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from the Greater Clearwater and surrounding areas
澄んだ水盆栽会
Sundamizu Bonsai Kai
March/April 2013
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 2
April 9, 7:00pm: Mike Rogers presentation at Long Bayou Club House, St.
Petersburg; sponsored by Suncoast Bonsai Club; $5.00 donation. reserva-
tions required, contact Linda Gibbons; [email protected] or 727-434-
2257 or Joan Lindsay; [email protected] ; 727-823-6894
weekdays 11-3pm; 727-521-3364 other times
Apr 11-13, 2013: Tree Ring Circus; New Braunfels, TX; Joey McCoy, Conven-
tion Chair, at [email protected]
April 13-14 Spring Plant Sale; USF Botanical Garden, Tampa; $5.00 admis-
sion; For information go to http://gardens.USF.edu or call 813-974-2329
April 20: Wigert’s Nursery, Fort Myers; Demontstration & Workshop with
Ed Trout; Buttonwoods and Elms. For info contact: wigertsbonsai.com
Apr 19-21, 2013: Mid-Atlantic Bonsai Societies Spring Festival, Grantville, US;
(Harrisburg/Hershey, PA); for more info; http://
midatlanticbonsai.freeservers.com/fescurr.htm
Apr 27/28, 2013: Green Thumb Festival, Walter Fuller Park, St. Petersburg
June 4, &:00-10:00pm: Nacho Marin presentation at Long Bayou Club
House, St. Petersburg; sponsored by Suncoast Bonsai Club. For informa-
tion call: reservations required, contact Linda Gibbons;
[email protected] or 727-434-2257 or Joan Lindsay; bon-
[email protected] ; 727-823-6894 weekdays 11-3pm; 727-521-
3364 other times
Regional/National Events
Changing Paradigms by Terry Davis 3
Holism vs analysis part 3 by Clifton Pottberg 4
Bonsai Soil by Terry Davis 5-6
Muck by Kay Waldron 7
A new method of weeding a bonsai by Clifton
Pottberg
8
Sundamizu Bonsai Kai News 9-10
Information on USF Plant Sale & James J Smith
Exhibition
11-12
General information, contacts, directions 13
Inside this issue:
Regional Happenings Buttonwood Bonsai—Inverness: Key
Training, 130 Heights St., Inverness, Fl;
Meets 2nd Saturday of every month.
President: Bob Eskeitz
352-556-4999
Contact: Al Harnage
352-527-3263
Sundamizu Bonsai Kai—Clearwater:
Meets 2nd Saturday of every month. Moc-
casin Lake Nature Park, 2750 Park Trail
Lane, Clearwater.
Clif Pottberg: 352-424-6000
Lois Powell 727-742-3301 or
Hukyu Bonsai—Tampa: Meets 3rd Satur-
day of every month at USF Botanical Gar-
dens.
Pres. Palmer Ogden 813-486-9374
Lakeland Bonsai Club: meets 3rd
Thursday of every month; 7:00pm; First
United Methodist Church, 72 Lake Mor-
ton Drive, Room D-3, Lakeland.
Pres. Paul Cacioppo; 863-860-1173
Suncoast Bonsai Club—St. Peters-
burg: Meets 4th Saturday of every
month.
Pres. Linda Gibbons;
All club meetings are open to the public
and visitors are welcome.
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 3
Changing Paradigms by Terry Davis Used to be a paradigms would buy you a cup of coffee, but it’s at
least ten times as much these days. And if your favorite Starbucks
goes out of business, go to the one across the street from it.
Okay, I’ve had my fun. This last year has seen a couple of major
shifts in paradigms for bonsai growing (simply put, a paradigm is
“what we thought we knew”). To give you a hit list, these include
a change in what we are being told about pinching junipers, a
change in approach in leaf pruning, a change in what we are being
told in the care of pines, and some major changes in what we
thought we knew about grafting and just how prominent it is in
Bonsai in Japan.
The significant thing about the sources of these shifts is access to
the information, in the form of BLOGS. There is more out there
than ever before… it’s a brave new world. I have repeatedly said
in the past that the major route to better bonsai art is in seeing lots
of good trees. Please note: I said “seeing”, not “looking at”. Some
of you have heard me repeat the adage from Rex Cole’s book “Art
is a record of things seen and understood”. Now, if you aren’t into
this as an art, stop reading now and you won’t be wasting both our
times. “Seeing” takes a little more effort than one “that’s nice!”
We have the opportunity like never before to see and appreciate a
lot of interesting trees. Again, note I said “interesting”, and not
“good”. I think we stand to learn more from the interesting ones.
What do we see? What works, and more importantly, what does-
n’t? This is a personal thing, but then, so is art.
Which brings us to BLOG number one: the “Bonsai Bark”, pub-
lished by Wayne Schoech of Stone Lantern Bonsai. Wayne is the
former publisher of “Bonsai Today” magazine, which has morphed
into “Bonsai Focus”, which may be the world’s premier bonsai
journal. Wayne puts a lot of work and a lot of heart into his blog,
which is updated often, with lots of great photos, but more signifi-
cantly, his stuff is a pointer to a lot of the other significant develop-
ments, the aforesaid paradigm changes. Wayne doesn’t miss much.
This is clearly a labor of love, and a peek at his advertising, which
is ok by me, because the stuff is good. You get to see and hope-
fully file for future thought a lot of interesting trees. It is that file
that is going to help you do better bonsai, and computer file storage
being what it is, you can do a lot of learning and still find the stuff
when you go looking for it (unlike my previous interesting trees
files, which are hard copy scattered hither and yon. And in black
and white, to boot).
BLOG number two is Mike Hagedorn’s “Crataegus Bonsai”. This
is primarily where the change in how we pinch junipers broke. I
refer you to the blog for details, but essentially it is like this: most
of us cut our teeth on the idea that juniper maintenance consisted of
constant pinching of the new growth. Gazingah! (You don’t watch
Big Bang Theory?) Now we are told that that approach will even-
tually destroy the health of the tree, and that (for most junipers) the
correct approach is to selectively prune back into the growth flush.
The key idea here is that a large number of growing tips are pre-
served, and this is essential for the long-term health of the tree.
Makes sense. Now that the finger has gotten pointed at it. (You
know that finger: it’s the one with the green smudges on it.) We
are told that this was always the idea. Uh Uh. I’ve been at this a
long time, and paid attention, and I know what I’ve been told and
what I haven’t, and this is new information.
Paradigm change number two came out of Wayne’s blog by way
of an article from Peter Tea (who has his own blog, BTW). The
thing that got my attention here is the statement that wild-type
shimpaku foliage is considered too coarse in Japan, and most of
the better trees have had their foliage totally replaced by grafting
on Itoigawa or Kishu foliage. (I guess that’s what apprentices are
for. They are sorta like grad students in that respect). The former
seems to be the current fad, I seem to notice. I suspect most of us
are pretty much behind the curve on the grafting, n’est cest pas?
The statement was made that, on their own roots, these two don’t
get all that big. I am working on grafting shimpaku foliage onto a
San Jose, simply because 1) it doesn’t bite, and 2) the SJ foliage is
too prone to blight. Not to mention it is prettier.
The non-blog paradigm change came for me this year at Brussel’s
Rendezvous: one of the featured demonstrators, Mr. Fujikawa,
was saying that leaf pruning is focused primarily on the outer
leaves: you leave (pun egregiously intended) the inner ones alone.
Boy howdy! It isn’t often that life hands you one that actually
makes something easier to do! The point is to focus the tree’s
energy on the inner, weaker branches. Again, hindsight and com-
mon sense are in agreement, but big change! Big, big change for
me. A time-saver! I might even get around to them all!
The last paradigm-changing blog came from Capital City Bonsai
(that’s Capital City in DC, not in California). Home of the Na-
tional Collection. Ahem. They published remarks from Ryan Neil
on how to graft, which had a lot of good and new information, and
a focus on aspects of growing pines that was really quite different
from what I had heard before. The idea is that you withhold fertil-
izer until the needles quit elongating (which is later than you
think). The pointer is also right at Winter fertilization for pines,
too, which I have long known was important. This info came from
Ryan Neil. Ryan had wanted to talk about this to our study group,
but they were too busy partying to hear what he had to say, so we
missed out. A tip to those who would learn from Ryan: Ryan is a
very serious guy. If you want to learn from him, you should be
serious about it, too. I refer you to his article for the details. There
is a lot more to it. Yeah, you’ve gotta read it. I am not going to do
more than point the finger in its direction. Man, this guy has got-
ten an education! His teacher, Mr. Kimura, pointed out in a recent
article that the tips of all pine candles should be pointed up. That
means we gotta wire out to the tips. Ouch! Oh well, time to be
serious.
It’s all about learning, after all. Those of you who know me well
have heard me say, “When you are through learning, you are
through!” (I have also used the word “looking”, but then I am a
dirty old man). So, we get out there and try to do better tomorrow
than we did today. Know what that is? That’s growth, baby! Isn’t
that what this is all about? We shouldn’t expect our trees to do it
all.
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 4
Holism vs Analysis part 3 by Clifton Pottberg In the previous installment of this article, we discussed
how the great masters were able to relate such a myriad
of details, keep track of them all, and always relate them
in a way that puts all the parts together into a larger
whole. In other words, they were masters of putting
things together. This the art of holistic thinking. As the
mind relates all of the parts it can begin to see, it sees not
just an elaborate assortment of parts, but rather a single
complete picture, the total picture increasingly begins to
take precedence in our mind over considerations of any
and all details. This is especially true if the picture’s as-
pects fit well together of course.
In other words, out of an assortment of details, the more
we study a picture, the more it resolves itself into a single
entity in our mind; this is the basis of the creation of ho-
lism; of oneness in any pursuit, whether it be art, or music,
or theology, for that matter.
As we find oneness it has been the experience of those
who study that aspect of man’s knowledge, both to dis-
cover beauty in that study and in particular examples of
that study or art.
To find oneness is to discover enjoyment. Further, there
is a particular part of the brain which, when it finds that
beauty, tends to wish to stay enmeshed in that experi-
ence.
The reverse is also true, of course. When we are angry,
or depressed, or experiencing any other emotion, it is diffi-
cult to get out of that experience. There is an actual
chemical which helps keep us enmeshed in that. It’s the
stress hormone group, called cortisol.
The other side of that biochemical experience, when we
are enmeshed in something beautiful; fulfilling; gratifying;
is a group of chemicals which together are called endor-
phins. It’s not just a single chemical; it’s a soup, but it
amounts to one of many senses of comfort, love, gratifica-
tion, or whatever and has a tendency to help keep us in
that place.
The effect can come from seeing beauty, hearing beauty,
meditating and so on, and it provides us with a sense of
belonging and having a sense of oneness with all things.
Interestingly, not only does it make us feel better, it makes
us think better, and also to see the world “through rosier
colored glasses”.
Thus we also see more beauty in many things, and in all
art as well.
It is almost as though we are filled with the ability to ap-
preciate more, and actually to see things as more beauti-
ful.
Thus to enter that “other” non-analytical/critical thinking
part of the brain is to enjoy art more and to experience art
more deeply.
It is possible to exercise that part of the brain which sees
beauty accordingly and to see ever more holistically.
To be in that other part of the brain which few people ac-
tually enter into is to see the whole world in a new way,
and to enjoy it in a new way.
It is where we are able to see the beauty in art, and
where appreciation of art springs from. It is, in a sense,
the art of art itself.
Getting there takes practice, yes, but the more we are
able to discover it and to stay there and go more deeply
into that experience, the more we are rewarded by the
experience of beauty in all aspects of the world around
us.
It’s the artist’s way of seeing the world around us, a very
different kind of seeing – and knowing – from what almost
all others ever achieve, but it is totally worth exploring .
It’s the artist’s way of seeing, designed by such leading
artists and artist teachers as Bette Edwards of Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain fame, and Ernest W.
Watson of the brilliant Composition in Landscapes and
Still Life book.
It’s also been talked of over the ages in many spiritual
traditions such as the Hindu, the Buddhist Pali and early
Theravadan writings, or the Yaqui Indian tradition ex-
pressed, for example as a new way of seeing, in Carlos
Castaneda’s writings on Don Juan Matus’ traditions.
However we come to it, it is often a startling experience,
and after we have achieved it we will forever see the
world and its beauty – and art – differently.
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 5
Bonsai Soil by Terry Davis (Mullet Wrapper)
I was supposed to do part of a program at our bonsai so-ciety meeting last night, but I slid around so much on my snowy afternoon errands, I bocked out (bock, bock, ba-caw!) on the nighttime traffic skidfest, so now I am going to do what I can to make up for it. So, soil yourself! As in: let’s talk bonsai soils. I remem-ber a cartoon book I bought at a BCI convention many years ago: there was a cartoon that showed a monster book, a foot thick, titled “Bonsai Soil Mixes”, to which I penciled-in “Volume One”. It is confusing, and eventually everyone develops their own, idiosyncratic approaches. We all know they should be porous and coarse, but why? The answers are several: the most important reason is so that the soil takes water uniformly. If you look at the roots of a houseplant when you repot it (assuming you get that far, as opposed to leaving it on the front steps to freeze in the Fall), you will note that the roots are all on the outside of the root ball. This is because the soils are fine and compact, and the water flows down the interface between the pot and the soil mass. (Part of this is because you don’t give it enough water, too). In a bonsai pot, you need all the roots you can get, and this means all through the pot: you can’t afford the houseplant watering scheme (maybe our houseplants would like a coarser soil?). Also we tend not to have just one or two, but a lot of plants (self control as a way of life is highly over-rated!), and we need the watering over within a reasonable time. The other reasons are that porous soils breath better and tend to heat up less. There is better oxygen access to the roots (this reason gets given, but I am not so sure they need oxygen itself. Howsomever, what they don’t need is to go sour due to anaerobic decay (occurring in the ab-sence of air), and evaporative loss tends to dry the soil mass more uniformly, as airflow moves moisture out of the pore space. Helps keep the soils cooler, too. Above certain temperatures, root activity stops. Short and sweet: we want the water to drop through the soil quickly and uniformly, and we want the soil to breath and stay cooler. To ensure porosity, we also sieve the soils to remove dust and get the particles into the same size range. Finer par-ticles fill the spaces between larger particles, resulting in less porosity (technically, this is called the packing frac-tion). I don’t know how obvious this is to you, but there is a second reason that you may surprise you: chopsticking the soils during potting tends to make the larger particles rise to the surface (technically, this is called classification). This is the opposite of what we would want (and it looks ugly), as we would like the upper part of the soil to actu-ally dry out a little more slowly, i.e., have a finer particle (which we seek to do by top-dressing). This promotes more uniform drying, root growth near the surface, and moss growth.
Now the tough part: what to use? For starters, we should be aware of what the overall objective is for the whole bonsai collection: we want the soils to dry out in pretty much one Summer day, and we want them all to dry out in the same time frame (to make it simpler!), so we need to tune the soils to the needs of each plant and planting. The idea of one commercial mix for everything just doesn’t hack it. We want the pines and junipers, and especially the ponderosa pines, to dry out fairly quickly, so they don’t sit around at night sopping wet. The de-ciduous trees need an even richer, moisture retentive soil. Tropicals need even more moisture, and we all have a list of the really thirsty trees in our collections, like the willows, crape myrtle, beech, boxwood, and wisterias in mine. A commercial mix is fine for starters, but we need to modify it for each tree. This is where experience be-comes a factor. As a starting point, I can recommend the soil formulas in John Naka’s “Bonsai techniques I”. If you don’t have the book, check it out from the library. Pay attention, not so much to the formulas, as to what they are telling you. Okay, ingredients: We want the sand to be sharp to pro-mote roots branching, as opposed to rounded like river (fracking) sand (which is mostly too fine, anyway). We all have access to the answer on this one, and it is called fine chick grit from the local feed store. As far as the moisture retentive component, this one gets a little complicated. One basic idea is that there is pretty much no place in bonsai soil mixes for black-dirt potting soil. It holds it size poorly, and tends to go sour. One approach is pine bark, preferably composted (which is hard to get). The uncomposted material tends to be a little hydrophobic (sheds water on contact), dries pretty quickly, and really soaks up the fertilizer as it begins to break down. But it is pretty much what we can get, so we need to compensate by adding a little more of it to get the moisture retention that a composted bark would offer, and water a little more thoroughly. Supposedly, tropicals prefer that the moisture retentive component be organic (i.e., pine bark). A lot of older books suggest leaf mold or earthworm castings, but these tend to be very fine and breakdown very quickly. And the particular source of the leaf mulch has some consequences for the pH of the soil, which you ignore at your peril. Maybe we ought to com-post the bark ourselves. It is pretty much a moving tar-get, as it becomes more moisture-retentive as it ages. One way around the bark issue, and the one practiced in
Japan, is to use Kanuma, which is an unfired volcanic
clay. It has good moisture retention. Kanuma varies a bit
in how well the particles hold their shape (“Hardness”),
but I haven’t got a bead on which is better.
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 6
Bonsai Soil by Terry Davis (Mullet Wrapper)
I have been using it a lot, and I really like it. Problem is, the Feds found a piece of root in a bag, and in their usual wisdom, banned the import (Oh my gosh! Contamination! We are going to be importing the next plague! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!). Hopefully this won’t last. The feds may be one reason Europe is doing so much better than we are: their governmental policies aren’t so, shall we say, restrictive (you gotta to know I really want to say anal!) (And anyway, the Europeans are doing better than us because they take it more seriously). There are two middle grounds here: one is to use brown lava, the other is to use a fired clay, such as Turface or Terragreen. A few years ago, I was experimenting with lava: it really sounded ideal. For starters, when dry, it is light (and my back is getting older). It is porous and should be cool-running. I like the color (Kanuma looks pretty much like…well like mud (which it is, of course)). Lava-based mixes are all the rage in warmer, tropical ar-eas. Here, it is just plain hard to get. However, in dry summers such as we have, without the daily rainfall, lava soils dry out too quickly, especially the upper portions. The result is almost no root growth in the upper-1/2-1” of the soil, and for moss, it is pretty much the Sahara Desert. I think the reason is that, because of its porosity, evapora-tive loss of moisture is too rapid. I also found the bottom of the soil to be too water-logged. Why, I have no idea. On to the fired clays. Kanuma is at the unfired end of the spectrum. Ya gotta understand what happens as a clay is fired: the more highly fired, the less water-retentive (think porcelain vs. a clay pot). Firing also progressively de-creases the cation exchange capacity (big, technical word, but there is no getting around it). This is the ability of the soil to retain metal ions such as iron and magne-sium, which is important in the mineral nutrition of the plant, and ion exchange also increases the acidity of the soil and the way it interacts with hard water. Lightly-fired clays such as Turface (which is used as Oil Dry and to make baseball diamonds) (which aren’t all that muddy when wet even though they are clay) also can get so dry that they withdraw moisture from the roots of the plant if allowed to get too dry. Any Turface-based soil should also have some pine bark, which Kanuma soils don’t re-quire. Since we pot with bone dry soils, this is a problem. When potting with these soils, the soil should be pre-wet, just a little. Just enough to take the edge off it, but not enough to make it sticky. It should still look dry. You can’t do this with Kanuma, as it wouldn’t take the chop-sticking. There is also an expanded shale product out there called Hadite, which is like a higher-fired clay than Turface. I haven’t tried it Lots of stuff to think about, but I am not going to leave you without some starting points. For conifers, I use 3:1 grit/
kanuma, for deciduous, pretty much the other way around, if not 1:4. For bark-based soils, the ratios would be closer to 1:1 for conifers, 1:4 for deciduous and tropi-cals (tropicals supposedly prefer bark to Kanuma). The bark mixes should be slightly moistened before use, pref-erably the night before (and seal them in a plastic bag. This is not because of drying capacity, as with Turface. It is because fresh bark is a little hard to wet, but even more because it is so much lighter than the grit it tends to mix poorly unless a little bit tacky, and this is worsened by chopsticking…it tends to “float”. For junipers, which like alkaline soils, I replace some of the grit with crushed coral or dolomite, which you can get at stores selling ma-rine aquarium supplies. White stuff in the soil looks bad, but dead trees look even worse. Now a word about the idea of stratifying soils of differing coarseness: what I am about to say is contrary to “conventional wisdom” (which is usually anything but… “wisdom” I mean, not “conventional”). Just like, when I told my brother, the REPUBLICAN, that just because a certain politician is a jerk doesn’t mean he is wrong about global warming. Just because it comes out of the mouths of supposed experts doesn’t mean they have it right. We get told that for deeper pots, we should use a coarser mix in the bottom. We get told to top-dress with a finer mix. We get told to put a layer of really coarse stuff (“crocking”) on the bottom of the pot to improve drainage. What happened is someone, somewhere decided this was a good idea (on the face if it, it does make sense), and others kept on repeating it without ever testing it. Well, Leon Snyder (who taught landscape architecture at Kansas, and is the original master of American tray land-scapes (“micro environments”)) did test it, and the idea is all wrong! He found that the interface between the two coarsenesses (new word, but it works) tends to get wa-terlogged. He called it a perched water table, because water transport across the discontinuity was inhibited. I think perhaps he had the right answer, but for the wrong reason. Remember what I said about mixing small parti-cles into coarse soils? All the airspace goes bye-bye, and the zone of mixing gets soggy. Perhaps this would work out as originally planned if we didn’t churn it up by chopsticking, or maybe just continued watering would eventually pack the small stuff into the big stuff. What-ever. Doesn’t work as originally envisaged. SO: don’t do it! If you want to top dress, use a more moisture-retentive element, not a finer mix. If you want to crock, maybe try covering the crocking with a layer of window screen to keep it from mixing. Or just use straight grit on the bottom, same size.
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 7
Muck? by Kay Waldron It’s muddy, sticky, squishy and essential for creating rock plantings, saikei, and plantings on slabs. If you attended the last Sundamizu and Hukyu club meetings, you had a chance to see us mix up a batch and use it for our rock plantings. Muck is totally different from our usual high-drainage, highly aerated bonsai soil.
Muck can be used to hold plants on rocks, build walls to hold soil in place for saikei and create a hill or slope in a forest that would be impossible with our normal bonsai soil.
One of the best sources for muck in Florida would be one of our nice soggy swamps. Clay is the traditional main ingredient of muck and is still probably the best, if you have access to a swamp. You can dig up a hunk of clay and let it dry to a firm moist consistency or let it dry to a powder and pulverize it to mix with other ingredients. An-other option is to use garden soil made from dried fully decayed black peat (without additives like perlite or fertil-izer) purchased from a garden center. Add water and knead like bread dough until it is firm enough to hold its shape.
I like Virginia Boka’s recipe that was included in the “Tropical Green Sheets” because the cornstarch makes it nice and gluey and the sphagnum holds everything to-gether nicely.
Combine 1 box of cornstarch and 3 quarts of cold wa-
ter. Cook this mixture over medium heat stirring con-stantly until thick like glue. It can easily burn on the bot-tom of the pan, so it is important to heat it slowly and stir. Let this cool to room temperature. Mix together equal parts (usually about 6 cups each) of soil, peat and chopped sphagnum moss and add this to the cooked starch a little at a time and knead until it is very thick and sticks together. Be sure to wear rubber gloves for this task. Muck is difficult to wash off and the sphagnum har-bors the chronic fungal disease sporotrichosis which can enter through any open cuts or abrasions on your hands. Worm castings can be used instead of soil in this recipe to add a little natural fertilizer.
Muck is a great medium for growing moss due to its moisture holding capabilities. Just place small pieces of moss on the surface and within days it settles in and starts to spread. Daily misting keeps the moss green and muck from cracking. Muck can occasionally grow mold on the surface and have a rancid smell. Covering the muck with moss and daily misting seems to help. The smell goes away with time. If you need to store muck for a while, the best place seems to be in an air-tight con-tainer in the refrigerator - making sure that the rest of your household knows that it is not chocolate cookie dough. I have also heard that it can be frozen but I have-n’t tried that yet.
It’s free! Stay in
touch with Bonsai
activities!
Join the Meet-up Web-
site for the Sundamizu
Bonsai Kai.
Go to http://
www.meetup.com/
WestCen-
tralFloridaBonsai/
It’s easy and only takes
a minute .
Would you like to exhibit your bonsai in a juried show? Or perhaps just
attend and view a beautiful exhibition. The James J Smith Bonsai Show
and Exhibition will be held September 14-15, 2013 in Port St. Lucie,
Florida at the Civic Center.
Admission is free. Entries if accepted will be $50.00 per tree. For entry
information, go to http://bonsaishowexhibition.com . Information about
the exhibition is attached on page 13.
Juried Bonsai Show & Exhibition
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 8
A new method of weeding a bonsai by Clifton Pottberg Here at my nursery, there is always an effort to find new
ways to keep the details of a bonsai looking their best.
One of the difficulties bonsai stylists have is how to keep
the plant – and planting - looking as pristine - and as we
wish it to look - as possible.
Beyond the plant itself and also any other aspects of the
planting in the pot (secondary plants, rocks, perhaps,
changes in topography, etcetera), there is always the
question of removing those aspects of the planting which
aren’t wanted. Most importantly, we always have to fight
with removing weeds.
Weeds are, by definition, those plants which aren’t wanted
where they are found, for whatever reason. Removing
them is a constant struggle and, for most of us, most of
the time, take a lot of time. Thus the fight to reduce the
appearance of weediness in a planting requires constant
diligence.
The more we allow the weeds to grow to larger sizes the
more work they require to remove them. Not only be-
cause they get in the way of the visual effects we want,
but the bigger the roots and the more disruption that is
caused when they are removed.
The visual disruption would of course be reduced to a
minimum if we could find a way of taking the weeds out
when they are smallest. That would mean that we would
almost constantly be on the job of taking weeds out and
do nothing else.
Until now.
What we’ve discovered is that it is possible to remove
weeds quickly if we use a certain weed poison, or herbi-
cide, without damaging the bonsai.
Although I don’t like using it, I do use Glyphosate, but as
minimally as possible.
I started using Glyphosate on larger plants in weedy pots,
using a large brush, only slightly moistened with the
weedkiller. If there is enough weedkiller on the brush for
any of it to drip off you are using too much. Just a touch
on the foliar mass of the weed will at least damage it. If
you are concerned with possible damage to the bonsai or
other plant you are weeding, use less and work up to a
successful amount – damaging to the weeds but not
harmful to the plants you wish. I’ve never found that there
wasn’t such a successful compromise.
So we started with using large brushes on large weeds
and worked our way down in the size of weeds we were
attacking, using smaller and smaller brushes (to fit the
size weed).
Eventually the thought struck me (slow minded male that
I am) that by using the smallest brushlike implement
available I could erase all weeds just as they germinated
and so reduce the time in weeding – if I could make the
time per weed commensurate with the size of the weed.
I found out that it was possible to do so and actually re-
duce the weeding time for the whole bonsai, and all bon-
sai, by using a tiny brushlike implement that was very
inexpensive, easy to load with Glyphosate, and able to
load with enough – without dripping – to make short work
on any and all bonsai weed problems.
Even moss can be treated in this fashion. Many of the
smallest weeds have been a problem for moss hereto-
fore, especially if they are broad leaved spreading weeds.
Now with this implement – and starting to work on those
weeds when they are smallest – will allow us to make
short shrift of even the most stubborn weed problem.
Further, although this sounds like a recipe for constant
tedium, it’s not so. It’s actually about the fastest way to
deal with weed problems, especially at the smallest level.
Always be careful only to touch the weed, of course.
The implement has been called by many names over its
history: ear bud , cotton bud, or cotton swab Today in
America it is almost universally known as a “Q-Tip”.
It has very many uses, but it is also primarily used for the
most dangerous: cleaning out the ear canal.
However, as with almost every use, it is the cotton tip at
the end that is the purpose of its existence. It often is
used to remove waxy or liquid substances, but here in
our application it is used to spread something onto the
weed we touch.
It only needs a moment’s touch and the slightest amount
applied with a – merely moistened – Q-tip to kill these
various weeds, and even the cumulative time to apply to
all weeds is still a very effective use of our time in keep-
ing a bonsai clean, and perhaps the only logical way to
grow moss successfully.
In fact, it is so useful in this context that weed killing
might even replace ear canal cleaning as its most popular
category of use!
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 9
March Meeting: Forest Planting Demonstration
Scoping out the size of the trees to be used , cleaning out the
lower branches, and light pruning
Setting the wires to fasten the trees in the pot as they are
being “randomly” placed (by design)
Marty adds some of
the plant nursery
soil into the pot
Placing and wiring
the material
The end of the demon-
stration… but not the end
of the design. Some
smaller plant material
will be added to bring
more depth.
Please join us on Saturday, April 13th
at 10am for the forest planting
workshop and build your own forest!
Bring a tray and your tools, material
will be available for purchase.
Note: this is a demonstration done on a large scale.
Not all forest plantings need be large! Just like the
root over rock workshop on the previous page, you
can make plantings in small sizes too!
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 10
February Meeting: Tree over Rock Workshop
Raw Materials: Rocks and Plants
Examples of Root over Rock
Tree over rock; adding muck; final tree
Don’t forget to join us
for lunch on
Saturday’s after the
meeting. A great time
to catch up!
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 11
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 12
The James J. Smith Juried Bonsai Show & Exhibition is proud to join a new movement in America,
raising the standard of Bonsai into the world of fine art!
The juried show is a major exhibit in the southeastern United States,
which presents Bonsai as a fine art while bringing awareness
and education to the general public on the art of bonsai.
Admission to view the exhibition is free
Best of Show
First prize $1,000.00 Second $500.00
Third $300.00
Entry is open to all: For more information go to:
http://bonsaishowexhibition.com
澄んだ水盆栽会
Sundamizu Bonsai Kai
the Greater Clearwater and surrounding areas
2013, Issue 3/4 Page 13
Sundamizu Bonsai Kai means Clear Water Bonsai Club
(Pronounced soon”da mi’ zu) Clif Pottberg: 352-424-6000
Lois Powell 727-742-3301
Meets 2nd Saturday of each Month
Moccasin Lake Nature Park
2750 Park Trail Lane, Clearwater
Directions to Moccasin Lake Nature Park
From Southbound US 19 or McMullen Booth Rd (CR 611):
turn west on SR 590 for 0.8 mi
turn left on Calamondin Ln for 0.3 mi
turn right on Edenwood St for 364 ft
turn left onto Beachwood Ave for 0.2 mi
turn right at Park Trail Lane
From Northbound US 19:
turn east on Drew St for 407 ft
turn left on Fairwood Ave/Park Place Blvd for 0.6mi
turn left at Park Trail Lane
Proceed to the back of the parking lot. This is closest to the
classroom. If you have large material/plants you are bringing,
we will open the gate for dropoff and then you can return to lot
to park.
Annual Membership is $24 per individual or $36 per family
and includes:
● Monthly meetings
● New friends
● Lots of fun
