Club News - August 2023
Garden Tour and Picnic - August 19
No August Meeting
As is usual at this time of year our club takes a break from formal meetings and instead visit the gardens of a few of our club members to see their trees and then have a picnic.
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Tour Schedule
11am - 12:30PM
Garden of Lynne O’Dell
750 Kings Mountain Rd, Woodside, CA 94062
1 - 3pm
Garden of Christine Weigen
3510 La Mata Way, Palo Alto, CA 94306
Note: Travel between Lynne's house and Christine's house is ~25 minutes
4 - 7pm
Garden of Michael Greenstein
860 Covington Rd, Los Altos, CA 94024
Note: Travel time between Christine's house and here is ~15 minutes
Monthly Tasks
This month: August Tasks
Each month there are a number of tasks you need to do to your bonsai – from repotting, to fertilizing to spraying for pests. We have put together a checklist, customized for the San Francisco Bay Area to help you. This checklist is adapted from earlier work by Mitsuo Umehara.
Recap of our July Meeting on Yamadori and Yardadori
With multiple handouts and their slide show this was a very special presentation as Idris Anderson and Bill McDonald took us into their world of collecting bonsai material from nature versus buying one from a vendor. Idris shared her passion for collecting bonsai from her neighbors’ yards or the hillsides of her property. Bill shared his enthusiasm for collecting trees from the wild—after getting permission to do so of course from the appropriate authorities—as well as collecting locally. While Bill remained ever calm and professional, you could see the special sparkle in Idris’s eyes as she shared stories of her adventures of collecting “yardadori.” We had a really good turnout that night—especially from the newer members of the club—and that was nice to see too.
Why Collect?
Collecting is a good way to jump start your collection. You can get a tree with a larger trunk than you would find at a nursery and for much less expense than you would have to pay a professional collector. And besides, the experience is great fun and it’s satisfying to develop a tree over time, especially a tree that doesn’t at first seem like it would make wonderful material. When you hunt for yamadori, you will not find a ready-made, styled bonsai. You need to develop an eye for what a tree can become.
A yamadori will have a character to it that no human-made tree will ever have; bonsai care—pruning, bending, fertilizing, and careful watering—can then enhance that character.
Finding & Collecting a Tree
Home demolition events are good opportunities for yardadori. Bill McDonald sometimes sends postcards to potential owners of trees (i.e. businesses or homes where he sees work being done or about to be done). Maybe 1 out of 5 times he gets a response. Idris scouts for material to save from landscaping projects and also kindly asks her neighbors’ permission to collect or air-layer something that grabs her attention. Walking her dogs in her neighborhood has yielded not only friendship but opportunities for new trees.
Never attempt to collect a tree when you discover that you will not be able to get enough roots for the tree to survive collection.
Idris has had the experience of attempting to collect a lovely little shore pine that had a large tap root and almost no other roots. She had to leave it. She’s also collected a neighbor’s juniper that was growing in about 6 inches of soil just above rock. It came out easily and survived.
Dig a trench 18 inches or more, down 8-10 inches all around the tree. Use a large pruner or reciprocating saw (sawzall) to cut large roots including the tap root. Try to extract intact a large root ball—this is the hardest part. Leave lots of foliage on the tree for its health. You can cut it back to a height you can handle. Spray water on the roots as you collect and protect them immediately by wrapping with wet T-shirts, burlap, plastic shrink wrap. Keep roots protected until you can plant the tree.
You can dig around oaks and cut big roots back now. This will promote finer roots that you want when you collect later.
Now is also the best time to start getting a permit; it takes several levels of approval and 1 or 2 months to receive the form. State and National Forest Services are very liberal and will provide inexpensive permits, but National Parks will not. BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and Caltrans (which has jurisdiction around roadways will mow it down and don’t care).
Bill advised not to dig the first potential tree you find but to take toilet paper to mark a tree you have in mind so you can find it again. It’s so easy to lose a tree you see once and want to go back to. If you never go back for the tree, toilet paper is biodegradable and won’t scar the landscape. If Bill likes a tree but wants it to grow more before he collects it, he may prune, wire, and bend some branches to put movement in the tree and collect a year (or more) later.
After-Care of the Collected Tree
When you pot up the tree, try to use at least some of the same soil in which the tree was growing in the wild. Bill and Idris recommend potting in pure pumice, in almost all cases. Bill and Idris recommend potting in pure pumice, in almost all cases. Avoid organic soils that will retain too much water. Roots can rot in such soil—one of the main causes of failure to survive.
Collected trees should NOT be put in bonsai pots until roots have sufficiently developed. Instead, plant in a wood grow box or large container. The wood allows lots of oxygen into the soil and roots stay cooler than in plastic. Boxes also allow roots to escape out of the bottom for the tree to gain vigor. To make a grow box, redwood boards from fences being replaced are good material for this purpose. Idris brought a grow box that she had made and used. She makes all her grow boxes from 6 or 8 inch, 1-by or 2-by redwood boards. Large plastic colanders, found in Korean markets, and pond baskets, from Home Depot, also work well. The tree will need to stay in its grow box for at least a full year and maybe 2 or more years. It might at that time be ready for a bonsai pot, or it may be put in a slightly smaller container with shallower depth. It’s all about how well developed the roots are. Anderson flats are good at this point to develop root spread. Directions for building a grow box are on the Kusamura website.
Other Members’ Yamadori/Yardadori (Show and Tell)
Jenn brought an olive that she dug up from her yard. Richard and Barbara Phillips brought their ugly duckling plum, purchased at the Jim Thompson sale a few years ago. Katherine Glassey brought her “stickadori" razzleberry, lorapetalum or chinese fringe tree. Michael Greenstein brought his mother, daughter, and granddaughter bougainvillea trees. First, he dug up the mother tree which had been in his yard’s landscape, and then he created the younger trees by air-layering each generation of tree. March is a good time to dig up bougainvillea but if you have a heat box like Michael’s you can dig it up in colder weather. Directions for building a heat box are on the Kusamura website.
Bill’s and Idris’s Trees
Bill brought 6 trees, including several Western junipers that he had collected with permit in public lands near Weed in Northern California. These were gathered next to or a short walk from fire roads. He no longer wants to venture far from his car on hikes to higher elevations to find trees. (Bill donated to the club raffle table a fully equipped backpack he will no longer be using. Thanks, Bill!) The location near Weed has since suffered from wildfires, so now Bill recommends an area a little north in the Siskyou forest where permits are also available. He’ll happily share the location if you want to head up there sooner and dig them up!
Bill also brought a juniper he collected on Whipple Road in Redwood City. It had 2 trunks, which he was able to separate. A boxwood he brought he had to dig out in May (among 5 others) because it was going to be demolished in a new landscaping project. He also brought one of 5 barberries he found on a trash heap from clearance of an intersection in Redwood City. It has a great big trunk. Bill reports that all 5 of the barberries survived. The slide show included photographs of Bill’s trees as they were being dug up or saved from destruction.
Idris brought 2 trees, including the first one she ever collected, a bougainvillea, in full fluorescent bloom, from a neighbor’s yard that was not doing well in the shade. The other tree she brought is one she got from Bill, a Western juniper that did not at first look so promising, but with some bends in the trunk and wiring of its branches, it is now well on its way to becoming a respectable bonsai. On the slide show, Idris had photos of several of her yardadori in progress, from shortly after they were dug, to potting in a box, then in bonsai pots—about a 5-year process for each of them. She had in-progress photos of a crepe myrtle stump she dug from her sister’s yard in South Carolina (don’t ask how she got it home); a large boxwood which was in this last year’s club show; a large olive from a secret place near her home that was the devil to dig and drag a mile up hill on a large hand-truck; and a juniper with a sweeping arm of deadwood she dug from yet another neighbor’s yard.
In the handout distributed at the meeting, Bill provided a fascinating narrative of his experiences collecting, laced with all kinds of great advice about permits and procedures. Also in the handout was a checklist of tools and other supplies you need when going collecting. You can access Bill’s story and the checklist on the Kusamura website here. Idris brought for the presentation her 2 favorite tools: her reciprocating saw and her short-handled pickax. Don’t forget a spray bottle to moisten roots as you dig.
Summary
Don’t be afraid to collect trees from the wild but educate yourself first and be prepared with the how-to and tools to do the job properly.
There was terrific audience participation throughout the evening, as members contributed their own experiences and offered up questions and tips. The new arrangement of tables and chair may have facilitated the liveliness of engagement. (Tables with members’ trees were on 4 sides, with seating mostly in the middle.)
The club thanks Idris and Bill for a wonderful presentation. They could take their presentation “on-the-road” –pun intended! Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.
Fun time at Sei Boku Bonsai Kai Style-Off Challenge
I am so glad I participated in the style-off of Colorado Blue Spruce provided by Jerry Fields. This surprise material was a species I had always heard about and I was curious as to its possibilities. Fortunately, Jerry provided us with a handout explaining the characteristics of the trees which would allow us to be more successful in our styling and later care.
I was joined by Jenn Tan, JC Zhang, and Gabriel Lobo. Gabriel worked with both the Midori and Kusamura clubs which was a coup because he helped us know what our competition was up to ;) Our tree had a slight curvature already apparent at the base that we enhanced by utilizing the special tie down pots. These pots were also something I’d always seen advertised but did not know how they might work and I can say I liked them. Jenn and JC quickly removed any growth that we felt was in the way. They also did the overall tie downs and agreed with a jin at the top which shari coming down one side. The Midori club did a nice design similar to ours including a sacrificial branch at the bottom. The Sei Boku team did an impressive formal upright design keeping the growth tight and small with a tall jin at the top. All the clubs did different designs yet all were winners in my opinion. Thank you to Jenn, JC, and Gabriel as well as other Kusamura members who offered their support and suggestions. I hope to see the tree in the future as Idris Anderson was the lucky winner of the tree designed by Kusamura.
Recap of the July Beginners Workshop
The Beginner workshop is free and open to any Kusamura member who wants to learn the art of bonsai. No previous experience with bonsai is needed and you do not have to have your own tools or supplies to get started. The workshop is held once a month on a Sunday at the home of Richard and Barbara Phillips.
What is the best way to build your basic bonsai skills? Practice, of course. And how do you do that? By working on nursery stock that is purely for practice.
"Purely practice" nursery stock was one of the central topics discussed at the July Beginner's workshop. Richard Phillips demonstrated how very inexpensive nursery stock such as dwarf Alpine spruce or procumbens juniper can provide the vehicle for learning such skills as evaluating a tree's potential, cleaning out dead and weak foliage/branches, determining an appropriate style and carrying out a design using pruning and wire. He emphasized that practice means repetition, so when buying inexpensive nursery stock, buy several of the same species. As you progress from tree to tree, you will begin to tune in your "bonsai eye" and your confidence and skills will increase. And although you are working with humble material, you may discover that you have created a very acceptable "first" bonsai for yourself in the process!
The goal with purely practice trees is to create an almost "instant" bonsai meaning it goes from nursery stock to a bonsai form in a single session or over only one year. Some purely practice trees can be developed further over time, but many won't have the characteristics for learning the more advanced skills that lead to a fully styled bonsai that could be exhibited. For this goal, Richard recommended finding "long term development trees" with well-developed roots, trunks with movement, and strong primary branches
Long-term development trees are just that - they are meant to improve over a number of years. At each stage of this process, the owner will learn new skills in order to keep the tree moving forward until it reaches the stage where it is a miniaturized representation of a full-sized mature tree growing in Nature.
Neither purely practice trees nor long-term development trees need to be expensive. Richard showed dwarf Alpine spruce that he bought For $7.50 each on Black Friday at Home Depot and a Prostrata juniper with a thick, curved trunk for $35 from a nursery in the East Bay. At this level of investment, beginners do not need to be afraid of making a mistake that will "ruin" a valuable bonsai.
A total of 13 members participated in the July workshop. Thanks to Rita Curbow, Jenn Tan, and JC Zhang for helping the new folks with their trees.
Recap July Intermediate Workshop
This month we worked on mid-summer pruning while enjoying warm weather and cool shade. Hal Jerman, Michael Greenstein, Charlene Fischer, Katherine Glassey, Jenn Tan, Dave Curbow, and Idris Anderson, used tables and chairs from a rented classroom at the Cubberley Community Center. Whether it was a developing oak getting a cut-back, a petite coast redwood being refined with pinching, a cotoneaster’s new apex being wired and pruned, or a mature Chinese elm needing branch reduction and selection, our trees all came out of the workshop closer to their bonsai forms and just a little easier to carry.
Kusamura Highlighted in Punch Magazine
Some of you may have noticed a photographer at our show on Saturday. Rita chatted with him and he asked if they could do an article about bonsai for a magazine called Punch, Spirit of the Peninsula. They wanted to interview one person who they could feature speaking about Bonsai. I had not read the magazine before, but after researching it a little, and checking with Michael and Lynne as to their thoughts, we agreed to the article. Michael did a wonderful interview and the photos of our show as well as his garden turned out great. You can get a copy of the August 2023 issue at stores on the Peninsula as well as online here: https://www.journalgraphicsdigitalpublications.com/epubs/punch-aug23/index.html.
I’m glad Johanna Harlow and Punch approached us and did such a fabulous article. Thank you to Michael for doing the interview. This makes me feel so proud of our club and our efforts to spread the word about the living art of bonsai.
Recommended Videos - How to Make Big Trunks
I learned fairly early in my bonsai life that large trunks, tapering from thick at the bottom to thinner at the top, are highly prized in bonsai. I made the usual beginner’s mistake of putting a young tree in a shallow bonsai pot and hoping that my watering and fertilizing it would make it grow bigger. That didn’t happen. Then I began to listen and became more patient. Beauty doesn’t come easily, or fast. Here are some of the best videos advising how to develop great trunks. The advice from various practitioners overlaps. It’s good to listen, over and over again, until it sinks in. There are various techniques. Here is the biggest hint: your tree essentially stops thickening when you put it in a bonsai pot.
Juniper Design
At Baikoen Bonsai Club March meeting, Marcus styles a juniper.
Mike Pistello's Bonsai Collection
Our friend Eric Schrader interviews Mike as he gives us a tour of his collection. (You can see more of Mike’s work on Instagram: mvpbonsai)
Styling a Large Sierra Juniper
Great to listen in on their discussion of design as they work on a Sierra juniper. Eric wants to keep it large instead of compressing it.
Sam Tan with Eric Schrader | Bonsaify
18 minutes, August 2, 2022
Video Link
Sam's Slender Sierra Styling
Sam and Eric continue their design discussions, this time with a tall Sierra. Sam takes the lead. (You can see more of Sam’s work on Instagram: samtanbonsai).
9 minutes, November 30, 2022
Video Link
Newsletter Editor: Jenn Tan