Bonsai Secrets

this is a video about the humble ASA campestre or the field maple sometimes referred to as the English fear maple it's a maple that grows almost wild throughout Europe and this I always refer to as the poor man's relative of the more flamboyant Japanese maple the ASA genus is a huge genus of trees the London plain trees which is ASA platanus the sycamore which is also an acer the canadian maple is also a maple i think and so you will find that the is a genus encompasses a very wide variety of trees but I like this European or the English field maple very much because it's very similar to the trident maple look at that beautiful trunk and the movement that I've created this is a tree that I created from scratch by growing them in our field we grow them in the field to get that trunk thick so the first cut was made here then what mother cut was made there so you can see how the taper was added next cut was made there next cut was made there and so on so all the time you grow it 10 feet cut it back and you get these beautiful twisted angle shapes and you can grow the branches very easily from scratch so this is a typical field maple that we produce ourselves from from material that we grow in our growing fields I'll share some other big ones as well those of you who follow my videos will know by now that I love big bonsai this is typical of this sort of large bonsai that I make and this one was collected from a nursery which had to move sites so I dug it up about 31 or 32 years ago it was about quarter the thickness and I just chopped it and planted it in my field and grew it more and more to the trunk got taken and I chopped the top across and grew all these new branches so look at the size of that trunk absolutely massive and the roots are quite interesting and the field maple has this beautiful golden yellow color so they don't often turn red sometimes they turn the slight shade of pink but it's generally a yellow color tree I have another one which I grew from a nursery plant there's a history to this one this particular tree I remember purchasing it from a garden centre in 1980 and it had a funny forked root so I told the tree into two pieces and planted once a part of the root on this side and the other thing was so like I can't can't remember when but over the years I've made a beautiful bonsai but unfortunately the apex of this site has died but I can reshape it but all this is absolutely natural I haven't done any carving so if you just let the wood rot you get this beautiful beautiful effect I will try and dig up pictures about this tree because it has a very interesting history when I bought it it was only about one inch thick in 1980 and over the years has just grown and grown and grown so we'll go back and show you some examples of smaller field maples and how we tackle them and shape them I have nine field maples to show you and I'm going to work on all nine of them what I want to point out right at the outset is that they were all grown in these little black flowerpots I think this size of flowerpot is one and a half liter and they are believe it or not all the same age they were grown from seed about ten maybe twelve years ago but like most trees that grow whether they grow in the ground or in pots they are grew at different rates I have never figured out why so although they are same age this tree has a thick trunk at least inch or inch and quarter thick and this tree which is the same age is only that thick and yet they are the same age but I'm going to show you what we will do with each and every one of them so the field maples are very interesting little trees very similar to the Trident maple and if you grow them in the ground to thicken they do take in very fast and they produce the image it's just like the tried maple so when we get raw material like this the first thing I do always is to tease the surface of the soil and get it down to the base level where the roots start to show never waste what is below the surface because you'll find beautiful surface roots and that is what the Japanese called the nebari or the base of the tree and the base is what makes it look powerful and anchored into the ground so we will tease away till we get to the bottom of it as it were so although they are all the same h2 is I'm going to show you what variation we we have so these trees I always grow and then I chop it off this tree would have been chopped off there and the new leader becomes this part and then I chop this and then another leader pops up so whenever you chop you will get new shoots growing so if I wanted to make a simple bonsai out of this without being too sophisticated so probably you don't need these usually the Broads are too thick I prefer to remove them and let it produce thinner branches so the base is quite nice there it's got quite a lot of interesting movement there so I can chop harder if I don't want the tree to be too big I can chop it there and make the tree come back on itself get rid of that so that's back to the structure so that's how I will deal with that one and next day we'll get lots more branches growing from there so that's number one done let's move on to number two I would point out that the field maples are all extremely vigorous trees look at the roots that have come from underneath now the field maple is quite unlike the other maples in fact the Japanese maple is different in this respect because what I'm going to show you here are these roots the feared maple can propagate from root cuttings like the crabapples they propagate from root cuttings I don't know why the Japanese maple cannot be propagated from root cuttings it's one of the strange things I'm not a plant geneticist or plant physiologist so I don't know the answer but this is all from trial and error so if you plant these roots in a pot in fact you can even clump these little bits they will produce shoots so they will produce search you got your nice mommy tree from that so I don't usually waste anything so I will keep all these roots and I'll make my guys plant them into little pot so now we got small plants from it so every little root makes a new plant and that's how we make a little living honest living from just selling little cutting line I drew rooted cuttings so dug this tree have taken the roots from the base I can probably take it out of the pot so again the first thing I do so by the time you've seen this video you would probably be inspired to do it yourself and it just shows you the procedure I follow when I make these bonsai I don't mind giving you all these secrets more people don't realize how these things are made but here you lost secrets for free so this one has a very ugly root there when you get take roots like this going back on itself they're not pretty so I would get rid of it but you remember what I said they produce plants from the roots so we'll keep this for a root cutting because it's not going to be a nice surface roots to form the nebari of the trail so that will be a nice thick plot so it could have a nice Bend straightaway so let's look at the street again some more ugly roots I get rid of so if you want to make nice small bond side that's the way to go about it how easy is that you may or may not wish to wire the stage if you would like to do a bit of wiring you can wire bit like that and you get a very nice-looking slender tree to grow like that so that's number two finished let's go on to the third one every tree is going to be different so more root cuttings so this is the boring work that I have to do I stand these plants on the ground and when you stand it on the ground the roots just penetrate the pot and seek the soil or seek the moisture and if you leave it too long it's quite a job digging it up so and all this has happened only in the last year just shows you how vigorous the field maple is and I've got some other field maples which are a subject to another video and there have trunks about six to eight inches in diameter and they were grown in the ground but they've been in the pots for the last few years so they're making some beautiful tapers but I wanted to show you just these young ones to show you what we do with them so again all this get quite excited when I see the base of the tree because you will never know what you find below the surface this what promises to be quite interesting the only trouble with growing trees and flower pots is at the flower pots make the roots go round and round so that's quite annoying if you plant it in the ground the roots spread more radially so you don't get so much of this problem of the roots going round and round [Applause] but anyway they're more root cuttings for me because I'm not going to use these circular roots it will be just removed [Applause] lots of ugly roots all these roots I don't need [Applause] and the more tears you see is called a beautiful base that thick base so this is going to be an interesting plant so every plant is different so what shall we do with this one so because the root is spreading this way the front is quite nice sided this way or that way so I can use that as a first branch use that as a leader or I could use this side and use this as the leader I think I always got to remind myself that don't be too greedy I can wire that down like this there are too many branches at the back but really I should take that off that's ugly that's very ugly so we will take that bit off so we'll chop it with this ROG lapa so let's get a more smooth taper so this is how tapers me so I've got to be patient and let this grow so next year I'll get more branches from there so I won't get an instant bonsai in this case so I'll be a bit patient and wait for more branches to grow but meanwhile the base is very beautiful so this has got tremendous potential so this is just to show that sometimes you have to wait and looking at the base of the tree they're more interesting roots lots of congested routes so these are all going to make beautiful root cuttings and they will become used for small plants so all those roots will become plants so that will be cut there so that will make a tree this will make a very interesting tree look at that look at the shape of that so nothing is ever wasted as they say you know when the Chinese do cooking they will eat the feet they will eat the beak every part of the bird has used so this is very similar because I'm going to use all the roots all the shoots and they will all end up as bonsai in one form or another the more I delve into this and more interest I find see below the surface they are just going to be hidden and rather than just waste it I'm going to make good cuttings from it so this one plant will produce about 10 or 12 separate bonsai so that is the base of the tree nice Boulder Bo le ball the street could even go this way and then all these are beautiful mature root cuttings so I will get straightaway plants with quarter inch pencil thick trunks that would be a nice pond sign look at you with the bend so nothing will be wasted so that is another one number three some are easy some are difficult so the annoying thing is having to get rid of all these roots I'm showing you what it's called warts and all because I don't want you to get the impression that just by doing a few cuts with the secretaries you've got a bonsai that's the preparation to do and this preparation although tedious is all part of the fun of making bonsai this is going to be a pretty long video and from the feedback that I've had from some of you I get the impression that many of you don't mind seeing the long videos so this would be a fairly long one just to reinforce what I'm doing sorry I'm not looking at the camera all the time because I have to keep an eye on the blunt if I turn my head away I may cut my finger off let's tease away again these ugly roots which have gone round and round we don't need them root cuttings more root cuttings if only the Japanese maple could propagate from root cuttings we would be laughing but sadly no okay not all trees need to have thick trunks many of us get obsessed with thick trunk trees but first with slender trunks can also be graceful in fact when we are talking about Japanese maples one should always remember that the Japanese maple is meant to be a very feminine tree nowadays when people are so obsessed with diversity and gender equality we don't like to refer to things as feminine and masculine but Japanese maples and maples that have thin trunks are very slender and graceful so this is the type of image we try to create when you use slender trunk trees don't need to be thick and chunky all the time so that's another one now this one as I said they are all the same age but look at the thickness of the trunk of this tree quite off of tractor with the rest of them again look at the masses of roots underneath so vigorous absolutely vigorous as I said sometimes the roots go right into the ground and you have to dig it up with a spade this tool that I'm using is called a root cutter and the root cutter is exactly what this tool is doing is cutting the roots not a branch cutter but wood cutter so this is how I use it very useful for removing these roots that grow out of the pots again beautiful base beautiful beautiful base but where we get these circular roots we just get rid of it certain species like the field map are so vigorous that you can cut them with impunity and they will just grow you don't have to worry about it it's one of those species that I always call trees that are impossible to kill if you kill a few maple then I think you are doing something drastically wrong but it's one of those trees that cannot be killed easily so again beautiful best it's got lovely movement look at that it's just got naturally so the first cut was their second cut there you can still see the little stub that I left third cut why what's done here so that's what I've done this year only and look at that beautiful effect I've got so without any effort I've already got a beautiful bonsai like that and that would be a lovely thing just as it is so put it in a bonsai pot and we've got a lovely tree and then we go on to the next one this I took out of the pot yesterday just to discover what was below there so it's got lovely base so this tree I chopped there last year is to produce a short trip so that's that one done now this one I want to show because you have again a very interesting ugly route I don't know if I can use it I know I sometimes use expose roots in my bonsai but that is a bit over the top I think that is really ugly so I don't want to keep that so let's get rid of it so with the big loppers but as I said all along nothing is ever wasted here we will use every single bit and this is going to make such a beautiful bonsai with a twist look at that look at that tree it's good squat from there and that would make a beautiful bond size so that root will be saved and it's just gone round and round in circles around a flower pot so I don't think this is particularly pretty so we will just get rid of it I will stop when I find that there is insufficient root left but what I see is that they can all be utilized although I say that is ugly roots I'm sure someone's going to make a comment saying that they considered very beautiful but I always respect other people's views because beauty is in the eye of the beholder I've always maintained that different cultures view beauty in a different way and you just got to respect it the exposed root style that some of the bonsai in China are made into it's not to everyone's taste some people rave about it others don't so look at that you get nice points I can get out of that so all these will be saved so all those ugly roots have come off and there's another take root here why waste that that will make a nice upon site too so there's still sufficient root here I might be even tempted to take that but I think it could be stretching it too much so there's enough roots here to plug back into the pot and make a nice bonsai so it got a nice stump you can make it that tall if I don't want the bonds out to be that big I can cut it down here and have a shorter bond side usually people are a bit greedy you know that word I always like using and they try to keep as much of this stem as possible but really to a get a good looking tree with good proportion I should cut it down to there and that is more in proportion so next year I'll have a full head of little twigs and branches so that's how I start doing those trees and then there's one final one no that's a couple more no that's this one I forgot now this one is very interesting this one is interesting because there are many many options whenever there are options it makes the choice not difficult but it becomes very intriguing because there are so many things you can do to get a good solution so this tree if I keep the two trunks normally the twin trunks look ugly like this so for conventional bonsai or many of the bonsai purists they would regard this as a very ugly solution where you have the twin popping up there but I try not to be too obsessed by conventional thinking so if we keep the two I still think it could be quite an interesting tree and I say it's interesting because you do find trees like this growing in nature so that could pass off as an interesting bonsai very natural looking bonsai not the typical triangular shape you know but this is more in keeping with the way you find trees growing naturally in its natural habitat so I'm tempted to keep the two you could if you wanted to remove this one and just have that trunk line or even remove this one no I think this one if you wanted to remove one this will be removed but I like to keep the two because it suits this particular tree and then there's another finer one here I've given you more than your fair share of examples so remember you can get fear maple those of you who live in Europe they're sold as hedging plants so they're quite cheap to buy what training I'm into bonsai does take a bit of time so you don't always have to use the Japanese maple but of course you don't have the beautiful red color that you get with a Japanese maple now this I dug out from another log because it has two trunks and this is a typical train trunk and yes this is one tree sometimes you plant two seedlings together you get that effect but the train trunk the classic Trinitron always starts at the base joined at the base rather than higher up so this is more in keeping with conventional style you could have like a mother and child one tall and one short so that would be quite nice and as I said you don't always have to have thick trunk so the slender trunk twin trunk would be quite a nice bonsai so this is how you make different styles of bones are using the same species the English of the European field metal there you go [Music] [Music]

Channel: Herons Bonsai

Views: 245,523

Rating: 4.9342079 out of 5

Keywords: Herons Bonsai, Herons Bonzai, Peter Chan, Peter Chan Bonsai, Bonsai, Bonzai, Bonsai Trees, Outdoor Bonsai, Deciduous Bonsai, Maples, Acer Palmatum, How to Bonsai Maples, Looking after Maple Bonsai

Id: tpFjbhWh9lA

Length: 32min 2sec (1922 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019