How to Repot Your Bonsai -Juniper

we are now in the middle of January and you must be wondering why I'm standing among all these trees fortunately in in the UK or in Southern England where we live we don't have very harsh winter today for instance the temperature is 12° C which is very mild we've had a very mild winter so far but very wet so although we are in the middle of winter and not being too cold I'm going to start repoting we have thousands of trees on the nursery this is just one small area there are thousands of trees and although we don't report each and every tree each year we must repot about 500 trees or more so there's a very big program of reporting and it all has to be done before the end of March and certainly with the diser trees before they start coming to leave Evergreens I start a bit early so I'm going to start doing it early now in case it confuses you let me tell you straight away that the best time to report is from the middle of February certainly in the south of England or if you have a mild tempered climate like we have in Southern England we we start from mid February until the end of March I'm starting in the middle of January because we have all these green houses and our green houses don't freeze they go down to possibly 5° on very cold nights to 0° but it doesn't go to -7 - 10 and because I have the greenhouse protection I'm able to do my reporting earlier so that is the except ion to the rule because I have the greenhouse facilities so if you have a greenhouse where you can protect the trees I don't mean heating the greenhouse but just protect it from frost that is fine so what am I going to show you today in this video let's have a look at these four trees here these are four ETO gawa junipers very nice itawa junipers look at all of them here these are all Theo gawa junip purose that require repotting they're still in these Japanese training pots they're very nice for training but to make them more salable I'm going to put them into better pots I've chosen some pots and let me just take one of the trees into the greenhouse to see how I go about doing the process so follow me and I will take you in there those of you you who have been to herens will know that we have a lot of pots we have hundreds not thousands of pots and if you look around this is just some of the pots in the display area we have a couple of barns full of pots which we have not displayed so we have pots from China Korea Taiwan Japan of course and of course very high quality British pots so with such a wide range of pots where do you begin choosing a pot I always tell you that the first thing to choose is of course the size of the pot the size of the pot may seem obvious but sometimes it is worth explaining for a tree like this I'm not going to use a pot like that because certainly it won't go in that pot is possible but a bit small mind you I have my own opinions about Pots if you look at some of the pictures of the Japanese exhibition trees I personally feel that they are in two smaller pot but that is just style that is just a matter of style but if you put it intoo smaller pot it will stress the tree so the size meaning you got to be sensible now let's look at this tree as I said even that part with will be too small now what about putting it in a pot like that now that is far too big if you were going to grow it on to make the tree stronger you can use that pot if you've got nothing else but that is far too big I'm trying to put them in pots so that they become more salable that's the main reason it doesn't need repotting because the tree is not pot bom The Roots haven't Jam scammed in the pot and then there is of course the style of the pot this is what we call a semi Cascade style of pot and some people may put it in that but I feel the semic Cascade pot is really for semic Cascade tree so this won't do and what about shape you've got round pots you've got oval pots and then you've got rectangular pots this was already in a round training pot so you could consider putting it back in a round pot which doesn't really do it justice because the whole object is to make it go in a different type of pot see that would fit but I don't think it's quite right before I go too far let me talk about the color you wouldn't think that talking about the pots can take so long I could spend hours talking about pots I've talked about the size first let me talk about the color now these are what we call unglazed spots this is sort of a light brown color this is a dark brown color this is a glaze P but it's a dark color Now by tradition Bonsai has a very long tradition because the Chinese have been growing Bonsai for certainly 1500 to 2,000 years the Japanese have been growing Bonsai for about 1,000 years and the Oriental tradition says that evergreen trees like this are better planted in unglazed pots because the Serene look of the green is complemented by these dark unglazed Pots if you put it in a bright colored pot for instance like this green pot it it is too gold body it crashes with the foliage of the tree so glaze pots are normally left or kept for flowering trees trees that have bright foliage like red leaves or pink flowers white flowers so the glazed pots are normally kept for colorful trees and deciduous trees they're seldom used for evergreen trees but having said that you know what I am I am not a great stickler for rules if you like a pot and if it's for your own enjoyment you like a glaze pot use it by all means please don't be bothered about what other people say and think about it it is your tree and it's for your enjoyment so do what you like but I'm just telling you what the conventional wisdom is so I've said about the size I've said something about the color and I haven't really touched upon the shapes of of the things so these are what we call the semi Cascade Parts let me go somewhere else if you follow me there are what we call proper Cascade pots which are deep like this one this is a tall Cascade pot but this tree doesn't lend itself to being in a Cascade pot because Cascade pots are for trees that hang down but this is going up the Cascade Port doesn't really Su there's another Cascade Port there so and then oval pop you can have shallow ovals and you can have deep ovals and then you can also have these pots which are called slabs like that you know if you mount it up you can find a Big Slab and mount it up so sometimes you don't have to use what we call the conventional types of pot let me just bring a very shallow pot to show you how the tree would look now these are conventional oval pots but it's not really that shallow so let me take it to the tree again and show you how the tree would look against one of these sh pots this is a Japanese Toonami unglazed SP so let's put it here if we come with the camera here look full frontal here that looks quite nice like that and although it's oval they get all sorts of variations you can have a band in the middle you can have a lip you can have no lips and if we just scan around those tokoname ports let me come close with the camera and have a close look at all the Fon Parts what you're seeing is what a customer the see when he comes to hers they look at this pot shop and they get completely bewildered by the shapes and the sizes so these are shallow oval pots shallow oval pots are normally kept for forest and group plantings you can also use shallow rectangular pots for group plantings although they wouldn't look as nice this is also an oval pot not too shallow that could be used for or trees these rectangular pots can be used for ay trees so you see the variety there is these are more conventional rectangular pots these are unglazed pots now these gray pots we call them Silver Fox that means it's a rough matte silver dull gray glaze and this is I think very special type of glazing that is done in to AME region I'm not sure whether it's a clear or it's a glaze I believe it is a glaze but it's very very sophisticated so you get those so you get the ORD Brown unglazed and even in the brown there are so many shades of color and look at some of these pots these are really for group planting and this is a huge pot about 3 4T long that's a Japanese Port very ancient Japanese Port so you can see the wide variety of pots so if you have these oval pots a tree like this could easily fit into one of these oval pots so let's try it I always say that when you go to choose a pot it's like buying clothes or buying shoes you got to try the tree with the pot this is not the preferred color I'm just showing you the size and the shape so oval parts of this depth could ALS also be suitable but preferably go for an unglazed pot in the case of juniper I would just mentioned that there's nothing to beat the Japanese to uh pots especially the tokoname pots ever since we started importing from Japan back in the early 80s we've always used tokoname PS that's where we used to go and Shop so I've said something about the size of pot the shape of pots the color of pots uh what else can I say there are of course let's go now for the Toonami pots to some of the Chinese pts these are Chinese pots I don't have to tell you that most of the products in the world any consumer product is almost invariably made in China and Bonsai pots are no different you get such a wide variety of pots and and of course the traditional Chinese pots the ones that are used in top top exhibitions are antique pots which are two 3 400 years old from China and they're highly sought out these are modern pots and what you pay is what you get the more you pay the quality is better the best Chinese ports come from yishi that's the area of China near Shanghai and sucha where they make the famous teapots with the red this color glaze but they also have this very dark clay which they call purple clay and you get this distinctive dark color clay and they are also very good for one now Chinese pots especially the decorated ones are not to everyone's taste look at this beautiful pot this is really a beautiful PT let me put the tree down and show you the pot this is in gold letters I don't know what it says because unfortunately I can't read Chinese but it is such a beautiful pot look at the detail on this absolutely beautiful and if you have the right tree it would suit it very very well so there are so many types of these tall Cascade pots but if you have the right tree the right Chinese style tree it would suit but because most people in the west are still producing trees after the Japanese style they prefer the Japanese style pots and look at these I don't want to lift them look at these decorated pots I have lots of customers who absolutely Rave about them because they're beautiful but it may not suit a Japanese style tree so you can see the wide variety and selection of pots we have if you just home in closely on the detail please mer you can see the detail of these and if you can come close to it some of them have a very fine crackle glaze look at this for a glaze fine crackle glaze on a emal green pot and so it goes so these again are the Ying pots and of course if you are having trees for training we have plastic pots these are large plastic bide pots they're made either in Japan or in China or Taiwan you get them in that shape you get them in this shap these are all plastic pots they cost a fraction of the ceramic PS obviously and then of course there are the mots I don't know why they call it a micop poot MCA mic as you know is is a mineral that is used for insulation I know in a lot of the electrical products they still use Mic but they are virtually unbreakable you can throw the pot on the ground and it will not break they're so resilient and they're very very dense I think it's a type of polypropolene plastic but it lasts forever I've had microts that have lasted over 30 years since they first started making microts so there you go and then of course you can use Hy pieces of slate or stone stone to plant the trees so having said something about pots I could go on and on but I think that is sufficient for your needs size of pot shape of pot color of pot these are the three main things while we're talking of shape of pot and size of pot I should also mention the depth I've touched on it very briefly there is a general um belief or tradition that the deeper the pot the thicker the trunk of the tree so the shallow pots or you try and match the depth of the pot with the tick of the trunk but it doesn't always work like that but as a general rule the thicker the trunk the deeper the pot can be so that is about the depth of the pots so let's now stop filming the pots and we're going to show you how I'm going to proceed with choosing pots for those four junipers so I'm going to show you what pots I'm choosing for these four trees so this first one as I said it's not fully pot B but I'm going to put them into these pots so that they become more salable so the first one I've chosen is this micro pot this is a rectangular pot and this is what we call a soft rounded edge with a rim so that gives quite a lot of character to the pot and I know that this size does fit the tree so we're going to use this pot for this tree I will show you when we put that up so that side is appropriate I would say the size of the pot is about 70 or 80% of the total height of the tree so that as a general rule is okay when it comes to the depth that trunk is fairly thick but this pot could take a thicker trunk but because I can't always find the ideal one this one proportion wise is quite okay and I'll talk more about the positioning in the pot when I we come to doing the planting okay let's look at the next one this is also quite an interesting Juniper and because it leans let's see what partt it can take this is another rectangular with soft rounded edges but it's got a band in the middle so this is slightly different from the other pot so let's try this one so this one could go like that leaning that way while we're talking of pots this is a very beautiful Juniper as you can see and this are put in a drum pot so that reminds me that I can also use a drum pot so for this tree I'm going to use this PO I know it is a bit too big for it but it give it a chance to grow I could go for a slightly smaller one but I don't want to stress the tree so that part would fit that tree and finally the last one this is yet another different pot no I think it's the same design as this but it's slightly gray color this also a micro so these are all budget microp pods and terms of price these are like 2025 each similar ceramic pot from China would be about 50 to 60 lbs the Japanese po pots could be double that so this one I think we could use this part like that so I'm I'm going to show you how we putt all these four trees up so the next step will be to take you into the potting area and show you how this is done here we have this tree and it's been planted I would say about possibly 3 years ago and the soil I can make out is like a very fine aadama that has been used as I mentioned earlier it's by no means pot bone all the roots have come to the edge of the pot it is not what we would call a pot-bound tree if it was pot bound it would be so congested you couldn't even get the rake in there a bit of mesh with the training pot so that is the state of the roots and what we do now this is the part that frightens most people teasing The Roots now there are different tools for teasing The Roots this is what we call a rake when I used to be in the club scene back in the 70s and 80s people in Britain used to use their household dinner Forks they used to bend the dinner fork and make a rake with that but I can tell you it doesn't work these tools are made specifically for the reporting so this a traditional type of rake you can get it with a tweezer as well but these RS are very efficient so this is what you do with this rake this design of rake will do most jobs but if you're dealing with big trees and heavy trees we find that the root rake with the wooden handles either with a single uh Pokey twine what we call or two tin or triple triple hook they would work I prefer to use this because it's more heavy duty but this also is quite efficient I usually Begin by teasing the surface to see if I can discover more surface roots on nebari to make it look more impressive and to give the feeling of the tree gripping the ground gripping the soil so begin by doing that never try and pot if you have Frozen conditions you can never pot a tree when the root ball is frozen solid you need to throw it out so as I say throughout the last 2 weeks we've had temperatures in the teens you know 12 13 15 it even went to 17 couple of weeks ago so we've had very mild weather and as I keep pointing out we have the benefit of the greenhouse so the temperature in the greenhouse is about 15° C and the outside temperature is 12° today so you can see I'm beginning by teasing the surface of the roots what I try not to do or I've never done in my life is to Jet all the soil off with water there are some people who believe that they should jet all the soil off with a hose pipe and just be root the tree it's just that I think that it is a dangerous practice to do I'm not saying it's wrong but it is dangerous I prefer not to Jet all the soil off why do we repot repotting is done so that you can enable the roots to grow more freely create a more vigorous tree many people who are new to Bonsai think that oh Bonsai is the thing where you keep cutting the root roots and they think that cutting the roots is an integral part of bonsai I know it's an important part of bonsai but not the main purpose of bonsai we cut the roots or repot the tree I prefer to use the term repot rather than just cutting the roots because we want the tree to grow strong if you let the tree get pot bound the congestion of the roots will stultify or reduce the Vigor of the tree and that is the reason for repotting many people don't understand this especially beginners I'm loosening the soil sometimes in the middle of the root ball as I said this tree has been probably potted up about 3 years ago so it's not bomb but if the tree has been in the same pot for tens of years 10 or 20 years then you may need to go deeper into the soil to remove all the old soil and let air into the soil many people don't realize especially if you're not a botanically minded person you don't realize that Roots actually breathe there just like we breath there to keep ourselves alive trees also need to breathe there through the roots not just through the leaves but through the roots I don't know how it's done but believe you me they do that it's like teasing your own hair out I'm not talking about my my hair because I've lost a load of hair but this is like combing the hair and this is really like a small comb isn't it so we've loosened the root step see how nice and loose it is and I know that in the center it's certainly nice and loose and not too congested how about cutting the roots now for cutting the roots there are special tools you can either use your secretors but these long handle scissors we prefer to call them root cutting scissors try not to use the same scissor that you cut this Twigs with to cut the roots because you will Blunt The Twig cutting scissors by constantly cutting Roots anything that has soil in it blunts The Cutting surface very readily so keep a separate pair just for cutting Roots now when you come to reporting it's always a good time to sort out these complicated Roots you see this Crossing route here is not good because it doesn't promote the radial look of the roots so at this stage it may be a good idea to try and get rid of that so all this talk about nebari some people make a song and dance and make all this nebari business so complicated but nebari simply means creating a good radial root system see if you get rid of the crossing Roots then it looks more more natural you see now you got radial Roots going there although it was at the side you don't see it but you certainly don't want too many crisscrossing roots and although there are no visible radial Roots here you want to encourage some radial roots coming this way so this tree's still got a long journey to go this is clearly the front of the tree and that's the back of the tree as you can see it's got some beautiful Sherry or Driftwood here now I I chose this drum pot because the style is right and the size although slightly big is not bad it give the chance to grow it'll help the trunk to thicken much more if the person who buys it doesn't like it they can choose their own pot so that's how we proceed now how do we prepare the pot it's not just a question of putting the tree in a pot and ramming it with salt there's a lot more to cting a bonsai than you think because we have large drainage holes the large drainage holes are there for a purpose the drainage of the tree is very important for Bonsai if the soil is water logged and the roots cannot breathe there and you have a waterlock pot with no drainage The Roots will rot and die so all pots including Bonsai pots have ample drainage you see such large holes but if you put soil in there all the soil will fall out so to stop the soil falling out we put mesh that various types of mesh this is a purpose made Bonsai mesh and this is just orary plastic mesh people use it for insect proofing their houses or whatever for the last 35 or 38 years I've always used this orinary Garden mesh and in fact when we were very poor in my amateur days I used to go to the Street Markets and buy the vegetable bags you know the onion bags and the carrot bags orange plastic I used to use that to put at the bottom so you can always make do with something cheap and simple so you can use this so you can cut enough to cover each hole like so have four separate pieces to cover it or if you feel lazy I know again people will criticize me for that you can cut a whole piece to cover the entire bottom whatever you like as I always say there is no right and no wrong way as long as it works for you that is all that matters so I'm a great believer in doing these things after all you don't see what is underneath the pot as long as it works that's fine okay so I'm going to use this large whole mesh because this is what I now prefer to use reminds me of doing cooker programs doesn't it anyway so I put it over the surface and that's it like that some people go to the extent of putting pieces of wire like this to to keep the mesh in place it's a good practice but I'm a la lazy person I don't do that for the last 38 years or even 40 years I have never done that and the reason why I don't do that is because it is my feeling and from my experience the mesh will not run away as long as you put the soil carefully on top of it if you just put the soil carefully the soil is fine you don't have to tie it in but I could tie it in because I'm now going to put these tying wires now let me talk about tying the trees in most bonai when they're repoted they're tied in the pot this is a good practice to do and I think this practice has probably been started in the late 70s early 80s prior to that people never used to tie the trees in they just put the trees in the pot and once the roots have filled the pot the tree will never fall out so tying the tree in is a good practice now we tie it with wire this is aluminium wire and because there are so many different gauges what wire do you use I know some people they don't use common sense they go and use a thick wire like this a 4 mm wire to tie the tree you can use it but you're wasting wire there's no need to use such thick wire I find that for a pot of this size 2 mil or 2 and2 mil is quite adequate this in fact is 1 and2 M but I find that for a tree of this size the 2 mm wi is fine you can either use one piece of water that means one piece to straddle the trunk or you can use for lock use another piece use two I will use two because I'm just showing you what is a safer method to do although I'm working on this round microport or the drum microt I'm going to repot the other trees but I may not go through the process of showing the entire um procedure with you because it may take up too much video time but I'm not going to cheat I'm going to do exactly the same thing that I'm doing to these trees through this tree here so this is how this tree is going to sit like that now the next thing to talk about is the soil I can use neat aadama you can look at this soil very carefully this is aadama you see how their granules don't break down they retain the texture and composition throughout its life maybe as long as five even 10 years I've always said that using aadama neat is not always a good practice certainly not in the UK I find that we prefer to mix our soils so if you come here you see this is our standard deciduous tree mix it's got like 30% aadama some ordinary organic compost and some grit but I'm not going to use this for junipers because junipers and Pines require slightly more aadama and um the Japanese grit or any type of grit to it let me show you what I'm going to do do so follow me around so you're literally seeing what I'm doing there's nothing stage because this is exactly how I do my trees now as I said this is a wheelbarrow load up a decidious tree mix which we sell but I'm going to mix some more grip and aadama just to improve the drainage so this is a very gritty material when I was in Taiwan I saw some tree poet almost exclusively in what they call River grit like this this is the sort of composition you should get and here we have this famous iaki aadama these bags come all the way from Japan but I found that it is almost a universally accepted soil I was surprised that in Taiwan almost every grower uses Japanese acad for potting their best trees so this is a sort of consistency I would prefer to use with my junipers and Pines you don't have to use it but you get better results if you use this mix for years before we could get acad we just use only garden soil and the trees behaved quite well but we find that if you use that sort of mix it performs even better so let me go back to the potting area and po up that tree I like to pass on all the tips to my viewers you must be wondering why I standed on this semi Cascade pot there's a reason for everything this pot is perfectly leveled so when I line the tree up I know I've got a perfectly hard horizontal surface so I can view the tree to see whether it's horizontal flating or whatever so this part I find very useful when it comes to aligning my trees another little tip I'm giving you is this cementry people who come from abroad always wonder what this is these trays you can get from Builders Merchants for mixing cement I've been using it for more than 40 years and the number of people who've copied this idea I don't claim that it's my idea but I certainly started it that this is one of the best receptacles for putting your mix in for doing your Bonsai you can do there are other trays as well but this I find very useful because of the scale of our operations so the first thing I do is to put a layer of soil underneath to cover the base if I put it carefully and not disturb the mesh of course the wires have gone through the mesh so they're not going to get dislodged anyway I put enough you can see what is going in there and then I put the train to see whether the level is right or not the level is about right what about a drainage layer many people believe in putting a thick layer of drainage material and by drainage material we mean the material that is used for um providing more drainage that mean that no soil mixture it's just large grains of probably even aadama but we prefer to use uh different types of material there is see this is a type of pmus that you can can use large grains you can use that as a drainage course but I don't see the need for a drainage level or drainage there because if your soil drains freely I believe you don't really need that so I would forego that okay I've tied the tree very lightly in and that's the correct sort of lean disposition I will tighten it a little later but let me fill more soil first and then see how the tree goes and then at this stage you can either prod it with the end of the root rake and then for the finer particles you can get your chopsticks we have all sorts of things either Chopsticks or bamboo sticks again you can use whatever suits you you know I have so many different little gadgets here that you know you can just improvise I haven't got to the stage of using the Chopstick but let me fill the rest of the soil tie the tree in and then when it's finished I will show you tying the tree in twisting the tree tight so it doesn't fall out as I say there are two pairs of wires here you got to keep an eye on the wire so that it doesn't bite the surface of the trunk as it grows of course once the roots have filled the pot then there's no problem there's no problem at all you can just leave it there and it should be okay so I'm now going to fill the rest of the pot with soil it's quite amazing how much soil it takes because once it's compressed you find that you have to keep putting more and more and it's never enough and this is the proverbial Chopstick especially underneath the roots you find that you can't always get all the soil to penetrate there so the Chopstick is certainly a useful thing to have and all the time make sure that the disposition of the tree the position of planting is correct if you want it like that then you got to shove soil underneath to make sure it is inclining or leaning in the right way this is where my pot stand being absolutely level gives me an idea as to what it should look like see the more you poke the more the soil goes in it's quite amazing how much it takes it's almost like a endless black hole and what about putting Moss at this stage as I I'm not really putting it in for exhibition or anything I don't bother to put Moss but if I want to beautify the tree then certainly put Moss of course the Moss will grow once you start watering the tree but since this is just repotting the tree so that is the job done I don't like to put too much soil in case the soil washes away when I repot the tree so that is how this tree is done when I've done the other trees that there are three more to do I will will'll show you these all right so I hope you've enjoyed this exercise in reporting trees there you go so I showed you how I repotted this one and it's in a micro pot in a drum pot I put these four junipers which are almost all identical into different pots to show you the effects of how a pot can make the tree look slightly different these trees are a very nice lean in form upright like that like an S shape so this has been planted at this angle with the Gins coming out on this side so it's only slightly off center so this tree is planted like that so every tree I'm going to show you is going to be slightly different let's move to the next one this one is also in a micro poot but a different micro poot this is a rectangular one rectangular pot with very soft edges I haven't put any surface dressing on it but I will keep it now in the greenhous so this one leans the other way again the lean is very interesting and it is only just slightly off center that's the way it is planted okay now I'll show you yet another one to show you how the position of planting is really determined by this slant of the tree and the disposition of the branches so this one you can see that the tree is not planted dead in the center because if it was dead in the center this Branch would overhang that side so I planted it slightly off to the left and that seems to work with this so that pot is different so I've so far used all these microts I know that a lot of people you know say that all microts are cheap and lasty but when you look at it from far you can't tell the difference between a micro pot and a proper ceramic pot now this is a ceramic spot and it's also a different color so you can see that it's not the traditional Mar color now this tree because it leans it leans so much that you see I had to plant it way to this side if I put the trunk in the center it wouldn't look right it just wouldn't look right so the angle of planting is extremely important so this is how this tree has been done and I dare say okay this is the back of the tree but the D back is as Nic as the front but no the other side is the proper front because it leans more the the Apex leans more so we've transferred these four junipers into onai pots rather than the Japanese training pots like these these are what we call Japanese training pots so it has taken on a new persona so I show you how we did the reporting of one of them but I did all the four in exactly the same way so there you are I hope you've enjoyed this little uh video and I must emphasize that because we have these green houses they're going to be kept in the greenhouse till about March so they won't go out of the greenhouse so they have protection and they're not going to be Frozen thank so today we are still in the first week in January we're not into the hard winter yet usually at the end of January and most of February we have snow and hard hard Frost so far this winter we've had nothing but rain I believe in the first 3 days of January we had more rain than you would get in one month so it's been so wet today fortunately it's not raining and the temperature is still mild it's about 10° Centigrade yesterday it was 12° so we are not in for the hard winter just yet but there are still a lot of winter jobs that I keep checking on many people think that in Winter there's nothing to do but there's a lot to do there's a lot to plan so although the Evergreens look nice they look very nice if we walk around there will be jobs to be done so if I just walk around casually this is completely informal um video that I'm going to to show you I look at all the trees and see how they're doing and this little favorite for scer of mine I've shown it to you before this is sentimental piece that my late wife's friend made and I can see that some of these Foria flow birds are already starting to swell so in a couple of months or maybe in just a month it'll begin to flow the junipers are looking very very green I'm going to talk about the junipers in just just a minute but I will come back to that after I've looked around the nursery and as I walk around the larches look bare the oak trees look bare and what are these fruit doing these are the Quin fruit these are the Chinese Quin fruit from just one tree and I'm going to show you what I will do with these because we have a use for them so let's walk to something else this is a huge San Jose Juniper and if you remember the video I showed you about Taiwan and those Twisted junipers and looking back this is something I did 30 or more years ago and all these Twisted effects are the nearest thing I can get to what the CH Taiwanese do and you see the wire is still embedded in the in the bo there and most of you will know that I've used to be criticized for leaving wire on but this is how these Twisted effects are created so I'm very pleased that I've been Vindicated yet again so this as I say is the nearest thing to a Taiwanese Juniper nowhere near the quality that they can make but the principle is the same twist the uh things around and leave the wires on and you will get that Twisted effect so that is um something that I propose to do this coming year what about the maples we see so many Maples around and at this time of the year I do not touch the maples you always tempted to prune the ends and um do work on ramification but I do not start doing them till well into the spring if you do it I would say in February you will find that they will bleed a lot that means the water and the sap comes out I'll talk about that when we get into uh February and late February early March but for the time being just leave your Maples alone don't touch them don't cool them let me have a look at some of these junipers here these particular trees have been left here and they did catch the early winter frost in November we had a spell of quite cold weather when the temperature went to freezing and these junipers were left out and this is the typical Browning or we what we call the frost blush of the Juniper where the frost gets it it makes it look brown but inside where the frost doesn't get it it remains green so when you see a juniper that is brown in Winter Please don't think that it is dying another plant which is very susceptible to a frost is the cryptomeria the Japanese cryptomeria they turn this very rusted Brown and again people think that the tree is dying it is simply because the Frost has got it if you open the foliage out where the frost hasn't caught it it is bright green but come March and April this tree will suddenly burst and become green again all the Pines are looking very green looking very green indeed another little tip that I was passing on to some of the new staff on our Nursery is about the wire on some of the larches this Larch had wire on not so long ago and I told them to take it off because in my experience having grown larches in the UK for the last 50 or more years I found that if you leave wire on the larches mind you it's only larches very few other dis trees get affected the cold that gets on the wire gets transmitted to the branches and it causes the branches to D die especially the thin branches so I make sure that the wire is taking off the larches for the winter period otherwise you get severe dbag for some reason it doesn't affect Pines so I I'm not worried about the wires on Pines so again the maples are left well alone we don't touch them at all we don't P them I'm now going to take you to an area where there are quite a few Chinese junipers especially theoy gawa now this is another Juniper that's slightly br brownish this is a EO gawa left in the frost now if we come here if you look at these ETO gaas these are all etoy gaas you see how bright green they all are they're all very bright green every single one of them and I seem to recall that in the winter early winter of January I think it was certainly January or maybe even early February one of our colleagues Padma Pria started fertilizing The Evergreens with the ordinary Japanese naruko fertilizer on the rap seed fertilizer I didn't say anything to him at the time and he probably hasn't seen this video but I let him do it because I like to keep an open mind I was saying to myself why did do that perhaps I should tell him off because I don't normally start feeding the trees till early spring that means March or April well I let him do it in January thinking that oh the trees will suffer because if they come into early growth they'll get caught by the frost but no I think he has been proved right because these trees have stayed green and have been ever so healthy throughout the year so I'm going to start feeding again now which is in early January I'm not going to do it to all the Evergreens but I'm going to do it certainly to some of the Evergreen and see what happens sometimes you try to do things which you've been doing for years and years and you don't like to change your ways but if someone else does something which seems unusual I think it's an important thing to keep an open mind and try experiments and this experiment which P pra did I think was a good one and it's been proved to be right I know it's only one year we need to try it another year but if it keeps working year after year then we've stumbled across something which is good that means fertilizing very early in the winter that is January still winter the trees will benefit so all these beautiful green junipers are the result of being uh fed early now you must be asking me why some of those are bronze color and some of these are green this is because the frost did not get it we've protected these trees from the frost with this overhead netting so the netting has stopped the junipers getting frosted and some of them will be taken into the greenhouse for protection okay I'm now in another tunnel area and all these Maples are without their leaves but I think they should be okay if we get very hard Frost I may protect them a little more take them into the greenhouse but us usually for the winter the shade netting in the UK is enough to give protection oh what have I got here look at this beautiful little Japanese Quin beautiful what they call chuai you know you put it with a pine and a bamboo and make a beautiful little uh planting there are some other ones but these don't seem to have had flow now let's walk a little further on [Music] and I'm carrying this empty pot and a pair of secret because I'm going to collect some seed now these are par caner you look at all these seeds here the birds are very fond of eating these fruit so they keep picking the fruit but I don't like to waste anything I don't like to waste anything all these seeds will become plants so I'm going to collect all the rest of these seeds as many as I can it's really just to show you what we do so we are going to sew some of these seeds and follow the progress of this tree this is where the birds have taken all the fruit I let the birds take some because I like to feed the birds as well so I don't collect all the seed I take take some of the seeds and let the birds eat some the same with this this is the Japanese H and they have these beautiful large fruit and they'll only drop and get wasted so at this time of the year before they fall or get pinched by the birds I will collect some seed and I will s them I will sew them so this is what I do with these food and then different types you see that type of Japanese horon has got the big fruit and this Japanese horon I don't know what's the difference they've got slightly different fruit so they're all different plants so it's worth seeing how they perform they're clearly different they're clearly different once you're into plant and into bonide it's great fun sewing from seed now this is the the European haon orican so that Japanese one must be similar to the European one so there a lot of fruit in this too so lots of fruit people and these Rock planting we've had such a hard summer last year that they got frazzled in the heat so I've got to carefully nurture them and bring them back into good condition so if the Frost gets harder it's going to go into the greenhouse for protection because they did suffer a lot last year in the heat so let's move on and see what else there is to do the use I will probably leave outside because the frost is not too hard the other thing I wanted to point out is that I said I don't prune anything so all these long shoots you see this is the Chinese Quin is already coming into Leaf such an early plant look at it all coming into leaf and this has not been protected in the greenhouse one is tempted to pre the shoots but I'll be a bit reserved and cautious and don't prun it just yet the same goes for our Young Nursery plants if I can just take you to an area where we have a lot of Young Nursery plants these of course all our starter plants you continue to sell and make bide from them so these are larches larches I think are quite Hardy Tre trees but if you can resist it don't PR them the same goes for the GLE see these are goles that have shed their leaves you see these shoots have all been produced in the last year and one really should cut them back to about here or even further down but I prefer to wait till end of February early March when the worst of the winter is over because if you make Cuts now the frost can get into the twigs and cause die back further back so this is just a precautionary measure don't be in a rush to do that again looking at some of these for sites here they're already bursting the butts are beginning to swell and very soon they should be blooming having said that about not pruning there are certain plants which are what we call tough as old boots and the hedging s suckle which we did did a workshop on they are very very hard so these can stand hard pruning any day so I'm not worried about that so you just got to use your common sense and discretion but generally plants which appear to be tender don't prun back so I'll now go and show you how we sew some of our seeds and we'll go into the back greenos so let's begin by sewing some seeds and we will do it with the quins first so I have so many fruit just from a few trees so although it's January I could have done it back in November but as long as you do it before March if you leave it too late then it may have to wait another year because whatever you do may not produce germination so you look at it look at it the fruit and if I was clean it enough I can probably boil this pulp and get a lovely dessert from it so that is the seed we're going to take out the fruit is not very sweet it's a bit sharp I think it's just pulpy so this how you get the seeds out sometimes the seeds are not viable let's see the small one what happens to them this one is very hard it's rock hard I've got to be careful that I don't cut the seeds because if you cut the seeds then you've ruined it I think I might even need to use a Cleaver to open it out oh so I've cut some seeds see the color of the seat is different for this one so those are the seeds like so so those are the seeds you got out now with some of these other fruit this is just the quins these crab apples they eventually rot so you you can either cut the fruit open to get the seeds out you see look at the seeds so nice and firm seeds so this fruit probably only got like five or six seeds so that's the seed you want to get out but I'll show you we do different things with different seeds so let's prepare the compost you must be wondering why I have this one with just sand in it there are all sorts of different the look at that's a maple seed in there falling on the thing and it's already beginning to swell and germinate so sand is a very good medium to use but if you wanted to you could sew it in pure sand because although it may not have any nutrients once it germinates you then prick them out and you can separate the seed so these Quint seeds I will just put in here you can spread it around doesn't matter if they stick together because you will always be able to separate the seedlings once they grow and then you can cover it with a very thin film of sand again now I showed the use of sand because many people think that you've got to use special seed sewing compost you don't have to let me show you how we do now these are seedling this is a this is quin last year's Quin last year's quins ins last year's Quin from these food ins and this was planted Josh reminds me in pure sand look at the sand and these all germinated like that look the leaves are Fallen because it disu Tre and you see that little bit of red Quin sleaves are red like this so this is one of your seedlings now this is koni aster seedings and look at it this only one year only one year sewn last winter and already they are quite valuable plants if I pull one out and if you wanted to make a m tree I dare say you could even make a mmy tree look at how vigorous the roots are certain trees are more vigorous than others and konas is certainly one of them the roots are so vigorous that they've got entangled with the other plants look at that one your St and I got to cut the root off is so vigorous look at that such a lovely plant so there you are you could wire it and get a very nice Bon from that with a one-year old seedling so these are things I st last year and you see the roots are coming out from underneath the tray I'm going to show you how to mix compost if you want to be festigious let's come here now there's all sorts of commercial compost what they call garden compost available in the market this is something that you can buy from supermarkets or garden centers and now that Pete is no longer used this is probably composted leaves and chipped bark so you can either SE the seed directly into this or if you wanted to you and mix it with sand I think if you mix it with sand it is slightly better because you get better drainage and if you can afford it you can use the proper Bonsai compost this is our standard standard decidous mix where it is organic material 30% organic 30% aadama and 30% of the Japanese volcanic grit so you can use Bonsai compost so you can use all sorts of different uh compost for sewing the seed the important thing is after you've sewed the seed put it outside for the frost to get at it so the frost acts as a stimulator and it is called breaking the dormany so the seeds for those of you who know a little bit of Botany the seeds go into hibernation and while they're hibernated they are sleeping and you need to wake them up so these are those big Hoon I can open it up and you can see this each of these has just one big seed in it like that so I can SE that uh this one again for some reason it's just got one seed in that in fact it's so soft I can just get seed on look at it just one seed so this is very pulpy so it's just one seed again just one seed okay but that is not the only way to do it if you wish you can simply put the fruit into the tray because what will happen is that the flesh will rot and the seeds will germinate through it I've got a bucket here and these are crab apples that we just leave in the containers here like this to rot away and and when they wrot rather than cut open each individual fruit we sew it in our seed beds and this is how we get our crab apple plants simple as that so there are so many different ways of doing it please remember that there is no one way which is perfect and no one has the Monopoly of wisdom if you've done it a particular way and are successful please tell me I've got something to learn from you there are so many different ways of sewing seed it is just a Nature's process of reproduction so seed sewing although you may think it is a long process it is quite a rewarding process and you can get results very quickly like most of our Maples are grown from seed junipers we prefer to grow from cuting but junipers can also grow from seed so enjoy your uh winter sewing seeds so there's always something to do in the winter so I hope you've enjoyed this [Music] video

Channel: Herons Bonsai

Views: 68,410

Keywords: Herons Bonsai, Bonsai, Bonzai, Herons Bonzai, Herons Bonsai Nursery, Bonsai Nursery, Garden Centre, Peter Chan, Bonzai UK, Peter Chan Bonsai, Indoor Bonsai, Outdoor Bonsai, How to care for Bonsai, How to look after bonsai, Outdoor Bonzai, Evergreen trees, Japanese Garden, Pruning, Large Bonsai, Garden Trees, Chinese Elm, Chinese Bonsai, Japanese Bonsai, Bonsai for Sale, How to repot bonsai, Basic Principles of repotting Bonsai, Chinese Juniper Itoigawa Repotting

Id: C0g_-ZlZbdI

Length: 70min 50sec (4250 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024