Round 2 of the Ebihara Method

[Shibui]

Trees do tend to straighten as they grow. The trunk thickens more on the inside of curves and less on the outsides so the trunk gets slowly straighter as it thickens. The bends you have are significant so the trunk will need to grow much thicker for that bend to disappear but the bend will certainly get less prominent as it grows.

 

[Bonds Guy]

Well I plan to let this grow until it has a 3-4in base. So now I’ll wait

 

[Bonds Guy]

The ebihara was a success The board however need to be replace (as I figured). I was pretty aggressive in pruning. Lemme know what you guys think

Before prunning


After pruning

 

[MrWunderful]

I personally would have cut those thick roots back farther to a secondary. After a couple years those roots will just be big round roots with no taper.

 

[Bonds Guy]

I personally would have cut those thick roots back farther to a secondary. After a couple years those roots will just be big round roots with no taper.

Haha I never knew root taper was a thing. I’ll set a reminder for next year

 

[0soyoung]

I've never thought of root taper being a thing when the objective is a pancake nebari. But, maybe I mistake what this 'Ebihara' thing is about. IMHO, the objective is to have lots of fat roots, not just a few. So when repotting one must cut the biggies to make more biggies --> keep this close skinny ones and shorten the big heavies. By the pix, it looks to me that you are doing the exact opposite.

Nails on the board serve two purposes, IMHO. One is to keep roots directed radially. The other is to make a pre-sized tourniquet so that as the root becomes too thick it gets choked off by the nails (analogous to air pruning with pond baskets / calendars), making it unnecessary to repot so frequently.

 

[MrWunderful]

The other is to make a pre-sized tourniquet so that as the root becomes too thick it gets choked off by the nails (analogous to air pruning with pond baskets / calendars), making it unnecessary to repot so frequently.

I read this often about deciduous nebari development, but havent really seen it to work in real life.

From what i have tried with Aggressive root species, they will swallow a thin wire and compartmentalize it, and just continue to run.

The idea of growing on top a 1/16” hardware cloth to develop a pancake nebari intrigued me, (like a flat collander, directly under the tree?) but I found the roots just swallowed it up and turned into coarse, running roots. I read about it in the book Bonsai Maples and wanted to try it.

 

[Bonds Guy]

I've never thought of root taper being a thing when the objective is a pancake nebari. But, maybe I mistake what this 'Ebihara' thing is about. IMHO, the objective is to have lots of fat roots, not just a few. So when repotting one must cut the biggies to make more biggies --> keep this close skinny ones and shorten the big heavies. By the pix, it looks to me that you are doing the exact opposite.

Nails on the board serve two purposes, IMHO. One is to keep roots directed radially. The other is to make a pre-sized tourniquet so that as the root becomes too thick it gets choked off by the nails (analogous to air pruning with pond baskets / calendars), making it unnecessary to repot so frequently.

So I thought ebihara was fixing a tree to a flat board to get a flat root base. I just wanna get a nice flair and nebari. I don’t think that melting pancake root system will look nice with redwoods

 

[Mikecheck123]

Is Ebihara different than "planting on top of a board"?

 

[0soyoung]

So I thought ebihara was fixing a tree to a flat board to get a flat root base. I just wanna get a nice flair and nebari.

Is Ebihara different than "planting on top of a board"?

I don't have enough historical perspective but wager that people had been planting trees in shallow boxes/pots long before Ebihara.

Pancake nebari is one of Ebihara's "things". The other is relocating developed branches, though it is aside from the line of this thread.

 

[leatherback]

Is Ebihara different than "planting on top of a board"?

Yes. It aims at more than just horizontal roots. The way I interret it, it is about creating loads of evenly distributed roots, filling all the holes in the nebari, and enhancing a spreading rootbase. This eventually will lead to the pancake nebari, but you can of course stop pushing for this once you have a flare which is say 2 or 3 times to the trunk. Then you just have a very solid flaring base.

But.. I have just started using it this repotting season. Have been growing seedlings over pieces of schale to keep the roots spreading instead of diving with pleasing results. To me that is different, but we will see in a few years.

 

[Bonds Guy]

So this one really took off the passed 2 years. Unfortunately, I don’t have time today to repot but I wanted to give you guys a sneak peak of what to come. Hopefully tomorrow is as nice as today, because as u see the leaves are coming out and I wanna get this one in the ground to thicken some more.



I didn’t have my measuring tape but I used the measure app on iPhone and it was 2 and 1/2 inches in girth where nebari meets soil

 

[Bonds Guy]

It was a hassle getting it out that pot but I got it done. Lots of big chunky roots had to be cutback.



All those chunky roots