BonsaiNurseryman

Our Message for 2015

Wow! A whole year without a message or post. That's a little clue as what kind of a year 2014 was. So, before I get to our message for the future let me fill you in on the highlights of the year just past:

First, the good news. Susie and I are in good health with only minor problems related mostly to just getting old. We are comitted to a healthy lifestyle of exercise and good food (and dogs). We have had the best two years ever for the nursery which is a minor miracle considering the state of the economy. Of course that's not inflation adjusted. We now have a brand new metal roof on the house, the largest project we have tackled since the first years of our move. And, finally, it is RAINING AGAIN! 16 inches since the beginning of the season (starts officially July 1). We had nine inches in one week. And lastly, we have a new family member, an 18 month old black female pug named Ollie (California Black Olive) that we rescued.

On the other side of the coin, we have just had the driest year EVER (2013-2014). One meteorologist thinks it was the driest for the last thousand years. The driest year also included the coldest spell in the last 15 years, 12F for several nights in a row. We suffered significant plant damage. We spent all our money on the roof. We lost most of our cuttings because I was spending all my time on the roof. A giant oak tree next to our house fell while we were watching, right out of the blue. So, instead of putting up the gutters and trim, I got to clean up load after load of limbs, leaves, and firewood.

The Weather

The rainy season traditionally starts July 1, but it usually doesn't start to rain until November, other than a minor storm here and there of maybe an inch or two total.It didn't start raining last season until February 2014, and without those couple of good spring storms we would have been down the tubes. For the calendar year of 2013, we got less than six inches. It was bone dry all last fall and winter (2013-2014), maybe 3 inches total until February. We got so little rain that the grass did not germinate in the fall. No one has ever seen that. It was gray/brown all winter when it is ordinarily rich green in the hills and valleys, except for the deciduous trees of course. The water table kept falling all winter. By early summer, the level had fallen 4 feet lower than normal. We have a very shallow aquifer (10 to 30ft), so our water flow was cut in half. We had to throttle back our pumps to keep from pumping air. That meant there wasn't enough water to operate the sprinklers properly, so we had to hand water thousands of trees 4 hours a day, every day, all summer long.

Most of the time during this winter dry spell we had bright sunny days and mild weather, but for about the first 2 weeks of December the bottom fell out and we were in the teens almost every night, falling as low as 12F. It hadn't been that cold since we moved here in 1998. No good deed goes unpunished: Peter and I have been spending the last two years or so getting most of the larger containerized plants on benches and off the ground. It's wonderful for weeding, pruning and keeping things clean. It also lowers the temperature of the rootball two or three degress in hard freezes. It's counterintuitive, but ground contact keeps the rootballs a couple of degrees warmer.  Having not lost anything to hard freezes in recent years, I didn't worry about it. But last spring the damage became clear. I had found the minimum low temperature for Cedar and Cork Oak roots. These had weathered 15F with no problems for many years, but raising them off the ground and subjecting them to sub 15F temperatures was just too much. The roots froze and turned to mush. the tops were undamaged, but with no roots of course they succumbed. Lost all the one gallon Cork Oaks and all but a few one gallon Cedars (except Cedrus deodara). Most of the less cold hardy plants in smaller pots were overwintered in the greenhouse and were undamaged, but the smaller Cork Oaks that had minor protection of being under shadecloth and on the ground died. Live and learn. Now I am back to turning on the overhead irrigation when the temperature is expected to fall below 20F, as it has for the past few nights. It makes a winter wonderland of ice castles, but it protects the plants.

This season the rains came right on time at the end of November. A seemingly endless stream of subtropical moisture getting caught up in a succession of cold fronts from the Eastern Pacific. It rained off and on (mostly on) for three solid weeks, almost flooding some areas, but mostly a nice soaking rain. The parched earth soaked it up like a sponge. It took about six inches to saturate the top layers of soil and even begin to run off. Sixteen inches so far, well above average for this time of the year. But it stopped about a week ago and got cold and only one storm is predicted for the next two weeks. So we have our fingers crossed. We need a lot more rain to recharge the ground water and create some snow in the Sierras where it has been too warm for snow except in the highest elevations. I am still waiting for that mythical 40 inch year that it is going to take to break this almost decade long drought.

The Roof

We have been planning for this one a long time. We have been making a REAL house out of our old double wide mobile that was here when we moved here. We have completed most of the inside work, but the tired old roof wasn't going to make it another season. Good timing given the rains this year. We have been making endless repairs to the roofs of our house, the garage, and our rental for 16 years. So, we decided to do it right, and to do it for the last time. We bought enough metal roofing for all three structures, getting a better deal that way, and storing it until we could get to each project. Summer of 2013 we did the garage. It was a nightmare of course since nothing was level or square, part of the floor was still dirt and it was originally an open pole structure that had been added on to for years. We got it mostly straight and level but no where near perfect.

The house was next, and it was a quantum leap. It required a complete new frame to accomodate a surrounding overhang, and front porch, and a new back porch. We had to give it more pitch and put a pitched roof on the back porch when we rebuilt it. It was a monster job that our friend Peter and I started the first week in July and finished on Labor Day. By finished, I mean the rain won't come in. I still have the gutters and a lot of trim to install to cover the old funky siding at the top and bottom of the wall. But it is beautiful and will never have to be done again. We lucked out with the weather. The first too weeks were a heat wave, and we thought this is going to kill us for sure, but that was the last one and it was just typical hot for the rest of the summer. Peter is 67 and I am 68. Two old farts in the broiling sun going up and down a 14 foot ladder a couple dozen times is a day. A good recipe for heart attacks. But other than a few black and blue thumbs we came out unscatheed. We would work on the roof in the cool of the morning. In the hot afternoons, Peter would find spots in the shade to work and I would start the 4 hours of hose in hand watering required by the drought. Exhausted each day by PDT (puppy dinner time), I didn't pay nearly enough attention to the cuttings and losses were far too high. So we may be short a few thiings this year that we were hoping to have. But the roof is DONE. Just a few more projects to complete before we can retire to our rocking chairs.

The Tree

Of course everything cost two and three times as much as we thought it would for the roof even after we had already purchased the metal. So we ran out of money by the end of summer and reluctantly had to send Peter home by Labor Day. I only had the gutters and trim to do, and thought I could easily get that done myself a little at a time. But oh, that fickle finger of fate! About a week later as my neighbor, Susie, and I were walking down the driveway to the nursery, we heard this big crack, and right before our eyes, about 50 feet away, a four foot thick oak crashed to the ground. It missed the new roof (we had it pruned previously so it wouldn't fall on the house), but it fell across the driveway, crushing the gate, and narrowly missed the wood shed, just bending a little metal at the corner of the roof.  This is our main access to the nursery. To get to the nursery, we either had to go outside the compound and around to the main gate, or all the way through the garden to the lower gate. Now, I go out to the nursery about a dozen times a day, so this was  major inconvenience. There was nothing to do, but crank up the chain saws and go at it. We took about a dozen loads of leaves and small branches to the compost pile, and then I started on the job of cutting it up for firewood a little at a time when I didn't have the hose in my hand watering, and I wasn't in the blazing sun. It took weeks to clean it all up by myself, but we got at least three cords of firewood out of it, most of which now has to be split. And we now have this nice sun garden on the north east corner of the house where the shade garden used to be. Then we had to begin fall cleanup and the rains came. Needless to say, the gutters and trim still aren't up.

2015

I think that just about catches you up on the events at Evergreen Gardenworks. Where do we go from here? It's obvious that I haven't felt like writing much lately. Part of this is simply being overwhelmed. When I feel like this, I just shut down only getting done what immediately needs to be done and feeling guilty about the rest. Of course, that feeds on itself as the list of things that needs to be done just gets bigger and bigger. Now that I can see an end to the projects for the property and the nursery, I am starting to feel like I can get my head above water. Starting a new year is a good time to get a fresh start, so I hope this is it.

Another aspect is simply coming to terms with getting old. I am probably doing better than most in that I at least am keeping myself in good shape. But there is a lot more to getter older than just being physically capable to to do some of what I used to do. I have to come to terms with the fact that I just have to hire people to do the things I can't do anymore, or to free me to do the things that are more rewarding and productive. And there is the old saw that time goes faster as you get older. The reality of that one is really hitting home these days. The days, months, and years are just flying by now. Statistically, I probably have another ten years, but I also know that I could be gone tomorrow, or maybe live to 100. Who knows? The point is what to do with the time that's remaining so that it is meaningful in some way no matter when the end comes. I suppose you will be hearing more and more about this if I can find the headspace to keep up the blog. One thing that I know is that I want to work in the nursery as long as I am capable or can find the help that will keep me involved. Right now, I have a wonderful helper, Kristin, that gives me hope that my work will continue to be joyful and productive. As long as she can stay or I can find others as capable, the nursery will continue to be a reality.

I write these things because this thinking is what is guiding the future of the nursery. For example, I am thinking about the last batch of grafts that I may produce since they take a full two years to become salable. The ones I did this fall won't be ready until I am almost 70. Likewise, I am slimming down our catalog offerings, as I have stated in other yearly messages. The list is getting down a more comfortable level of species that I really like to grow, and that people will buy. It is had to believe that when I started out, almost 30 years ago, I used to propagate and grow almost a thousand species and cultivars. I still marvel when I peruse the old propagation ledgers.

More specifically, for 2015, we will continue to offer a good selection of mume since we have the big greenhouse to overwinter them. Still no plans for anything larger than one gallon size since overwintering larger plants just isn't practical. The red ones, the ones everyone wants of course, continue to be problematic. They are weak growing and the new cuttings seem to be more prone to fungal diseases, and are harder to root. I will have to work out these problems before we can offer these in significant numbers. Unless I can locate some plants from other growers, we won't have these until next year.

We are having similar problems with Chaenomeles 'Chojubai Red'. EVERYONE wants these, and once again we lost our cuttings. I think they stayed too wet because I have just been too busy to pay enough attention. I may be able to get some small ones from another grower, but I won't know until late April or May.

I did find some Japanese beech, Fagus crenata, but only in a larger size. These will in one gallon pots and probably will be ready about June. A number of people have requested these since we ran out two years ago. Seed and plants are very difficult to find.

The big greenhouse has been so beneficial to the survival of new grafts that I have decided to try some Cedars again. I bought 100 Cedrus deodara understock and they are sitting happily in the warm moist greenhouse right now. They will be big enough to graft next fall, and be ready for sale two years after that. I plan to start some C. libani 'Green Prince' and C. brevifolia (grafts should be faste than seedlings), and to introduce a new cultivar of C. atlantica that I haven't named yet. It is a chance seedling that is a bright green with no hint of blue with very short needles. It is a vigorous grower and may be a good candidate for a nice thick trunked shohin. The Japanese white pines, Pinus parviflora cultivars have never really sold well, and I continue to weed out the ones that don't sell. I may discontinue them altogether in the next year or so. They are so difficult to grow that their usage as bonsai is really quite limited, unlike Japanese black pine that grow like weeds, and are so stylistically adaptable. But even here, I will be offering fewer cultivars, the ones that are most popular.

Once again, the specimen plants have got the short end of the stick. I am hoping that I will find more time to work with them and get them in the catalog this year. I have so many wonderful plants, it is a shame that I can't seem to get them available to you. I know many of you are waiting for the new offerings. I promised some plants for this fall, but was still too busy. I still plan to do my best to get a few dozen trees up in the specimen catalog before spring, but as of this writing I haven't posted anything new.

I hope I can find the time to keep posting this year, but even if you don't see me here, be assured that I still answer all your email, and usually in a day or two. Come hell or high water, I continue to ship every Monday and most asap orders received by Saturday morning are shipped on Monday. Thank you for your continued and loyal patronage and may you and your families have a happy and prosperous New Year!

Brent

Our Message for 2013

2012 was another one of those watershed years that laid the groundwork for the direction of 2013 and indeed, the future of the nursery. I will be 67 this year, and as much as I would like to, I cannot keep doing this forever. Things have to change to allow me to keep running the business without expending as much physical labor as I used to. I was musing the other day, that twenty years ago in the old nursery I was working seventy hours a week on average, ten hours a day seven days a week. I can't work a fraction of that schedule, nor do I want to. This means getting some labor help and learning how to work smarter.

Last year, I committed to hiring enough part time help to make sure that the heavy work got done, no matter the cost. This has made a big difference in the look and health of the nursery. The infrasturture is now almost complete and the grounds and growing areas are nearly immaculate and weed free. My friend Peter has been a great help in this regard, He needed the work and I needed the help. The bonus was that he is a creative and talented professional, and an artist to boot. Thus I could give him tasks to do that I wouldn't dare let anyone else do with the exception of Dr. Bob, my former apprentice who still comes and works occasionally.

The other key was working smarter. Let's face it, I just can't get down and work squatting for very long any more. That means the plants have to come up to me. I designed a wire bottom table capable of holding one gallon plants making pruning and weeding a breeze. What an incredible difference this has made. I made a template for Peter and he constructed enough tables to take all of our one gallon plants off the ground. The debris falls through the wire mesh, creates water and air drainage and the plants stay naturally clean and healthy. An additional benefit is that debris and slime molds cannot build up on the ground cloth anymore. Cleaning the cloth every year used to be a monstrous job and took weeks. Now everything just stays clean. Since pruning is so easy when working standing up, I have been able to keep many more plants in salable condition and the tree branching is better than ever, becoming more ramified with each pruning. The first big benefit of this is a great crop of one gallon crab apples for this year. Before, it was almost impossible for me to keep them in a salable state. Fertilizing is also easier, and the system also prevents most blow over. All this means more efficiency and more time for useful productive work. The next and just about last project is to create benches for the two gallon stock. I have a prototype bench started but we haven't finished one yet to see how it will work. It will allow me again to stand and work on the trees, give them plenty of air and light around each plant and blow over will be impossible. We should have these benches finished by spring.

The big greenhouse has worked beautifully in its first year. The mume that were overwintered there last year were absolutely gorgeous  with no losses and fantastic growth. This success inspired me to buy several more cutting grown cultivars for this season. The fast growth means that these will be ready in May instead of our usual June release. The greenhouse should also make an excellent overwintering area for the pine grafts that Peter and I just completed. These probably won't be released until 2014, but if all goes well we will have a nice supply of the cork bark Japanese black pines that are perennially in short supply. We are also keeping several thousand new cuttings in the greenhouse including several hundred 'Evergreen's Roughbark' tridents. We will have enough plants for everyone this May. I am keeping the greenhouse just above freezing at night and open the big eight foot wide doors every day to keep the plants cool and dormant. The double wall design is very tight and efficient with a Mr Heater keeping the inside temperature ten degrees above the outdoor temperature even on the low setting, thirteen degrees on the medium setting.

I am continuing to get more and more specimen plants ready for sale. I hope to be adding hundreds of conifer and deciduous trees by this spring. The last hurdle is photographing, describing them, and getting them up on the internet. I still can't devote as much time to this as I would like, but this is becoming a higher priority now that I have help. If you have watching the specimen catalog, you can see that these have been a great success by all the SOLD! signs. I have a new crop of monster cork bark elms ready for sale and these will probably be the next addition to the catalog. I guarantee that some of these will blow you away. We will also be digging a few trees from the field this year. These will be mostly hawthorns and crabs. They will go directly into Anderson flats and hopefully will be ready by next fall.

Except for the mume, I continue to pare down the listings in the catalog. We just can't grow that volume of material anymore and still have time and space to develop our larger offerings. This has really taken the pressure off me, and let's face it, much of this stuff didn't sell well anyhow. It's nice to be able to offer EVERYTHING, but it's just not practical or efficient. So, if one of your favorite items disappears from the inventory, I apologize, but I think you would agree that the result of slimming down is definite worth it. The waiting list may disappear in a year or two, or at least be cut way back, perhaps for only pine grafts. Keeping track of the names and addresses and sending out the notifications is a considerable amount of work, even using a database.

I apologize for not posting to the blog or the forums, but my interests are just focused elsewhere these days. I hope that changes and I can get back to sharing more with the community at some point. I finally purchased a good video camera and studio lights (mostly for specimen plant shots), and my plan is to record some of my pruning and designing sessions, giving you a running dialog of the procedure and showing you the result. This is what we do in our study group, and I think this is the most valuable exposure you can get in learning bonsai once you horticulturally confident. Since part of my long term plan is to develop larger bonsai material, this should be a natural adjunct. I'm not saying I will have it started in 2013, but hopefully soon.

My health continues to improve, and my brush with death seems like ages ago now, although I  still have the obvious limitations to deal with. I continue to get stronger mostly due to my new found faith in exercise and body building. I had a wakeup call about a year ago when my back went out for the nth time, only this time I wasn't recovering. I ended up seeing a doctor and she gave me a prescription for physical therapy. In three days I was up and around again. Brad is really a wizard. He gave me a set of exercises for strengthening my back and also for my upper body. I do them faithfully every day, and I haven't had  a serious mishap since. I am again doing things that I haven't been able to do for years. I rarely even get stiff or sore after a tough job. What a wonderful feeling it is to know that, if I am careful, I can just go out and do what needs to done without fear of injury. I am a convert: As you get older, it is truly 'use it or lose it'. That only left a cardio vascular regime to keep my wind and stamina up, and to strengthen my tricky heart. I was diagnosed with a PVC (pre ventricular contraction) arrhythmia this year, probably another gift from chemotherapy. It causes my heart to skip beats and reset, sometimes every other beat, but is otherwise harmless, mostly untreatable, and incurable. My cardiologist says to train like an athelete so my effective 50% pulse rate will be close to normal in pumping capacity. So again, a wakeup call. My on again, off again bicycle regime has become permanently on again, everyday for almost a year now. I don't have to go far, only about five miles a day, but I have to climb what my neighbor affectionately calls "cardiac hill" every day. Now if I could just stop getting fatter! But most of it is muscle, right?

We have a new member of the family, Ricky, or Ricky Ticky when we want him to come. He is a rescue mutt with multiple royal origins, Pomeranian, Tibetan Spaniel, and who knows what else. He is the first ankle biter we have ever had at about 18 pounds. He's a year old now and a real pleasure when he isn't barking as small dogs are prone to do. He is long haired and brindle all over, big upright ears, long body and short legs with a swell set of pantaloon feathers, and he can run like a broken field wide end, which is good because he and Oscar, our 100 pound Catalhoula play 'catch the  Ricky' all the time. Talk about Mutt and Jeff! Old Liz is still around and is a pretty spry 14. She mostly tries to stay out of the way to keep her old hips upright and out of trouble.

Susie is double sixes this March and will begin collecting that rocking chair money. Other than the usual aches and pains she is good, and still working like a horse. She is continuing with her Social Security disability advocate work, but will retire to the ranch full time when it becomes too much for her. Me? I'm probably good until seventy now (only 3 1/2 years away!), but may want to cut back some more by then. Running the nursery and taking care of ten acres will eventually take its toll no matter how much I try to stay healthy.

I think that's about it. The new catalog is up, you can begin dreaming of spring and even order now for spring delivery (not a bad idea for plants in short supply). Happy New Year and may you enjoy peace and prosperity for the coming year.

 

Brent

Our Message for 2012

Well, it's been a long and hectic year. I apologize for not keeping you informed, but in addition to the usual deluge of work, I have had to deal with my ailing father, something most of us have to do sooner or later.

Dad was 91 last year and still living independently in his home in Florida. Mom died three years ago, and Dad just didn't want to go on living without her. But he wasn't willing to give up either. He was a tough old bird. I was flying out to see him twice a year and trying to do what I could to keep him at home. In May he fell in a freak accident and fractured his pelvis. We had talked several times about how long he could keep living at home, and I told him that as long as he didn't fall he could probably keep on going. But he did fall.

As so often happens with the elderly, this was the beginning of the end. Fortunately, he was placed in a very good nursing home and he grew to enjoy it. The staff was great and he was the most popular resident there. The only problem was the $6,000 a month bill. At that rate he would quickly burn through his savings. Also, the place was small and crowded and the food terrible. It was our extreme good fortune that a new Veterans nursing home had just opened up in the area and there were plenty of vacancies. This place was wonderful. There were wide aisles, brand new room, several outdoor areas with automatic doors, a great cafeteria with decent food. There were even therapy pets.

We got him in the Vets home about the beginning of September. I had been flying to Florida about every six weeks to care for him and handle his affairs. Despite all our efforts to keep him going, he began to go downhill, suffering from bouts of congestive heart failure. I made my last trip in early November. He died quietly in his sleep two days after I arrived. Everyone said he was just waiting for me to get there, and I think there's some truth to it.

Since then, I have been handling his estate and it has kept me pretty busy, but it's almost over now, and I will be able to give my full attention to work again.

I feel like I'm crawling back out of my cave now and can start writing again, and being productive again. Healthwise, I have been terrific and am just about back to 100% considering I am 65 now. My last CT scan was clean and there is no sign of cancer. I had a bad bout of back trouble and saw a physical therapist. It turned out to be an important life lesson- I can't stay healthy any more without really working at it. The therapist taught a series of stretching and strengthening exercises that I continue to do religiously. The difference has been amazing. I am now able to do things I haven't been able to do in years, although, I still have to be really careful. Now I have to find a way to do part 2 and develop  a regular cardio exercise routine to increase my stamina and keep the heart healthy. I was riding my bike, but now that it's winter, it has been almost impossible to keep it up. I may have to resort to one of those silly boring exercycles, but if that's what it takes, then so be it.

So, now for the good news. A number of financial improvements (not the least of which was turning 65 and getting Medicare), have allowed me to get a steady stream of part time help. Between the help and my improved health, we have got the nursery in better shape than ever before. We have been here almost thirteen years now, and finally it is all coming together. Our greenhouse project was finished this fall, and now we are working on getting all the one gallon pre bonsai elevated on benches so they can get weeded and pruned regularly without bending over. We have pruned back every larger plant in the whole place to prepare them for final branch work and sale, even my mammoth 25 year old maple collection. There are some to die for trunks out there. Having them cut back and pruned regularly now will make their care much easier. And YES, there will be hundreds of additions to the Specimen Catalog
I have just updated it to remove the sold trees and new additions will start to be added shortly. You response has been terrific. We have sold over half of the specimen trees and have many satisfied customers.

Here are just a few of the trees that will be added this spring: more big elms, more 'Hachi Gen' pines, 'Mi Nishiki' pines, five gallon size Shimpaku junipers, assorted smaller deciduous trees, big Japanese maples (hopefully). Our system for maintaining, photographing, and listing specimen trees is almost now complete. It was a huge effort, but well worth it. I hope you all are as excited about it as we are. Almost no other bonsai nursery on the web has really been able to pull this off successfully. It will give you access to material that is almost impossible to otherwise obtain.

The new greenhouse is a critical part of the specimen plant process since it will give us another way of protecting trees from late spring freezes. It will also allow to once again offer more Prunus species. It will take a few years to build up our stock again, but this year we will be offering Prunus mume in limited quantities. These will not be ready to ship until June, but if you want these, you should order now to reserve your trees; they won't last long.

Grafting has been just about impossible the last few years due to my illness, but I have found another black pine grower for understock. If these trees are as good as those from our previous supplier, we should begin grafting pines again this fall. It will be two to three years before these new grafts are ready to ship, but in the meantime there will be many more specimen sized cultivars for you to choose from.

Last, but not least, we will begin to dig some trees out of the field this winter. These will also be listed in the Specimen Catalog but won't be shipped until summer or fall. We hope to dig 'Paul's Scarlet' hawthorn (cutting grown, not grafted), crabapples and possible some 'San Jose' and 'Shimpaku' junipers. Our goal is graft over the monster 'San Jose' junipers to 'Shimpaku' eventually, but we will offer some for sale now so you can do your own grafting, or leave them with their own foliage.

Now for a look at our new 20 x 48 foot greenhouse, both under construction and the finished job. The first photo is the finished floor, a leveled bed of sand covered with chicken wire (to keep out the rodents) and ground cloth. A concrete floor would have been nice, but way out of budget for us. The second photo shows the steel bows attached. The finished greenhouse has double wall plastic and eight foot wide doors for natural ventilation for most of the year.

Trunk Movement

Here is my response to a post on BonsaiSite. You can read the whole thread HERE.

I don't think I have ever wired a trunk, or certainly not very many. I think it's much better to do it the way nature does it: trunk dieback, only we call it trunk chops. Wiring a trunk practically guarantees that you will never get taper, and taper in my book is just as important as movement. The only way to get taper from a wired trunk is to grow sacrifice branches, and they have to be in the right place: at the base of the bend or it will look unnatural. Chances are, wired trunks are going to look unnatural anyhow most of the time because rarely can you bend a trunk severe enough to make it look like nature did it, that is, with a trunk chop. Wiring may have a place with tall very slender trees where taper is unimportant, such as bunjin, but this is a very limited class. I think this is why you can't figure out what to do; snakey bends are just going to look like Chinese junk that have been wrapped around a bamboo pole. Another place where wiring a trunk may be appropriate is to wire the base of a young tree so that there is a very low turn. That's wiring in a single bend. This works because a tree will almost always buttress at the base and create the taper for you. Above this point, it won't happen. This is frequently done in pines, although low chops will give you the same effect with even greater taper.

One of my cardinal rules of bonsai styling is to trace out a trunk line using every branch of the tree. No low branches? That's where you start: do what's necessary to get them, which is using a higher chop to induce lower branching. This is absolutely essential in pines where once you lose low branches, they are most likely gone forever, but it's important for other species too. If you do this, you are already thinking and planning using principles of taper and movement. Changing the trunk line to make it go through a branch creates both movement and taper simultaneously. Everything above this point is junk except for its use as a sacrifice. If you are lucky, the branch/new leader will have secondary branching that will give you a another change of movement and taper. Rarely will you get a third section of movement from tertiary branching unless you have very advanced material.

How do you start? At the bottom of the trunk and move up. At the first branch, imagine that the rest of the tree is now gone and what the trunk would look like through that branch. You can manipulate it of course, most frequently by tilting the tree to make the base trunk come out of the ground at an angle and the new leader more upright. But you can also wire the new leader up or down to create less or more movement. Then imagine the next trunk section coming low off of this new leader. Is there a secondary branch there? If not, you will have to induce one.

Once this is done, put that image away and try another one. This time go up the trunk PAST the first branch (which will probably serve as a sacrifice instead) and imagine a trunk line through the SECOND branch. Is this better or worse than the first image? Then with the third branch, and so on. Probably ninety percent of the time you will use the first or second branch. Now the stunning realization of this is that when you are looking at raw material, the vast majority of the wood and foliage you are staring at won't even exist in the finished tree! Hopefully, this will change your perspective when analyzing potential material.

I HATE SPRING!

Sheesh, it's been months since I've posted anything. Everybody loves spring except those of us in the nursery business; there's never enough time, and everything has to be done NOW. But the rush is almost over and I can finally stop and catch my breath. The good news is that I am getting stronger and have been able to keep up with the work. Stooping and bending is still difficult, and I still have peripheral neuropathy in my feet that drives me crazy, but I can work three or four hours before I have to take a break and do something easy for the rest of the day. Hopefully, the bending and stooping will get easier, although it's now a race against time before the body gives out due to old age. Medicare kicks in in July and I am feeling my almost 65 years. The problem with my feet may never get better; one of the wonderful side effects of chemotherapy.

So, the good news for you, our customers, is that the Specimen Catalog really has got off the ground. Not a lot of species included yet, just Chinese elms and 'Hachi Gen' Japanese Black Pines, but there are a lot of them. Both have been selling well even without any announcement, so if you have been waiting for these, you should act quickly. I just updated the section today to show which are already sold. It's very rewarding to have folks so excited about these incredible plants. I am excited too, and motivated to keep adding more now that the spring rush has slowed down. The next large section will probably be the five gallon Shimpaku junipers. I have about twenty of them that are pruned and ready to go. I want to get them photographed soon before they break out in new spring foliage so that you can see the trunk lines and structure. This summer, I will photograph everything again after the flush of new growth begins to fill in branching close to the trunk. Later this summer, I will try to get assorted other deciduous species added.

The new greenhouse project got interrupted by the late rains and then the spring rush, but I am about to get back to it. It's a half size, 20x50 foot structure that will finally gives room to overwinter the few delicate things we have, and give me a warm dry place to work in winter. I will try to get pictures soon of the frame. The ground posts are in and waiting for the steel bows. It will be a double wall inflated poly greenhouse with passive (water bag) solar heating and maybe some active solar as well. I should be able to overwinter a few Prunus and Wisteria stock plants, and also overwinter all the tender new rooted cuttings. I really want to offer a few mume cuttings again. I have a few 'Peggy Clarke' listed in the catalog this year, but they will go fast. Cold greenhouse overwintering seems to be the trick in our fickle freezing late spring weather. It was below freezing just one week ago, and this is zone 8! The overhead sprinklers have worked wonderfully so far this year in protecting the rest of the nursery. As long as it doesn't fall below about 28F, we should be ok. It's the price we pay for living in a beautiful, but cold deep valley.

We are getting a volunteer helper for the month of June from Canada! He is another bonsai nut who took time off from his real job to study several months in Japan, and now wants to learn the basics of the bonsai nursery trade to round out his education. It's a great opportunity for both of us.

That's all for now, but I hope to get back to you soon with the greenhouse update and cutting propagation news for next year's selections.

 

Our Message for 2011

It's the start of a new year in many ways for me, and hopefully for the better. My surgeon pronounced me 'cured' in December, and my oncologist will be seeing me only two or three times a year to make sure that everything is still ok. I am back to working now, but manual labor is still limited to three or four hours a day and I am still not up to speed in terms of strength and endurance. That will still take several more months. Knock on wood, I am probably as normal as I am going to get. There's no getting around getting older (65 this year), and this means I have to work smarter. No more abusing the body in heroic efforts of grunt labor.

And to that end, the nursery is getting leaner and more mature. If you are a long time customer, you have no doubt seen the catalog offerings diminish slightly each year. We will also stop selling tools sometime this year. But having said that, the offerings won't change much from here on out, although some things are not going to be offered in smaller sizes. It is time to develop the massive amount of mature inventory that we have and concentrate more on specimen trees. I still hope to get a decent amount of this material online, starting this year. I know, I have been saying that for years, but this year, there is a sizeable number of plants that are advanced far enough to be sold. I just finished pruning the pines, and there are some fantastic trunks that were revealed. The plants are a little naked right now, but that is best for seeing the possibilities, so I will photograph much of it this spring and followup with a second set of photos after the new growth emerges this summer.

So what's coming out? The long wait for cutting grown specimens of Pinus thunbergii 'Hachi Gen' and 'Mi Nishiki' is just about over. These will probably be the first specimen pines offered, starting at $150 and up for twelve year old cutting grown material. A limited amount of cultivars may also make it to the website this summer, including a few larger 'Hayabusa', 'Brocade', and 'Yatsubusa' black pines. We also have about fifty 'Shimpaku' junipers in five gallon size that will be soon cut back and offered this spring or summer. These are great workshop trees with 1 1/2 inch caliper trunks and great branching. These will start at $150. I have been selling a number of 7 gallon ancient mugo pines at the nursery and hope to offer some of these as well. These trees are over twenty years old and have had considerable training over the years. I have been pricing these at $200 each and folks have been gobbling them up.

The big field grown maples that I got from Randy Knight of Oregon Bonsai have finally begun to get some branch taper and ramification. It has been quite a struggle since our area isn't really suitable for Japanese maples. But that struggling has finally turned them into fantastic, unique trees with four to six inch trunks, but they are only twelve to sixteen inches tall. These are starting at $400. Many of the 'jungle' rescued trees were repotted and pruned last summer and are now ready to go. There are many one and two gallon deciduous trees in this lot. Specimen one gallon material is starting at $75. And lastly, a good deal of field grown material can be dug this year, although I may not get around to doing more than a handful of these since it's so much work and there's so much to do. But this stuff just keeps getting bigger and better. From this area you get unique offerings like three and four inch 'Paul's Scarlet' hawthorn trunks that are CUTTING grown, not grafted, and a half dozen different cultivars of cutting grown crabapples with large trunks.

And what about the future? Well, I put about fifty cedars in the ground last year, and an equal number of black pines. There are about forty 'San Jose' junipers in containers and in the ground with enormous trunks of six to eight inches. These are real monsters that are still  being pruned for back branching and will make awesome specimens with either their own foliage or grafted over to 'Shimpaku'. These are probably too big and heavy to ship and will be available for nursery pickup only. I will probably began to unload a lot of my larger Japanese maples soon. It is just too difficult to protect this much larger stock from our spring freezes. I need to cut them down to size and start moving them.

We have plans for a larger greenhouse soon, hopefully this spring, and that will be our last nursery construction project. It's been a long road since 1998, and I'm glad it's almost over, and none too soon! We still have work to do on the house and property, but the pace is definitely slowing down and my time and energy can go into more plant development. Bonsai is a funny business. If you want to make money, you sell a jillion little crappy junipers in $2 Chinese pots with zero long term interest in plant material. But if you really want to do BONSAI, then you spend your life developing one or two crops. Since I was in my thirties when I got started, it has been a single crop and little more. Inventory isn't just stuff you sell, it's passing on life to friends. You try to charge as little as possible to make sure it goes to good homes, but you have to collect for half a lifetime of care. It's a tough call.