Black pine/Ponderosa Frankie Tree Revisit-
This is an earlier work, black pine grafted on a ponderosa trunk. I think it was grafted about 9 years ago. It’s a small tree, a chuhin at 14”. Collected years ago by Randy Knight; recently reworked by apprentice John Eads. In our first post on this tree, Black Pine/Ponderosa, I suggested calling it a Frankie […]
Jonas’s 2016 Post about Decandling Black Pines-
Now and then words deserve to be repeated. The Bonsai Tonight blog post by Jonas Dupuich about decandling Japanese Black Pine—of which this is the primary work season—is head and shoulders above nearly anything else you could read (or write) about the subject, in a concise, digestible form. Even if you’ve already read this, try it […]
Old Project Revisit and New Project Teaser…
This massive Ponderosa pine was repotted this week into its first bonsai pot. It had been in a box for about 6 years so the root growth was pretty impressive. We’d grafted it with Black pine a few years back. This photo is from 2015, perhaps some of you remember this, it was a graft […]
Black Pine / Ponderosa Frankenstein Bonsai
Well. I’m not sure what to call Black Pines grafted onto Ponderosa stock. Frankensteins? Frankies? Feel free to suggest… When I first started grafting Black Pine onto Ponderosa, I was unsure whether one could decandle them the same as Black Pine on its own roots. Before I went to Japan to study I grafted a […]
90 Year-Old Black Pine Wired by Bobby Curttright-
This Japanese Black Pine, Pinus thunbergii, was wired by Bobby Curttright. Bobby has been my apprentice for over 2 1/2 years now, and his wiring is becoming quite accomplished. The necessary fine attention to detail reaches a level of nerd-dom with the best wire wranglers. He’s been a quick study with it, and his organization and […]
Two Grafting Projects: Juniper and Pine
The first tree in this photo essay is a whimsical juniper that used to be a needle juniper. Although my client enjoyed the needle juniper, it wasn’t doing very well where he lived and was getting weaker. I gave him a few options, and he decided we’d ‘change the clothes’ of the tree, so to […]
Time to Decandle your Black Pines-
Those pines that can be de-candled (de-shooted, de-foliaged—chose your favorite term) include Japanese Black pine, Japanese Red pine and a few of the less often decandled but sometimes very vigorous trees like Scots and Pitch pine. It’s nearly the last week or two for decandling in many temperate zones in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in […]
Spruce On Nylon Board
The day after my Seasonal students left I was so intrigued by what we had done with the Mountain Hemlock from last week’s post that I put this Engelmann spruce on a plastic slab as well. While the first day with five students it had taken all day to figure out, I did this one […]
Black Pine Grafted Ponderosa: STYLED
This small pine goes way back to when I was a potter, trying to sell them at my first convention in the mid 90’s in Harrisburg, PA. I met Andy Smith there, and we traded a pot for a tree. He collected the yamadori pine in South Dakota. For years I grew it as a […]
Two Old Pines
These two imported black pines have been through a number of hands in the United States, most notably Boon Manakitivipart, who established the basic branch framework of them. A client owns them. The refinement work shown here is typical of that applied to very established conifers. Both trees’ key branches needed shortening, having slowly grown […]
