Crataegus Bonsai

A couple photos of the studio from this week. Hopefully get the roof on this coming week before the rains start! It has been an absorbing project. I have been hiring a contractor friend on an hourly basis just to educate me, and I’ve been doing the work. He’s very encouraging when I voice fears of making a mistake, offering such perceptive quips as: ‘It’s only wood. And it’s stupider than we are!’

Related to yesterday’s post, our watering changes too with the beginning of fall and the cooler temperatures. Relatively higher summertime night temperatures will dry out pots quickly; in the fall, the pots will dry out slower, and we need to be awake to that shift. If you have been watering by rote in the hot heat of the last couple months, this is a good time to re-calibrate and look again at when trees actually need water.

Best,
Michael

With the cooler nights we have seen in late August, we can begin to taper off our ‘hamisu,’ the misting of the leaves in the summer evenings. Now the dew is doing that.

We might also begin thinking about fall fertilizing. I think fall fertilizing is more important for bonsai, particularly developed ones, than spring fertilizing. In Japan more fertilizer is sold for bonsai in the fall than in the spring. If you live in the Pacific Northwest or other areas with a long, mild fall, re-fertilizing the trees is very wise as it is as long and nearly as productive a growing season as spring.

Don’t discount at least some nitrogen in the fall…there is a lot of talk out there about cutting out nitrogen in the fall, but if you’ve been fertilizing with nitrogen fertilizers throughout the year the trees will shut down naturally due to shorter day length and cooler temperatures by themselves, regardless of nitrogen. Nitrogen is used in all cell processes; don’t cut it out of your fall fertilizer.   

Best,
Michael

Yesterday’s ‘HEAT’ post made me remember a story from Japan…

My first year as an apprentice in Japan was a record setting heat wave. Temperatures reached into the low 100’s for weeks on end, and the humidity was wilting to those watering the trees…

They covered the heat wave on the news at night. One week a young carpenter fell off a roof dead of heat exhaustion, and the following day my teacher, Shinji Suzuki, handed out sombrero type hats and white shirts and forbade us to die. We added to this towels soaked in water and wrapped them around our necks. Both Tachi, my sempai, and I made it through all right and so did our hundreds of trees. But we got little work done during the hot surges. Watering was nearly nonstop.

One of the secondary effects of the extraordinary heat wave  of 2004 was that we got 4 times the number of typhoons that summer and fall compared to an average year. Prepping for a typhoon hit in the bonsai yard is unforgettable exhaustion…lifting or tying down every bonsai while being soaked by hard rain, and all the time you’re thinking that you will get no sleep that night as it’s like the life of a fireman, always ready to jump back into it to move something or tie something down that had been forgotten, and the wind blasting the house and keeping you awake rattling the windows until dawn. And you come in the next morning haggard, looking like you’ve just lost 9 rounds with someone who did not like you very much.

That’s my memory of extreme heat and typhoons. The heat got you wobbly, and the typhoons neatly finished you off… 

Michael

Here in the Pacific Northwest we’re having a devilish heat wave…and to protect your trees from very hot days there are a few precautions to take. 

The most important precaution is to step up your watering. If you’ve been watering once a day at 80 F, you will want to step that up to two or three times a day at 100 + F. When I say ‘water’ I really mean ‘check.’ You might not actually water each plant, but five hours of intense heat and sun can dry out a pot in record time and so we check frequently. 

The next precaution might be to put up shade cloth areas that will reduce the local heat by five degrees or so. This step can be significant, particularly for small pots or sun-tender plants.

Another precaution is misting. A hose does this just fine, spray the foliage and benches and gravel down with water. No need to soak the pots, this is just a refresher for the foliage and to cool down the pots a bit.

Finally—and this can make a huge difference—try to relocate trees and companion plants to shadier parts of the yard. This may be a tall tree or even a tall wall that protects an area from afternoon sun. 

And cool yourself down with lots of watermelon… 

Best,
Michael

Probably the worst thing we might encounter when we have a hose in our hand is a tree that, when we think about it, has not dried out in three days of sunny summer weather. That ought to send off all kinds of alarm bells in your head. If none go off, install some.

First of all, don’t water the tree if you want it to live. Secondly, place it in semi-shade and mist it frequently. The roots are not working, they are not drawing up moisture. Usually what has happened is root rot: the small roots got crispy dry, then they got waterlogged, and now the soil is staying waterlogged and everything that was living is slowly decomposing. This is like a heart that just stopped pumping and the medics are scrambling for the jump-start. If those small rootlets don’t start growing out again soon, the tree will die. 

Tip the pot up on a block to let the excess water run out the bottom of it. The pot must be kept a bit on the dry side, and water introduced by misting onto the leaves to get the tree going again. 

This is one of those cases where prevention is worth it’s weight in platinum. Don’t let your trees get COMPLETELY dry, and be ever alert to those that are not drying out as you would expect.

Best,
Michael

As the heat builds up the next two months, be considerate of several things…

For one, if you consistently get temperatures into the mid to high nineties and above, this is when some light shade cloth for shohin, companion plants and some of our more sun-sensitive trees such as stewartia and Ezo spruce should be put up. If you rarely get above the high eighties, shade cloth is unnecessary. 

Be careful of watering. In an earlier post I wrote about the dangers at this time of year with poorly rooted trees—the ones that now will be exposing themselves with burned leaf tips. In the spring we should have been letting our trees really obviously dry out a bit before watering, which creates as strong, well-ramified fine root system. But in high heat days keep your trees moist. It is not a time to be playing around with letting roots grow out by withholding water—that is only for cooler days. 

On very hot days, when the sun is on the horizon in the evening, spray the foliage and pots of your trees in a very light watering that is called hamisu in Japan: leaf watering. This refreshes a tree and cools it down. It is not meant to soak the pot.

Again with temperature, if you live where temperatures rarely get into the nineties, you may continue to fertilize throughout the summer. This is especially true for young bonsai (not necessarily young trees)—trees in development. 

Watch your grafts. If you’ve done any juniper veneer grafts last month, be sure to protect even the shielding duct tape over the scion from the hot sun. The tape will reflect much of the sun’s energy, but still the top of the scion can get burned. The addition of shade cloth above grafted trees greatly increases their aftercare success rate. For approach grafts this consideration is not necessary. 

Enjoy the summer days! One of the odd things about Portland Oregon, where I live, is that there are very few mosquitoes here. I see (or hear) only about three a year. Given all the water it is a surprise. Some people don’t even have screens on their windows…

Best,
Michael

Ok, I’ve waited and can wait no longer…

Been delightfully shocked that no one, in 4 months, has commented that there are scandalously FOUR trunks in the spruce clump I posted on Feb. 25th. Have we really evolved past that? 

To be frank, I had no particular intention of falling out of line with that guideline of an odd number of trunks. It just seemed that the balance would be destroyed if one of the trunks was removed. Maybe I’ll remove one in the future, but for now I am relishing my moment of rebellion…

Best,
Michael

Don’t ever design your own building in an effort to make things ‘interesting.’ For one, it makes engineers nervous, and so they seriously over-engineer to compensate for sweating. For another, your pocketbook will feel light as a feather. And finally, they are a bugger to build.

Actually I’ve enjoyed building it immensely…and in early fall, the teaching at Crataegus Bonsai will be transferred to this quirky five-sided studio currently under construction:

They’re here again…scale are emerging from their eggs underneath their shields, and beginning to crawl. 

This is the time to control them. If we sprayed during the winter we wasted insecticide on protected eggs. In June they mature and begin moving around the plant, and can be controlled with oils. All-season oil or Neem oil work. Early summer through the warm months they are active.

It’s very important to identify when to control what. If we spray with the right insecticide or fungicide in the wrong season, we waste time and money and maybe give a beneficial organism a hard time.

Michael