That’s Washington DC. I feel. A lot of converging traces and paths layered on high of one another. I posted the same insane road map final time I used to be up within the space and I visited the Bonsai and Penjing Exhibit on the Nationwide Arboretum .
I used to be too busy working this tour to get to see the Assortment. That’s okay by me. I like working. To be human is to work. To seek out that means in that work is the only function of this life on this earth.
Anyway, there’s room for philosophy in a while within the mid and final part of this essay, so, as promised within the final put up, right here is LeAnn’s buttonwood.
She stated it was collected (as most within the USA are) by the Buttonwood Queen herself, Mary Madison.
LeAnn is the girl in lavender (purple? Lilac? Not periwinkle, or plum, for positive) hovering behind me.
She waited very patiently whereas I labored via all the opposite workshop attendees bushes and eventually received to her tree.
It desperately wanted a repot. I educate my college students in Florida that buttonwoods want a repot yearly. Up north, like right here in Virginia, it’s not so essential. Until you employ a horticultural heating pad, that’s. (Wait, is Virginia “Up North”? I’m undecided. The place’s the Mason-Dixon Line?)
Okay now…..WHAT? (not the North/South factor, even I’m not moving into that). What’s a horticultural heating pad?!
Right here’s a number of secrets and techniques for my northern tropical bonsai growers. First: get develop lights. We’re in a golden age of indoor rising of vegetation. Sure, as a result of legalization of hashish, largely, however we achieve from it as a result of all types of develop lights, from full spectrum LEDS to steel halide, can be found virtually wherever for reasonable. So get your self one. However…BUT..secondly: heating pads!!! Horticultural heating pads are the sport changer for those who want to usher in their tropical bushes for the winter (one ought to at all times put your bushes exterior for spring and summer time, there’s no alternative for the solar and rain. None). Most tropical bushes progress habits are depending on temperature. However not simply ambient air temps. It’s the temperature on the root zone, within the soil, through the night, that makes tropicals develop.
Which is why we right here within the Sunshine State don’t repot buttonwoods till nighttime temps are above 65°F for not less than 6 weeks after the repot.
In candy Virginy, this explicit operation is happening in the midst of July, and LeAnn has the remainder of July and most of August to develop extra roots. So no worries there for her. However I knew of a man in Cincinnati that repotted his buttonwoods in January. He had a greenhouse and heating pads. That’s the place I received the thought.
Anyway, we received the buttonwood out of this pot:
And into this pot:
We wired it, tried to bend some deadwood with the torch and steam method (solely partly profitable) and, now, simply to make you wait, how a few bumble bee and a moth on a coneflower?
Awwwww, ain’t that cute?! LeAnn has an incredible backyard and a good wonderful assortment of bushes.
Right here’s one of many extra developed bullhorn acacias I’ve seen.
And a twin trunk willow leaf on a rock (a rock from Hawaii I imagine, the place LeAnn hails from).
And now, the buttonwood.
It’s a formidable specimen.
You’ll be able to kinda see the burnt part the place I attempted to bend a straight piece of deadwood (center of the beneath pic. It was ramrod straight).
View from above.
The fixed reader is asking, “Why are there nonetheless leaves on it?”
Nicely, we’re in The North, and the solar isn’t fairly so robust as in La Florida, so, regardless that we’re in full summer time, I’m not snug completely defoliating a buttonwood up right here.
And the principle factor I don’t need to do is to kill this particular tree. We actually beat up the roots when the repot occurred, and foliage is what grows new roots, so I left the foliage. Easy calculus, as they are saying within the motion pictures.
And the tree was collected by Mary. Right here’s the final pic I received of her earlier than she handed away (that’s her daughter Terri, behind her).
Mary was such a power in bonsai, it’s exhausting to imagine she’s gone. I really miss her. There received’t ever be a lady in bonsai like her once more.
And it was an honor working her tree with LeAnn. Thanks!
One final tip, and I discovered it from Mary. Since we beat up the roots a lot, I suggested LeAnn to set the pot in a tray of water. One deep sufficient to cowl the drainage gap. This can assist the tree to develop new roots. Opposite to what I’ve stated earlier than about air being essential for root progress on different bushes.
A buttonwood lives within the coastal saturated zone, the place mangroves develop, by the ocean, and are used to water. In truth, to make a reducing root, the simplest means is the quaint “Put the reducing in water” technique. Oftentimes (don’t inform anybody) after we acquire buttonwood, it’s actually only a huge reducing, with no roots in any respect, and we place the tree into the pot, and, as LeAnn is doing, place that pot into a bath of water.
One can, as many typically do in bonsai, level out the unscientific practices of bonsai individuals. I do it typically. However I’ve a saying I exploit religiously, and it applies to bonsai apply distinctly:
“Horticulture is a science, however the apply of horticulture is an Artwork”
I’ll go away you with that to mull over. Quote it to your greatest good friend and your most divisive foe. It’ll separate the wheat from the chaff, actual fast.
