Making an Oak Bonsai

it's the 11th of November today and although we are right in the end of autumn I came across this beautiful oak which we thought could be put in a pot and it still got its lovely leaves on and my colleague here Padma Priya was working on it and I suddenly said to myself why are we wasting this lovely opportunity to show you what we do with this oak now let me just tell you something about this oak this oak is every bit I would say six inches in diameter at the base the tree is about a metre tall and what we did this was growing enough here for many years and all we did was to chop the tree down we let it go to about ten or twelve feet it was gone in this large I think this is a I think 70 70 liter pot and that would be about 60 centimeter across at the top so it's a large pot so we dug it up from the ground and all I did was to chop it at the top there can you see that severe chop that chop was done about say five years ago and it was continued to be allowed to go in the ground and it was about two years ago that we put it in that pot and look at all those lovely lovely roots that have formed in fact there's so many roots but I've had to take some of those thick roots off so that big thick root can you pull it out I think we cut it off we don't need all that because we're now going to get it into a waterside what we'll use a micro port there are some sacrificial branches at the bottom although they look quite nice while they're there so we'll keep that so all we've done is cut the top and the branches at the top have been trimmed back and no great shaping or styling has been done but I thought I'd show you this because it's a very natural image of an oak many people criticize us for making the sidious trees look like pines I'm aware of that in fact a lot of my maples are not made in the pine shape they are made like maples now this tree is an oak and when we put it in a MicroBot and finished the potting I will show you the image and I can assure you it will be a lovely tree so I thought I just captured this operation because there's so many things we do on the nursery that we think are mundane and boring to people but you might find it interesting so I was sure they finished image when we putted this in the pot okay the thick roots you can cut they're not foreign roots this so we can cut some of the very thick fat roots yes yeah no I'm just going to show the soil this is really our God alone on the soil that is for nut tree on the nursery and we've just added a tiny little bit of sand to it but folks tend to like a loamy soil so I don't think we would put it in our standard which has a lot of akadama and grit because that soil is more suitable for pine so I will use this soil again which is mainly a long base soil with some sand in it so you can't always use the standard bonsai compost for every species so we've just got to observe how these trees grow in nature and go with the flow as they said we're just taking out one of these thick roots and we've cut it off so you must be wondering whether doing this would damage the tree and the answer is no because the rest of the tree has a lot of these beautiful fibrous fine roots so taking off the odd take one that one is well over an inch thick as you can see it's well over an instinct let's pull it out and see how much fine loot is attached to it so it's quite safe to do this we're taking all that off some of these we can take office working but goes back to fit the porch big one in here that way first all these lips have grown in the flower pot after transplanting and you can see in just three years they form these very big thick roots they go wrong and round in the Koch so this this is sister city street a very vigorous so you can see there lots of very fine feeder roots and this is what will sustain the tree even this can come off this one so by doing that they're going to encourage more of the final roots to grow let's stand it up and see which this is you're using this this one but it's too far to the back that potus okay we could try the next fires oh how about we try some other ones just place it in front of it hard to see this would be ideal well that seems to be a bit bigger but I think it would be more comfortable for the tree let's use this one as you know of my views I always feel that in Japan especially the finished bonsai they tend to under plot the trees are far too large for the bonsai pot in which they are planted but since this is still a tree in training I don't mind using slightly larger pots these are the lovely mica pots that we started importing more towards the front because it's mostly roots on the front you look sorry I think slightly more to the right and keep clockwise a bit yeah that's okay [Applause] now that's a grantee that's a really good looking tree beautiful beautiful yeah I think if you can pull it forward a little more take some soil yeah so there's not too much other back yeah certainly up to here up to the limit that may need to cut that yes we still have a lot of decisions to make because this tree most of the root sign are front and very little at the fact the back is what we call like a pigeon breast is nothing there so all the roots are towards the front and to make it sit centrally in the pot we have to take some of these very thick roots off so if you just pull this root on and let's see this this root here if you can pull this this is falling its position in the pot and because there are not a lot of fine roots attached to this long parsnip type root we're going to cut it maybe over here at that point we're going to do that I think this process terrifies a lot of beginners because they think that if you cut too much the tree won't survive but there are still quite a lot of lovely fibrous roots there so I have every confidence that it will take so let's try it in a pot now padmapriya so I think that should be okay we're gonna Maul the soil a bit we're not going to cut any more root at the bottom so we will mount the tree and that should be okay so we put it up and just tie it with some I think three milliwatt two that means to us one two pairs of us so preparing is mica pot and this is my lazy way of doing it people will criticize me instead of using individual pieces I can't be bothered using individual pieces so I'll just laid a large piece of this green mesh at the bottom put two pairs of wires and we're putting back the original soil which is a loam soil long based on so no fancy akadama on the soil I don't think it needs it so okay last one polettis close to the front as possible yeah that's I just see its needs to go slightly to the right couple of inches to the left maybe back off and enjoy keep it in the waterfront okay because of that right hand okay okay tarted can you do it one sing landed [Music] so we're now just putting back some of the original soil which is our nursery loom there is a lot of leaf mold in the soil that's why it's so dark in color leaf mold is quite important many bonsai peers don't talk about leaf mole and other organic matter they just concentrate on the quality of the drainage but leaf mold is important if you're an ordinary gardener you will realize that basic things like leaf blower houmous all play an important role in the health of the plant the reason why our plants are so healthy is because we do that so we've tried to get it as central as possible but because the thick roots are all growing towards the front we will do it in stages and now we're going to just put some sphagnum Moss on the side here because I want some new roots to come we just pile it like a little mountain and then covered with soil so that's going to encourage more new loops to form to get a better nebari lot of people ask about nebari but kneebar is a tedious long process so this is what some of the things we do to encourage new routes on one side that doesn't have much route going so there you are the muscles underneath so that will encourage the roots to grow we just feel the rest of the port with soil and this walk is so natural look at the wall capitals in case you don't know what most couples are this is a I think a little wasp that goes into the old capital inhabits it so this tree has got two three five minutes up is going so natural absolutely natural tree six seven seven all capitals I'm just going to trim the top of that tree because there's too much to the right hand side but because I cannot do it with me holding the camera I'm going to put the camera down to a wire while I trim it and then show it to you again yep so before I sign up I just show you the debris and the debris is these roots that was taken off can you see if there's enough quite a long route so they're mainly tick roots very very thick roots some of them are tech like that so these didn't have very much fibrous root so we haven't taken off much fibrous food but this is what we've taken off that is that large 60 centimeter diameter pot in which it was growing and that is the Audrey nursery soil in which the tree was growing in which as I said she was mainly the garden lawn from our nursery and a lot of leaf mold and how long did this take this didn't take even half an hour to do so here we are I will just ask my colleague now to hold the phone while I just give it a tiny trim at the top I couldn't trim too much because there's a branch at the back which is quite taken by chopping that I created more density there but I will deal with it my colleague firm appears not just doing a little guy wire to pull this branch down this is English oak and this is probably an offspring of some of the large Oaks that are going on our nursery here you have some five or six modules which are supposed to be about two to three hundred year old too much because I did chop it I have to take something sure next it's going to produce such a lot of new shoots that we'll be able to create the perfect shape later on still a bit too much [Music] so I hardly touched there we hope in a fog we have created the trees an English oak might English or I know that the tree needs more cutting off there but next year so I hope you liked it I'm glad we managed to video this because we were just going to do it as part of our routine necessary chore a many chores like this which we do and some of you have asked me to strap a camera on my chest and go around filming it I know I'd love to do it but this not always possible so I hope you enjoyed the creation of this large oh we have lots of our jokes on the nursery they are much more interesting than tightening it once I just show you another little oh this is a tiny little acorn that grew and I dare say this is about maybe possibly three years old because it was cut there and then it was cut there originally it was just a straight tree like that but I decided to put a piece of wire and give it a quirky shape so that's another look so Oaks make very nice bonsai not many people think of using Oaks but they're lovely trees so this end I saw from the same big tree that goes in our nursery car park so thank you very much [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you you

Channel: Herons Bonsai

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Id: B6yCkaP5YPo

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019