Beginning Bonsai: The Gentle Art of Miniature Tree Growing Larry and Shirley Student
This book is one of the best for beginner bonsai growers and is authored by Northeast Bonsai Association charter members. Everything you need from buying your first bonsai to creating your own bonsai landscape is here. There are also important tips on how to find the right bonsai style, how and when to prune or pinch and anticipate potential problems. This is a practical book to have, especially if you’re still unsure about handling bonsai.
The Art of Bonsai: Creation, Care and Enjoyment Yuji Yoshimura with Giovanna Halford
This book is in paperback and discusses the beginnings and nature of bonsai as an ancestral tradition. You get expert advice and lessons from Yoshimura, who travels the world to teach about bonsai and from Halford, a pupil of Yoshimura’s.
Together, they bring together the eastern and western aspects of bonsai growing in an easy-to-read book that is filled with practical answers to the most common bonsai problems. Incidentally, Yoshimura owns the Kofu-en, a bonsai nursery near Tokyo, which is frequented by international admirers.
Bonsai Survival Manual: Tree-by-Tree Guide to Buying, Maintaining and Problem Solving Colin Lewis
Authored by the founder of Bonsai Magazine, this book will give you the most detailed advice on selecting plants for bonsai, assessing bonsai health and yes, ensuring its survival. From buying to shaping, from pruning to repotting to handling common pests and diseases, this book also contains specific information for each bonsai featured in its pages. Also with photographs, a good book to have if you’re a beginner.
Bonsai 101 Essential Tips Harry Tomlinson
The best 101 tips for bonsai growing and care are what you’ll get from this book, authored by one of the leading bonsai instructors in Europe. The tips are practical, easy to understand and can provide the most comprehensive answers to the common (and uncommon) bonsai questions.
Bonsai Landscapes Peter D. Adams If you have enough bonsai experience, then you’re ready to move on to the next level by creating landscapes for your bonsai. The topics are illustrated with photographs and line drawings and the whole book has easy to follow instructions for 13 styles of landscapes. Great if you plan to create miniature worlds in a small pot.
Creating Bonsai Landscapes Su Chin Ee
This book presents bonsai as a lifelong project, with clear advice on selection, planting, positioning and nurturing. The book is illustrated with color photographs that will help you along as you slowly build your bonsai landscape.
www tradebit com Probably one of the best bonsai care e-books you can find on the internet, ‘Bonsai Essential Tips: Bonsai Care Secrets’ has everything you want to know about bonsai, especially if you’re serious about learning its nature. From landscape design to tree training and pruning, this book presents easy step-by-step instructions on bonsai care secrets that only the master bonsai growers know.
www ebookexplorer com This site’s bonsai care book is ‘Bonsai Gardening Secrets’ by Erik Olsen, a longtime bonsai grower and enthusiast. At over 95 pages long, this book presents hands-on bonsai care secrets to creating the most stunningly beautiful bonsai.
The book features easy-to-follow instructions from selecting the right types of trees and plants for bonsai growing and using the right kinds of techniques and styles to maximize your bonsai’s potential. If you still think that you can shape bonsai anyway you liked without thought to its nature, think again. This bonsai care e-book will let you in on the secret why different plants are used for specific bonsai forms.
http://cgi ebay com Get ‘The Bonsai E-book’ for only .99, which explains the basic principles of bonsai, styles, shaping and seasonal care. It also contains practical tips for collecting trees and shrubs in the wild, a great skill to have if you’re planning to find and care for your bonsai yourself.
http://auctions yahoo com How about bidding for a bonsai e-book? ‘The Ultimate Guide to Growing Bonsai’ presents the basic principles of choosing the best styles, including the very popular formal upright, slanting, cascade and semi-cascade. This e-book also contains useful tips for indoor bonsai growing, along with special seasonal bonsai care.
www wsbonsai com Get a free e-book from one of the largest mail order websites for bonsai and bonsai accessories. The site offers a free bonsai e-book that contains basic styles, plant selection, shaping, container choice, seasonal care, propagating and displaying. You have to register as a member, though and click on the ‘add to cart’ button before you can download.
Or, you can just log on to their website and click on the menu for anything you want to know about bonsai – its origins, styles, information about pests, even a few essentials tips on choosing the correct pot for your plant.
www e-bookdirectory com This is a site for e-book downloads of self-help and how-tos, some of which are free. Get Elizabeth Chute’s ‘Art of Bonsai’, one of its freebies. This e-book has got your bonsai fever covered from the simple basics including caring and advanced bonsai techniques like wiring and training. A great bonsai care e-book for beginners.
A Gardener’s Guide to Growing an Awesome Japanese Maple Bonsai – Part II
In my previous article we dealt with the correct fertilizing, watering, sunlight, and humidity requirements for the Japanese maple bonsai. This Part II will deal with pruning your japanese maple, re-potting your japanese maple, root pruning, and also the winter care of your Japanese maple.
Pruning
The Japanese maple bonsai is formed, partly, through careful and thought out pruning. You can prune leaves, branches and roots with additional internode pinching. Autumn is definitely the optimal time of year to prune a Japanese maple due to the fact you’ll find it easier to observe the form of the tree when there are no leaves, but more significantly because the plants bleed heavily if pruned at the begining of spring. Your tree won’t bleed as badly if you should also prune it’s roots, if undertaken in advance. All wounds resulting from pruning the tree’s branches need to be covered with a wound dressing sold at your neighborhood garden store or nursery. If you’re going to prune the tree’s roots and carry out some branch pruning the best time of year will be to do both in the fall.
Fine, delicate branches would definitely be a feature of superior Japanese maple bonsai examples. When you prune your tree to avoid long internodes the effect should be delicate branches. An internode is the space on a branch in between one pair of leaves and the next pair of leaves. To shorten the internode you have to regularly pinch back all the new growth during the growing season. You must pinch back new shoots by pruning them back to just two sets of leaves (internodes). When you pinch off new shoots it results in a shorter internode on the next shoot, and when the internodes are shorter the foliage is always denser.
Leaf Pruning , also called defoliating, is carried out to cause that tree create smaller leaves. It is best to only do this once every couple of years. Leaf pruning results in all of the tree’s leaves being removed, but being very careful to leave the leaf’s stem attached to the branch. This tricks the tree into a “false autumn” and leads to an additional set of leaves being produced that are smaller than the first set of leaves that the tree created. Defoliating really should only be carried out every two years, and you should not defoliate your plant during the same year that the tree has been repotted.
When to Re-Pot Your Japanese Maple
To maintain health and vigor bonsai trees really should be re-potted about once every couple of years. After two years of growth the roots begin to get somewhat overcrowded. An excellent time to re-pot is in the fall, but it can certainly be done in the spring. The primary grounds for re-potting is to give you a chance to prune the trees roots. The effect of root pruning is going to be to stimulate healthy new growth. After removing the tree from its pot the roots ought to be washed with water to make re-potting easier. To avoid future root rot you should be very careful to remove all of the dead and/or injured roots. One of the best potting mixture consists of loam, peat, and coarse sand in a 1:1:1 ratio. For all styles except a cascading style, you need to use a shallow pot. This will compel the roots to spread out which enables it to create a stable root base.
Root Pruning
If at all possible attempt to plan the pruning of your maple’s roots and branches to be done at the same time. That will lessen the strain to the root system in attempting to supply water to the plant’s branches and leaves.
As trees grow older they only need to have their roots pruned about every 2-3 years.
Pruning your trees roots will cause the tree to lose some of its ability to move food and water throughout the rest of the tree. For this reason fall is the best time for you to prune the roots because the tree is slowing down it’s systems of moving water and nutrients through the tree anyway. The least stressful times of the year for this to take place is either in the late fall or in the early spring.
By late fall, the Japanese maple has quit providing it’s leaves with water and temperatures are cooling. Although there is no visible activity in the top portions of the tree, the roots continue to be very active, and will remain so so long as the temperatures stay above 55F in the daytime. If you prune the roots prior to the temperature dropping below 55 degrees the roots will have a chance for some new growth.
Caring for Your Japanese Maple During the Winter
Water the tree completely as the last few leaves drop off in the fall. Move your tree to an area where it will be sheltered from severe winter winds. If not sheltered, the dry winter winds can cause extensive injury to your Japanese maple. The reason is the wind will very quickly dry out the soil in the bonsai pot. Your Japanese maple bonsai doesn’t need to be watered as often through the winter, but that does not mean you don’t need to check on it now and again. When it looks almost totally dry then give it a splash of water, once every week or two. Bonsai plants, since they grow in small pots, can suffer from root freeze very easily. Keep the tree in a cold frame to help keep the soil from freezing and also to protect it from frosts.
Bonsai is fascinating, affordable, and can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Click this link to learn more about growing your own amazing Japanese maple bonsai. Sign up for your FREE 7-part mini-course on how to grow all kinds of miniature bonsai trees. To get started growing your own bonsai trees right away check out the essential “how-to” bonsai book, “Beautiful Bonsai Secrets”. Peace.
Another guide to wiring using a Chinese Juniper bonsai tree.
Caring For Bonsai Trees – What’s There To Know About Root Pruning?
It is widely known that the secret of keeping your bonsai both healthy and miniature is to prune not only its branches but the trunk and roots as well. Pruning is a bit scary to newcomers to the hobby of caring for bonsai trees, as pruning roots damages a plant, restricting its ability to take up water and nutrients while pruning branches must be done carefully to ensure that you end up with your desired shape.
The time when your bonsai will need its roots trimmed is usually between one and five years after you bought it. This time frame is only a guide for caring for bonsai, as a number of factors effect the amount of time a tree takes to become rootbound in its pot; different species of tree have different levels of development and the variables such as the size of the pot, the development of the rootball and the age of the tree all have an influence on the growth of the roots.
When you take the tree out of the pot to inspect it each year, usually in the spring, you will be able to see if the roots need pruning. If you find that the roots form a circular ball around the edge of the pot, it’s time to trim or prune the roots. If the roots of the tree are still contained within the soil, the tree can be returned to the pot and pruning can be left for another year.
There is a tool specially designed to help you expose the roots. This is called a “root hook” but it doesn’t have to be this specific tool. You could try either chopsticks, screwdrivers, or a crochet needle as what you are trying to do is to gently work in between the roots to loosen the soil surrounding them.
While you have got the roots exposed, this is an good time to inspect the roots for early signs of decay and rot. It is vital when caring for bonsai trees, that we remove these dead roots as they will cause trouble in the future if we do not get rid of them.
You need to know how much root to cut off and how to select the right roots to be ‘cut back’ to a degree to keep them healthy and small enough for the pot.
Look for the long large roots that dominate the pot and trim them back. In particular, look at the downward growing roots. These need to be removed as they will eventually begin to ‘lift’ the tree out of the pot.
What we are trying to achieve here is to make way for the smaller feeder roots that will continue to sustain the growth of the tree while keeping the root system small enough to survive in the small pot.
You want the root system to spread laterally, from the trunk base or nebari rather than downwards, like anchors.
It is best to use a sharp knife or shears when cutting the roots and try to cut them with a downward slant. When you do this, there is less chance of water gathering in the exposed part of the newly cut root which in turn lessens the chance of infection setting in.
It is important when caring for bonsai trees that you do not remove more than 30% of the roots in any one year. This is important as you don’t want to reduce the root mass to the stage where it can’t support the tree so, generally aim to only remove about 1/3 of it.
Although there is a lot of information available on caring for bonsai trees, the pruning element still seemed to be rather daunting to me. It was difficult to have the confidence to do actually cut the roots for the first time.
I found that the best thing to do was to find a person experienced in caring for bonsai trees and watch them before I attempted to do it myself. Once I had seen it done, I had the knowledge on what to trim and what to leave and I could get on with the task of pruning my bonsai, confident that I was doing the right thing for my tree.
It is important to get the proper knowledge so that you don’t end up killing your tree. To find out more on caring for bonsai trees bonsai tree care
A practical guide to bonsai trees, this book discusses styles and their applications, tools and materials, aesthetic rules and principles, basic and advanced trimming techniques, tree grafting, and the more than 70 tree species that are appropriate for bonsai. The 20 years of research shared in this book make it as useful for novices as for advanced artists of the craft. Una guía práctica tanto para principantes como para los ya expertos entusiastas del arte de bonsai, este libro discute esti
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