Rose Food and Elms

Some bonsai enthusiasts are apparently having remarkable success using Rose 3-N-1 on elms. Rodney reports that he visited a group recently, and they were using Rose 3-N-1 to treat black spot on elms. An incredible reduction in leaf size is a noted (but unintended) benefit of the treatment. My notes indicate using 1 ounce per gallon and drenching the soil once a week for two to three weeks.

Here are some photos from our last meeting.

May 14, 2011 Meeting

Dennis McHugh has been studying with Kenji and Ryan Neil and apparently learning quite a bit about pines. :-)

We prevailed on Dennis to share a few tidbits with the group during our May 14 meeting. Here is what we learned.

Pines

Black -       two seasons of growth

White -       one season of growth
Includes:      Ponderosa, Limber, lodge pole

Black pines grow stronger roots, which is why you often see other pines grafted on black pine roots.

Fertilizing

White pine

Do not fertilize white pine in spring. The time to fertilize white pine will occur around the middle to end
of June/ early July and you will have time to get one fertilizer application in before the really intense
heat of August is of concern. If you fertilize before then the candles and needles on white pines will
excessively elongate. Even though the needles may be pushing out the candles can still gain a lot of
length and the internodes will become excessively long between needle clusters. You will know when
needle elongation and bud elongation have stopped because the sheaths will shed completely once the
needle clusters have fully expanded and hardened off. At this point the needle junction needs no more
protection and the sheath becomes useless. In fall use moderate fertilization.

Black pine

Start fertilizing in February and continue into June, stop when you cut candles. Don't fertilize again until
the new candles harden off (needles are in sheath and hold and color changes to deep green). Then
fertilize once a month depending on how you fertilize. Moderate fertilization in fall and a little in winter.

Dennis may provide another mini-tutorial at our June meeting. Don't miss it!

Open Bonsai Workshop

 

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Warren Hill and Dana Quattlebaum will be at Plant City in March. Go to http://www.plantcitybonsai.com/Events.html for details.



February 2011 Meeting

The Smith Gilbert Bonsai Group held its first meeting of 2011 on February 12. Here is a short summary put together by Rick Dawsey.

We had a wonderful day Saturday.  A lot of folks, beautiful weather, and a great teacher!

Rodney opened with a meeting in which he outlined how he thinks we should proceed.  He plans to open with a brief meeting, then bring in SGG trees for everyone to work on under his direction, and as a group.  It worked great. Everyone sorta self-selected themselves into singles or small groups, and
Rodney circulated, guiding us.
  

Around lunch some of us moved onto our own trees, and some of us worked on SGG trees all day.

The highlight of the day was the bending of a huge old black pine branch. This tree, donated by Bob, is a great old tree whose top was broken out several years ago.  Dennis and Rodney split, wired, raffiaed, and bent a 1" diameter upper branch 90º to vertical, without any breakage or even serious cracking. This process took 3-1/2 hours, and the results show it!

At the end of the day we adjourned to Trackside for a little wine and dinner.

See you next month!

Tropical Overwintering - An Experiment

Overwintering tropicals can be challenging if you don't have a heated greenhouse. I've had this narrow leaf ficus since about 1990.

Here's what the tree looked like a couple of years after I purchased it.

Each year I have to figure out a way to keep it happy when the weather cooled. A few times I've lucked out and found heated greenhouse space. But usually it ended up somewhere in my house (along with a fair number of spider mites) and emerged in the spring looking non-too-happy.

Recently we moved into a townhouse, which will be our temporary home until are new house is completed. My office area includes a bank of windows that allow in a fair amount of light. Although the space is tight, I thought it offered a good spot for this year's overwintering experiment.

As I mentioned, spider mites are often a problem with the indoor overwintering of this tree. Inside humidity levels are usually quite low, especially with the heating system is running constantly. These conditions seem to provide an ideal environment for spider mites.

To head-off this pest invasion, I treated the ficus several times with highly refined horticultural oil. I also used a non-toxic (but expensive) soil drench to clear out the ant colony that had taken up residence in the pot.

To keep humidity around the tree as high as possible, I purchased an washer overflow pan from HD. Hopefully this reservoir of moisture will help to offset the townhouses dry air.

A few years ago I overwintered the ficus at a bonsai nursery that used propagation matts to boost the temperature in the root zone. The ficus responded well to this set up, so I decided to use a similar approach in my own set up.

I purchased a matt that is designed to warm to 10 to 20 degrees above the ambient air temperature. (It has to be elevated above the water in the tray to work properly, however.) I placed a layer of heavy duty foil under the matt to help reflect the heat up to the pot.

Here are a couple of pictures of what this set up looks like.

If you have any ideas for how to improve this setup, let me know.
  

Colin Lewis Announces Bonsai Classified

Colin has started a buy/sell section on his bonsai forum. It's a place where you can post an item or make a purchase. Any comments on this?

Interview with Nick Lenz

I found this to be not only hilarious but also very thought provoking and informative. Here is the link http://bonsaijournal.com/nick-lenz-profile.php#

Rusty