission to take cuttings. Bald cypress growing in a swamp often don't have anyone to ask...
Why would someone buy a landscape tree that grows locally? Beats me, but they do. I have sold bald cypress in pots in NH, as landscape specimens. So their range and heartyness is bigger than people think they are.
Don't cloud the issue with facts. I try not to correct non-hobbiest gardeners, because new growers tempt fate and try besetting their trees with more misery than the tree can survive. You can bet they will blame you for their actions.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 13:23:23 GMT -5
I am just walking. An' none of that real good. As I built a little bit of a skill-set growing trees in shallow pots, It became a way to wander in the hills and valleys between my ears, where my legs were no longer gonna carry me.
One tree I never did collect but had a few really encouraging reviews by growers I trust is; Alder. its another swamp tree and is close cousin (I think) to birch.
What I don't know is how far into the south this tree grows.
Red oaks are slower than whites. Probably the prince for reds is bear oak, but man is it slow s-l-o-w. Start a couple if you can find some, don't expect much gratification though. Plant them to field and go on with the rest of your life.
English oaks (a white) do tolerate leaf-crown and root pruning, and do spread in a mature growth pattern a whole lot faster.
Garret you are way too south to ever grow larch. Its not for you. Sorry dude. its a good tree and satisfies some of what I want to evoke because its needles drop in the fall. Dude your just gonna have to make do with bald cypress.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 4:42:41 GMT -5
San Antonio is likely to be about the northern frontier for Texas Ebony. Its a legume, Now I had'ta buy my seed in frosty New Hampshire.
I was and am in no hurry to speed up its growth. I did intentionally keep mine from seedling in shallow bonsai pots. This is as close to old Nobukana's ideal way to grow bonsai, as I'm likely to hit.
I like the looks of them as is. Plus I have profoundly limited indoor space to over-winter this tree indoors.
TX Ebony has a largish bloom and sets a largish seed. Everything else about this bush is knees and ankles above any other leguminous tree I looked at.
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Post by garrett on Jul 24, 2012 7:37:11 GMT -5
don't think i've ever seen a texas ebony.or a texas simmon either.lol
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 10:40:21 GMT -5
don't think I've ever seen a Texas ebony.or a Texas simmon either.lol If you prefer Latinae: Pithecellobium flexicaule Like many quince, it blooms, stays short, has thorns, changes leaf color, has thorns, and everything... 'Cept quince is in the rose family.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 20:07:16 GMT -5
Garret is a thorough researcher and has gotten some second opinions. I applaud his research.
I do like the Fatali page where he shows how he coppice(s) peppers.
I agree with elm and hackberry as bonsai candidates. I'm less sure of cedar as bonsai (not tried it).
Any plastic pot can be cut shallow. Once your at the collecting tree stage some are gonna start life in pretty deep pots, and a couple cut shallow (pots) will come as you need them.
Single use art pots are several years away even if you dug several trees this fall. I think there are photos of a pear in a sawed off 5 gallon bucket and in its first training pot. It ain't ready yet for that final girdling. Photos should be in tree section of tree forum on Not Just Tomatoes...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2012 11:26:16 GMT -5
I think that even if you were diving into bonsai head over heels, it would be some years before you actually needed a single use mica or ceramic bonsai pot. That said its fun to window shop. An' the Internet is ideally suited to do just that. Bonsai by the monastery is in Conyers Georgia. www.bonsaimonk.com/ Is I think the value store. Post script: I hadn't been by their web site inna while. Get their catalog. last (catalog) I got had about 100 times the number of pots...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2012 19:45:39 GMT -5
Hm some of my first trees collected as stumps (after getting keeping a tree alive down better) were a couple quince, a mock-cherry, and a half dozen sugar maples.
Learning how to do the things I needed done on those sugar maples and quince was the well spring of much of the next decade's work.
I wired and weighted limbs on that poor mock cherry at least a dozen ways that did nothing to enhance its presence as a mature tree in miniature.
I girdled and fretted on those sugar maples learning by doing much of what I still do for trees.
I had to see some of the tender boxwood's at the national arboretum (Washington DC) before it dawned on me that there were northern hearty box I could try. I spent a year slapping my forehead, cause I waited too long to get started.
Once you have a couple stumps growing, what the "next tree" will be will occur to you then. Nothing of my folly is going to drive your endeavor.
Oh, what I did to those first stumps, was not pretty. Educational yes, beauty not!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2012 7:31:44 GMT -5
Mulberry yes, bayberry no.
I think it would take a whole tribe to grow out all the Viburnums indigenous to north america, This small tree-shrub with small blue-purple berries has hundreds of cultivars. Some you are bound to like more than others. Your grow out to feild will suggest the ones worth your trial in pots.
Mulberry grows from seed easily, (without cold stratification) tolerates root, and leaf pruning. Pick some fruit locally and you'll be off at the races next spring.
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Post by garrett on Jul 28, 2012 9:33:57 GMT -5
i may do a few cherries copp.i dropped a ton of wild black cherry seeds in one of the mega pots.if they come up...smiles
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2012 10:36:21 GMT -5
Its late enough that you may be in suspence till spring for a prunus (cherry) to germinate.
Mullberry should be about ripe and the berry have itty bitty seeds in them that do not require cold stratification. if your feeling impatient and all.
Sounds like foraging (for you) has begun.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2012 19:40:21 GMT -5
This is not the preferred time of year to transplant trees. B-u-t There a fellow who insists he cannot get (free) stumps from his local free-cycle. He writes on the helpful gardener site, and lives in MI. I did score stumps way back when in new england, and it looks like I have some more on the hook with my current (local) free-cycle. I have a new SIL who is making modest noises he wants to play with them, and a daughter who maybe he can embarrass into making a pot or three... I'll let'cha know how it comes out.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2012 4:01:52 GMT -5
I have about a yard and a half of brush to chop up small enough to use for hugelkultur. Everything I've got is going into vegetable beds.
I don't really wanna set out field beds for trees here. 1., I dunno if I'll live long enough to take them back up into pots. 2., The person I'm rooming with has rather flimsy understanding of pruning any tree or shrub, causing much anger that trees are being hurt.
The short is: the size of a tree in nature is as big as its access to water. A TX ebony will never grow as big as say a redwood will. But each will grow to the what ever is the first limiting feature. The order of precedence I have found is 1., Water. 2., Size of root mass, 3., size of crown. The last two cam be limited by a man with a pruner. Its just that simple.
An upright yew (or holly) might grow to thirty feet tall. If ya wants one as a bush your gonna clip it. Apple will often get taller. Even a shrimpy crab apple will get pretty darned wide.
Reds babies are just that-babies. If he waters them enough that will change.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2012 6:54:12 GMT -5
Coppice? whatssis coppice stuff?
If you can not plan on living forever. Then chances are good you are going to cut a tree down into what looks ever so much like a living baseball bat. Or maybe a living rolling pin.
When I stumped a tree I'd start the fall before and cut the roots in a ring a little more than a shovel blade away from the soil-line. Not to dig it up, just to cut roots. I'd leave it in field and next spring early I would chop the entire trunk off level with the lowest growing leaf (or branch).
The next fall I would dig my newly short tree up and put him in a training pot.
Each following spring my newly coppiced stump would get a bit of a trim on both roots and top till he was ready for a bonsai pot.
This very often was a four or five year project--even if I did not girdle the tree to make a shallow-er foot print.
I have run into coppicing photo sets where the stump was reduced to little more than a beer-can sized cylinder with a lone leaf at the top and a solitary root sticking out of the bottom. I don't have the chutzpah to prune that hard all at one chop.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2012 6:44:54 GMT -5
Root over rock bonsai. One of the perfect styles used to compound that "it grew that way forever" look that, well, cons the viewer to mentally adding age to a tree. Please don't read my assessment as one of disapproval. I like ROR (root over rock) trees, its a great style, one easily mastered by a new grower (who is patient), does best with smaller stock-the roots are bendy-ier. Start out with a sapling that has plenty of roots. Shake off dirt and wrap the roots around its new rocky home and tie roots onto rock with jute. Pack tree and rock into a pot big enough to cover root with soil. Each year for the next several years your going to want to take rather longer looking at the roots as they develop when its time for a spring repotting. Some trees with develop a money side for both the top and the (to be exposed) roots, some won't. Keep the pretty ones, sell the not-pretty ones to flatlanders... I find ROR trees also emerge and submerge as I work on the tree. Inadequate roots will grow during later submergence. But not while roots are exposed to air. Have I buried a trees roots for four or five years, exposed and pruned them, and then on later years reburied the same roots? You betcha. Doesn't everybody?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2012 11:58:18 GMT -5
The cost of being shallow, is sometimes a stern fart will separate a tree from its tray. Well, actually today's subject tree resides directly below the pole with bird feeders on it. Did the cat knock over that crab apple under the feeder? Did two birds fighting for supper, dump it? Probably I will never know. I was time though, to replace soil, and pass some wire up through the drainage ports and wire that puppy to its tray. Replaced the soil, tampered him well and back to the bench he went. All better now.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2012 7:39:08 GMT -5
Its been drouthy here on the appalachia. Drouth brings forth autumnal reactions in trees. They let leaves age out and color up. Some years those colors are muted because of the drouth, but not always.
If you have bloodgood red-leafed Japan maples. Now is about time to look for them. their autumnal color can be eye popping. An' knowing where they are, sets the search for where their seeds and seedling volunteers will be next spring.
If weeding in the JC Penny parking lot can be construed as stealin' well I guess I'm a theif.
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Post by garrett on Aug 20, 2012 19:11:50 GMT -5
it's drouthy here too copp.sighs
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Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2012 17:49:07 GMT -5
Fall is nearing, Heat is abating. I am cutting back a little on how much I water my tree babies. I'm off to do that now, about once in 30 hours VS July's twice a day.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2012 7:35:29 GMT -5
Just in case people get the feeling from my posts that there are some soft spots on old Cagles head, and have never gone a rummage in the crypts of IBC, here is Jack Winkle's article: www.annarborbonsaisociety.org/documents/FluLgtBonsaiWithPic.pdfJack makes me look sober as a judge. Please bear in mind Jack was doing all his growing at mame size (more than one fits in the palm of your hand). Meaning he is watering at a rate of something more than twice a day, and remote from his light box. Meaning he's got move his entire stock, water it and allow it to drain before returning it to its light station. Twice or more per day each and every day. Oh and forget getting somebody else to water for you...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2012 16:31:43 GMT -5
About ten years ago I used to correspond with a fellow who grew up in South Africa. He lived (then) in Chicago, but kept some trees from home. I have none of his photos as proof, but here are some links to others growing what has to be one of the more unlikely tree species trained to trays. www.baobabs.com/Baobabs_cultivation.htm
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Post by marielouise on Sept 9, 2012 19:50:41 GMT -5
That's some strange lookin trees! Very neat ...
do they bend them over for bonsai.
As a child I had a Chinese friend, they had a tiny bonsai tree that was very old --been in their family over 3 generations . The Grandmother lived with them ( she had wrapped feet--- very tiny ) the tree had been in her family back to her grandparents. The Grandmother was the one who kept the tree trimmed and cared for. The rest of us could only look not touch. Even their court yard was planted with shaped trees and bushes, very beautiful , remember raking the sand & rock garden , it had to be done in a pattern and Granny would chatter at us and wave her arms around. Mai would translate some but end up laughing to hard and not fully explaining what Granny was saying. I always figured Granny was probaley cussing us in Chinese. LOl
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2012 4:52:08 GMT -5
That's some strange lookin trees! Very neat ... do they bend them over for bonsai. Recumbent or laid over, is (raft) one style, slanting and cascade are others that could all be described as 'leaning over' bonsai. Chinamen like a pimped out vibrant (if not throbbing) loud pot. Hot pink is just an average pot. With a shaggier than Japanese tree in the pot. A Japanese tree is by comparason is in a drab brown or grey pot, Looking rather like a protestant tree hanging around outside the Episcopal church.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2012 15:16:52 GMT -5
This is not the preferred time of year to transplant trees. B-u-t There a fellow who insists he cannot get (free) stumps from his local free-cycle. He writes on the helpful gardener site, and lives in MI. I did score stumps way back when in new england, and it looks like I have some more on the hook with my current (local) free-cycle. I have a new SIL who is making modest noises he wants to play with them, and a daughter who maybe he can embarrass into making a pot or three... I'll let'cha know how it comes out. I was on my way, well actually I was at the marathon station when I noticed a landscape crew ripping out a boxwood and autumn olive hedge. They were going to replace it with annuals. The crew let me take two boxwood's. Oo baby! these had been in the ground for some years. Each is as thick as my thigh. I spent the past four hours chopping them small enough to fit in a 15 gallon nursery pot. If I can get photos of them I will post 'em. They're just hacked short stumps right now. Give 'em a few years tho and....
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