Fonz
Chumono
That's gonna be a killer pine!
Arakawa JBP
- Thread starter Brian Van Fleet
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- bvf jbp progression
DirkvanDreven
Shohin
What a great tree is this! I really love the base.
leatherback
The Treedeemer
Can you say "pretty"!?
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
Night shot from last night. The graft is promising so far. Pot shopping for a better fit for next spring, and the plan is to correct the planting angle and depth.
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
After needle-pulling, pruning and a little wiring. still has a long way to go, but another couple years of building density should help the apex. The graft was successful, so I should be able to reduce that first right branch more over time back to the graft. I’ll also repot it in the spring to the correct front, and get it into a slightly smaller pot.
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
Last year, I had to do an aggressive repotting to get rid of some rotting roots in old field soil under the base of the tree, and ended up bare-rooting and nearly reducing it to a cutting. I thought there would be a 50-50 chance it would survive, but the buds were pushing and the timing was right. It did fine, but I went pretty easy on it last year.
Since it recovered well, I was able to do a little wiring on primary and secondary branches. The next 12 months should show some real progress, especially with summer candle-cutting and very careful bud selection. This variety tends to throw tons of buds on super short internodes. Not a bad characteristic for bonsai, but requires attention during the growing season.
The first right branch is a graft, and has gained enough strength to be wired into the design.
Since it recovered well, I was able to do a little wiring on primary and secondary branches. The next 12 months should show some real progress, especially with summer candle-cutting and very careful bud selection. This variety tends to throw tons of buds on super short internodes. Not a bad characteristic for bonsai, but requires attention during the growing season.
The first right branch is a graft, and has gained enough strength to be wired into the design.
Maiden69
Masterpiece
That could have been a mayor set back, but that pine took it like a champ! Brian, do you have Mirai live account? He have a video "Repotting Fundamentals" of a shore pine that he had to do the same thing, but he catch it on time. He suggested in that video to not do a half (or pie style) bare rooting of pines, but to reduce the perimeter as much as possible depending on the health of the tree, and then clean the area underneath the tree (he called it the shin) on the next repot (2-3 years). What do you think about that option?
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
That’s similar to what I do with established trees in good soil. I’m not a Mirai subscriber, so I haven’t seen any of his videos. I’m pleased with the health of this pine now, and am confident the roots will be in good condition going forward. That will allow me to push a bit more on the design.
Darth Masiah
Chumono
more proof you can do aggressive root work on a pine that has a full head of steam.
Ryan is good, but he’s not always “right”. BVF has a lot of experience with JBP in general, and with this one in particular. He is (was) in the best position to know if his tree was strong enough to withstand the repot.
Remember... Ryan’s experience with JBP in Japan all were in Japanese soil. They use akadama, lava, and their river sand. So they are in “good soil” from the beginning. Not so in this country. We have to get rid of the organic soil in the rootballs of trees in order to avoid root rot.
Once you get rid of all the bad soil, then you never have to do any bare rooting.
Remember, with bonsai, everything “depends” on the situation. If you have a rootball with organic matter causing root rot, then yes, you might have to do some degree of barerooting to assure the future health of your tree. If it’s already in good soil, you don’t.
So... take what you see in Ryan’s videos, or anyone’s videos, with a grain of salt.
In general, I try to avoid doing a complete bare rooting of a pine. Sometimes I have to. It depends. I think BVF did an excellent job with this pine, and made the right decision to bare root it to get it in good soil.
Maiden69
Masterpiece
Adair, I agree with your statements. The reason I asked BVF was to have his opinion on the technique used by Ryan, as it was close to the same thing he did on this pine. The video I suggested from Ryan was on a Shore pine, that I think was either collected or from Telperion farm, and was yellowing the needles in different places on the tree. The problem was decomposed organic soil that remained under the tree from the first report into a bonsai container. Pretty much the same thing that happen to this arakawa.
This is one of the reasons that I think, even though I am developing the few pines that I have, I will only use akadama instead of any organic material in addition to pumice and lava.
Telperion used grow bags in the ground. Unfortunately, the soil they put IN the grow bags was of poor quality! They used pumice (which is good!) and some kind of bark (which is bad! Very bad!)
When I got my Telperion tree, it was in an Anderson flat, and all I could see was black pumice. I (wrongly) assumed the tree was totally in pumice. (Which would have been great!)
Unfortunately, I didn’t know it was in old, rotting bark, and I didn’t repot it for a couple years. When I did, I found to my dismay that I had a lot of black, dead and rotting roots under the base of my tree!
I did a half bare root repot.
Two years later, I did the other half.
Fortunately, I saved my tree!
So... while I think Telperion did a good job using the root bags, if they had used either straight pumice or a mix of pumice and lava, their trees would have been even better! It is essential to get that old rotting bark out of the core of the root ball.
When I got my Telperion tree, it was in an Anderson flat, and all I could see was black pumice. I (wrongly) assumed the tree was totally in pumice. (Which would have been great!)
Unfortunately, I didn’t know it was in old, rotting bark, and I didn’t repot it for a couple years. When I did, I found to my dismay that I had a lot of black, dead and rotting roots under the base of my tree!
I did a half bare root repot.
Two years later, I did the other half.
Fortunately, I saved my tree!
So... while I think Telperion did a good job using the root bags, if they had used either straight pumice or a mix of pumice and lava, their trees would have been even better! It is essential to get that old rotting bark out of the core of the root ball.
Maiden69
Masterpiece
That got me thinking... I'm thinking about building a raise bed (4x8) in the near future and almost everything that I read recommends some kind of pine or fir bark, peat, and pumice or perlite. Going with your statement, will it work the same if I use a root bag sized appropriately to the tree with say only pumice and plant it in the raise bed, as if I planted the tree directly into the organic media? The soil in my house sucks... I was there when they break ground and it is hard yellow color soil full of rocks and gravel. They added around 3" of clay (they called it landscapers mix) for the grass to stick to, so I know that going straight into the soil ain't going to help me a bit.
I am giving pond baskets a try this year, but it gets hot where I am and very windy, so I think I will be building my own wooden boxes to move my trees next season to prevent them from drying from the heat and the high winds in the hill country.
Use a mix of lava and pumice. The purpose of the root bags is to allow the roots to stay cooler in the hot summer, and moisture will infiltrate into the bag, keeping the soil at a more uniform temperature and degree of dampness, while allowing the roots to grow freely, and somewhat constructing them so they don’t get so huge you have to take a chainsaw to cut them.
In Japan, when they grow on the ground, they dig out a trench all around the tree every year. Severing all the heavy roots. The root bag approach would make it easier.
Here is a picture of a grow bed at Telperion:
The trees are in grow bags. You can’t really see them. They have weed control cloth on the soil in between the rows of trees. It’s important not to have weeds. Weeds will shade out the low branches, and those are the ones that are important to keep!
0soyoung
Imperial Masterpiece
I think a key point is having the roots locked to the ground so that the wind tossing those whips to and fro induces taper to the trunk close to the ground. If the trees were free to just blow over (as would a tree in a pot or basket), no such taper gets induced. If one were to use the same kind of root bags as used by @cmeg1 root ramification close to the trunk would be induced at the same time.
just.wing.it
Deadwood Head
@Brian Van Fleet
Killer tree, I dig it.
I have 2 questions.
When was the last repotting?
How long do you expect to leave it before the next repotting?
Killer tree, I dig it.
I have 2 questions.
When was the last repotting?
How long do you expect to leave it before the next repotting?
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
I’ll try to get one tomorrow. It’s well-established and though I’m still careful handling it, it’s not coming out.
Brian Van Fleet
Pretty Fly for a Bonsai Guy
Thanks. That last repot was done in March, 2020. Unless I want to swap pots, it should not need to be repotted until ‘23 or ‘24.
roberthu
Chumono
This is so true. I learned my lesson this year too. I had a JBP grown in the yard for 7 years and when I dig it out last year, I was afraid to touch the center root ball because “you should never bare root a pine”. What I found later was it was extremely hard to water that JBP. Water could never flow down. So a few weeks ago I pulled the tree out of the pot and found that the red clay in the center was bone dry. It had rained for several days prior and that center part was still dry like concrete. I raked everything out and planted the tree in Boon mix. So far I haven’t seen any bad sign but time will tell.
