Spring is rapidly approaching at Shibui bonsai nursery. Some of the Chinese elms already have tiny green shoots opening so the trident maples can’t be far away from starting to grow too. That means I need to get on with any jobs that involve root work.

Making new root over rock plantings is one of those jobs, so this week I emptied out a polystyrene box of last year’s trident seedlings to select some candidates for new root over rock plantings.

It is still officially winter here at Shibui Bonsai but a few warmer nights has stimulated some buds to start growing so I’ve been stimulated to get on with the repotting.

Yesterday I root pruned and repotted all the small shohin sized bonsai. I’ve found that these little ones do better if they are repotted every year. The roots grow fast enough to completely fill a tiny pot in just one summer so the following year it becomes difficult for water and air to penetrate into the root zone and the trees start to suffer.

Starting seedlings through holes in metal plates is not the only way to grow good nebari. I also grow many trees just by regular root pruning to control and direct root growth. Here are some photos to show that method.

In the last post I showed a couple of the trident maples I’m currently digging and pruning.

You may have noticed the very horizontal root spread.

These tridents have been developed using the ‘plate’ method.

At Shibui Bonsai I have finished digging the new root over rock trees so it is time to get on with the rest of the trident maples.

here’s one of the tridents I dug up this week.

Winter is a great time of year at Shibui Bonsai. I get to dig up the trees in the grow beds and see what has been achieved over the past year or 2.

The root over rock tridents are the most exciting because I can’t even get a glimpse of the rock/root arrangement until I dig them and unwrap the rock. It is almost like opening Christmas presents. You never know what you’ll find.

In an earlier post I mentioned that there is never just one way to grow bonsai. There are many different approaches that I use. In this post I’m hoping to present several different options for a tree like this. All of the different options would yield good bonsai. There’s never a single ‘right’ way to bonsai.

Another year or 2 should see some trunks with both taper and attractive bends. Maybe they even have some shoots in the right places for branching.

This time the trees are another year older. You may find starter stock like these in the bonsai section of nurseries. If you are intending to grow larger bonsai or really fat trunks your trees should be planted in the ground or large grow pots by now. I’m aiming at smaller sized bonsai with these. At this stage the possibilities start to magnify and different growers will take different routs to produce bonsai from this point.

In the last post we looked at one way to start working with raw seedlings. This time the trees are a year more advanced. Again, the following is just one possible way to move these small trees toward better bonsai.