Making Horse Chesnut or Conker Trees into Bonsai

today I'm going to talk about a most unlikely subject for bond design for most of you who are familiar with these three trees the Concord tree is one of the most beautiful community trees that are gone in Britain they've got these beautiful flowers and these beautiful leaves in the spring the leaves are very beautiful but during the late summer from all the August recept ember they get blotches on the leaves it makes it unsightly and the contact Reed is one of those favorite trees that school boys pick the little Concord and they play conkers by smashing it into each other's content on string and this is the great big Concord Grantchester and in Cambridge under the spreading chestnut tree so this is the subject of the conquer a very favorite subject on the English countryside there's a lot of history about the conker I like to tell you some of it although you can find it up for yourself in Google the Concord tree the botanical name is Aeschylus Hipparchus Tanen and it originates from Southeast Europe you'll find it all over Southeast Europe up to Greece and a lot of the Mediterranean countries and even up to the Scandinavian countries they have companies I discovered in the internet that the Concord tree only arrived in Britain in the 17th century so it is a fairly recent tree there to the British Isles why is it called a horse chestnut the concrete trees also called a horse chestnut horse meaning hor SC chestnut but it's neither a chestnut or used for feeding horses the I think not rumor but the story has gone wrong that the Concord tree was called a horse chestnut because the Romans used to feed the nuts to the horses to get rid of the cuffs also suffered from but apparently the chestnut is not really edible it can be poisonous and during the Second World War the chestnut was tried as a substitute for protein and carbohydrate but it was really found to be detrimental to health so much for the conker but also it was used in the war time to make acetyl if it is fermented the nuts make acetone now why am I talking about this piece the leaves are as large as a dinner plate look at it let me just take a leaf oh look at that largely it is larger than my head you know it's larger than a dinner pit so can you make a bonsai with a tree with leaves as large as this you would probably say no but let me show you something here these are concord trees i made three years ago by planting the little clunkers in very small pots compare this leaf with the size of those leaves on these conker trees there can you believe it it is almost unbelievable when you see that this is the effect you can get with the Concord tree although these small leaves will get bigger with time you can keep leaf cutting it that means if you cut the leaves off the second cup of leaves get smaller so don't despair this lovely conker tree does make beautiful bonsai but does it flower a lot of people think that if they produce conquer bonsai will it fly it takes years and years but I will show you some that I have as large bonsai which do flower so I lost just two fan every bit I would say 8200 feet tall and they're massive so they got huge absolutely huge we had this on the boundary we have about 10 of these trees all along the boundary and we pick up why are you talking about the conquers every show you have these are countries that are going that's a conquer seed link so that we can make into a bonsai so when they fall on the ground in Germany and we can make one more look at that that's a still got a conk on it so come to tree this one you get it but if you take your time and plant it in small pots they do become nice bonsai okay now let's show you some of the big honkers that I mean think I try it as an experiment and we planted several types of concrete I think these ones with the darker leaves are the red conquer and this one looks like an indian conquer tree Escalus indicus for the indian horse-chestnut but we mixed it in a group so this is a forest it was done just for fun someone may like it but I thought we just try experiments so we're always doing experiments with this is a country that I produce this is at least 30 or 40 years old and as you can see the leaves are already so small look at the leaves size of these leaves so small when you think that this seedlings this seedling the leaves are that big and the ones I showed you on the big tree a bigger than my head like a dinner plate so they do get small so don't despair if you go conquer trees they will produce more leaves and this is what in a flower pot but it's ready to go in a path of one's own accord so this was made from a large country while I'm passing I thought I'd show you this chestnut this horse chestnut is an American chestnut or the Buckeye very rare tree that I grew from a concur and it's again every bit 2530 years old but they all have these beautiful compound leaves but it's not the same as I in this was Chester right I must have about 50 of these large conquer trees they have been developed over the years we saw maybe one or two each year but it's not a tree that everyone likes and not everyone can handle a big tree like that although they're in flowerpots all I need to do is put it into a bonsai at a large bonus iPod so we go here the two varieties you notice the difference in the leaf color the water each other's paler green this is the ordinary conquer which is the Aeschylus tipica steinem with the white flowers and the dark red ones tend to be the red variety which is Aeschylus kanya bre UTI and they have slightly crinkly leaves if you compare the two leaves if I put the two leaves together you see the red one has crinkled edges whereas the green one doesn't have the crinkle leaves and that's an example of the red one besides we've got lots more flow so many people think that it's hard to produce fast but if you persevere you will get the fun look at this one all my congress's are in full flower longer that beautiful red flowers that's a white one the red one is grafted onto the green conquer trees as under stock and hence they flower sooner so all my red ones and lo and behold I can actually show you some white ones but this is probably hybrid varieties got double white flowers double double flowers not the ordinary tree is quite a rare one double white flaws but if you notice these flowering shoots are on stems which are 2 to 3 foot long the only difficulty with trying to get concord trees to bloom when they're grown as bonsai is that the flowering shoots are born on the end of the long stems so if you keep pruning them to keep it compact and short look at this one this is a beautiful tree look at it the whole tree if you get them over this is one of the best ones that I have I'm gonna put it in a bonsai pot because this is going to look really spectacular so this is due for putting interpret I'll show a picture when this is finished but if I keep pruning the shoots they don't get a chance to produce these long shoots and therefore you seldom get the flowers when you go at a spa massage you do get the pass you've got to grow the shoots law so here we are we've got lots of them all over the place it's not only in this area throughout the [Music] [Music] you wish I will show you something that I proved or need two weeks ago so let's walk to another now this is a typical tree that we are going to use for making bonsai look at the trunk it's every bit about six inch across over there and again we've gone this for about 30 years on the nursery really powerful looking tree but look at what I've done there was another shoot about two foot long I cut this off with a saw two weeks ago that's about at least two inches or more in diameter there so I've cut that off because I didn't want the tree to go too tall and it will shoot again and now these long shoots all this from here to here this is almost eighteen inches has gone in the last two weeks so if you don't deal with it it will become longer and longer so what I do I put two even further back then the new shoot over there so all through the year you have to keep rolling them back because the more you prune the more compact that she will get so all these long shoots and just going back this is pruning the shoots you can also leave cut if you don't want the leaves too long or too big you cut the big leaves off and then leave the small leaves and these small leaves will remain on the tree the rest of the year so this is how you make these large conquer trees I will show you another one that I did two weeks ago this one was also very tall and you can see where the cuts were made I cut over here and I cut over here because they were shoot that long so I cut all that off these are the new shoots that are born I'm going to cut back there you can see the Dolman buds day I don't just cut here I cut there I cut there so you can cut really hard back and it would make it bud back more and more so you get very fine dense trigger II so this is just the general principles of creating magnification no secret no secrets about that so that's how you pull hard let's move on to some other ones because this is how we grow them in our favor I'll show you it's another big one that we are growing look at that you must think me a crazy look at the side of that tree the circuitry it's all hollow there I cut it long ago and then all these shoots I will keep cutting and they will produce a new crop of fine leaves you will get lots of dense dense triggering from it so I've just noticed walking around here well this is a red concrete there must have been a red conquer here so these are the routes that have been left in the ground I can pull it out and make another plant but this holidays they sucker they do produce suckers and you can propagate from your a wall look at this sucker here see that's called the sucker I can cut that off and plant it as a root cutting now let's move on now this is still growing in the ground and again look at these shoots again the 18 inch long shoots have all gone in the last two weeks all gone in the last two weeks so in order to keep the tree dense and compact I just go around snip everything and the tree will be nice and compact I grow these in the ground just do that thickness in the jungle so this is going to be a nice little tree look at it beautiful size tree but we have big trees if I walk along again if we go from that side you see red one so remember if I want them to flower this is where I can't go to land because if I go too mad keep cutting the new shoots off then I won't get the flat so there's always a fine balance to be struck if you want floss then don't pull too hard as if you want a compact tree or shape and form a lot of triggering good ramification then you keep pruning it and keep the tree to the height you want so you get some very nice tape on this so this tree jim has got good taper there's so many if it's another one this is a white one so just constantly chiming match this again wrong shoots butene inch to two foot long shoots cut them back so I'm not going to take you into our back greenhouse and show you what we do with the wool conquer seedlings that we just pulled up from the ground and because not everyone can grow these large ones let's concentrate on showing you how to do the small ones can we'll pop these up and all I need to put this a small three inch pot fill with ordinary compost you can even use mud if you wish but when you plant these trees at this time of the year because it's not the dormant season what I do is I cut all the leaves off like this and you must be wondering why I cut the leaves off because if you cut the leaves off there is less demands on the roots that means the roots don't have to supply the tree with water and it helps the roots to establish if you left that leaves it will drain the roots too much and Betsy may not survive so this is a little trick perhaps I can teach you okay now look at this these are conkers little conquers that I picked up three years ago and I've put them in a pot around the perimeter of the pot and I just let them go to see what would happen I didn't want to do anything to it I've just let them go so you can see the growth from here to here is probably the first two years we cut it off there then the next year good and then I cut it off there and then this is the current year's growth so these have all grown now if I wish I can cut it back there I can cut it back there and it will but so it may seem a bit drastic but believe you me they will all grow side branches so I can separate the trees and put them up in the usual ways you see the roots are very compact now if you want it to be more adventurous let me show you how you can wire it into initially the S shape is the traditional shape for most bonsai so if you wanted something which didn't grow dead straight although they do look better than just straight I will use appropriate grid of wire and they are quite flexible having said that I hope I don't snap it now you are you can make an s-shaped tree with that like so and just put it in an order important maybe a part of that size and there you are you have an s-shaped tree so I can wire all these up into a shape trees and this although they are the same age look at this one this is one is much shorter than the other ones and because it's got some group that can cut it up there and I can put that up and make that into a small bonsai so I hope you will take the courage to pluck up these little conker seedlings and make little conker bonsai like these which are so cute so you can have them in all different sizes from very small showing trees or even mommy trees to very very large so I hope you enjoyed this foray into making conquer trees so this is that large conquer tree that was growing in a flower pot which has now been put in a temporary plastic bonsai pot and just to show you the contrast there is one bonsai and there's a lot of bottles on it and the difference could not be more stock but if you look at it look at the size and the leaves of this big cockatoo they are absolutely miniscule look at that they're almost like if you go back a little bit you can see the contrast this is the small bonus oil and the leaves are about the same size is this I can reduce the leaves of this little one even more by cutting these big ones off see so now the tree is even more to scale with the small leaves with the conquer tree being such a vigorous species you can keep doing this throughout the year if you go around and cut all the large leaves off and in fact you can defoliate that means take every single leaf off take every single day form and then the subsequent leaves or the new leaves that follow we'll be even smaller and you can do this up to I think I would say as many as three times I've done it twice so if you remove the leaves twice in the year you will get the third cup of leaves again extremely small so especially if you were exhibiting a tree like this with a flasher or a bonus I showed you want to show the small leaves you go on and just remove all these big leaves and you will have the bonus I'm for sure with just the small leaves of course removing these big leaves has the advantage of letting sunlight into the structure of the tree so you're doing it a benefit and of course by defoliating you will also have to create ramification because my new default is you also take the tip of the shoe top if you come close I will show you most of these have been done but let's take this shoot first and let me remove some of these leaves now that's the growing tip if you take this tip off then it will force it to bud back so take all the tips off and it will force the thing to bud back so I hope you've learned something from this video about the Concord see bonsai because I'm not sure many people love concur and even fewer you will actually be able to show your examples of a decent conker tree so I'm very very proud of this tree I can show the trunk pole by removing this trunk completely but even more so if you home and you see the thickness of the base of the street really thick trunk there and I think if we remove this no harm will be done so there you are big one and small one so this is the conquer bonsai that I worked on this morning and looking at it it may be quite an interesting tree it certainly about four foot high chest high and it's a world balanced tree quite a few low branches but what annoys me is this front branch is almost like a twin trunk if you can see and it spoiled the view of the main trunk so I can't decide what to do with it so I think I will cut it off so that I show more of the trunk I will just get someone to hold the camera and I will show you what I'm going to dude right I'm gonna remove this bonus because I think it hides the beauty of the trunk it's a lovely trunk so I'm gonna cut it off I'm not cutting anything major it's quite a difficult choice to make and even I sometimes difficulties not sure how long to leave it because I the industry I said even if I don't remove it it will help to thicken the trunk act as a sacrificial but how long can I wait you could wait til the cows come home so my world the bullet it's too late anyway so let's see what happens when I remove this moment of truth I like to be dramatic there you are one kicking it off now what do I do with this cut there some people like to seal it but I find that if you don't see that it heals over naturally these are cuts I made years ago and it's sealed extremely nicely it will tell us and seal over but very often if you just let the wood rot it makes a nice hollow to the trunk so that will look even nicer I'm not sure about this upward brush I can always go new ones these new branches are coming if this is out of keeping with the rest of the tree I can always get rid of it and that's the younger ones go so this is the final three I think it is an improvement so let me have a look at it and see see now you can see the trunk much more so the trunk is visible and it looks more tree like than what it did before and if I got jacked the whole time I'll just put Sealand I'll put Ceylon just to make it look better it's for cosmetics running for horticultural purposes this is not balsam that I'm using it's a very nice sealant so at least you can see the trunk and I'm quite happy with the doll and I hope you are too thank you [Music]

Channel: Herons Bonsai

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Keywords: Herons Bonsai, Bonsai, Bonzai, Herons Bonzai, Herons Bonsai Nursery, Bonsai Nursery, Garden Centre, Peter Chan, Peter Chan Bonsai, Outdoor Bonsai, How to care for Bonsai, How to look after bonsai, Indoor Bonzai, Outdoor Bonzai, Evergreen trees, Japanese Garden, Zen Garden, Pruning, Pruning Bonsai, Large Bonsai, Garden Trees, Acer Palmatum, Maple Bonsai, Chinese Elm, Chinese Bonsai, Bonsai for Sale, Horse Chestnut bonsai, Conker tree, How to make bonsai from conker trees

Id: wD4prvYESYM

Length: 28min 35sec (1715 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020