Growing trees in the ground or larger pots is a way to increase the trunk size quickly but as the trunk is growing, so are the roots underneath. At some stage the roots will need to fit into a bonsai pot so how can you tame those wayward roots? Continue reading
Category Archives: repotting
natives for bonsai
Late Spring and Summer is when I prune and re-pot most of my native bonsai at Shibui Bonsai. Continue reading
Starting a new generation of bonsai
Spring is propagation time at Shibui Bonsai. I try to start plenty of new trees every year to allow for plenty of choice for you the customer. It can take quite a few years to achieve a good bonsai but we need to always have new trees coming through to keep up supply. Continue reading
re-potting Callistemon ‘waterswept’
December is summer in Australia so here at Shibui Bonsai it is time to re-pot some of my native bonsai and potensai.
I started the day with my Callistemon ‘ waterswept’ bonsai. This one was slip potted into the current pot a few years ago but has not had a proper re-pot for quite a few years. It has finished flowering so it was time to stop procrastinating and get on with it.
Here is the tree before. The design is based on trees that grow in the bed of the nearby Ovens river with roots clambering over the rocks in midstream and all the growth battered downstream by frequent floods.
This one only produced a few flowers at the top of the tree this year. All the flowers have finished so it is a good time to re-pot.
banksia proteoid roots
Summer is also time for repotting many of our Australian native plants. I was repotting some banksias and came across this interesting phenomenon.
We hear so much about Australian Native plants being allergic to phosphorus and needing very careful fertilising. the truth, however, is that only a very few Aussie natives are sensitive to phosphorus and there are also a few plants from other parts of te world that are phosphate intolerant as well. I give most of my Australian natives the same fertiliser that I use on the exotics and they grow very well on it.
The exception is Banksias and here is the reason
That white patch that looks like fungus is actually a patch of specialised roots called proteoid roots that have evolved in some of the proteacea plants to help them extract phosphorus from the nutrient poor soils they tend to live in.
Black pine cuttings – update
There were roots out the bottom of some of the Japanese black pine cutting pots so it was time to check on progress. Continue reading
Black pine seedlings
Today I pricked out the last of this year’s black pine seedlings. Correct treatment of the roots at this early stage pays dividends later with better rootsystems to give superior nebari on your bonsai. These photos show my methods. Continue reading
Is it too late to repot my…..?
This question is regularly asked by beginners in bonsai. The answer given is usually along the lines of ‘repotting deciduous species must be done as the buds swell and before the leaves open.’
For many years I have stuck with this repotting rule but recently have started to question its validity. Sure it works but is it entirely accurate? Some new information has indicated that this rule may be far more prescriptive than necessary. Continue reading