Why I Oughta...

For the past few years (planted in 2019), we've had a creeping/crawling Juniper shrub planted in a patio container out back.  I put it in this container and attempted to prune it a little bit and wire it up when I was focused on trying my hand at bonsai .   Two years later (Spring of 2021), I was seeing some wire damage and (for now) abandoned the project .  My thought was....let this thing grow a bit more, then let's revisit it for pruning and shaping as it is more mature.   On a recent walk in the backyard, I came across (or...really...'noticed') this shrub in the container and I was (temporarily) alarmed.  Look at it in the photo below.  It is maroon-ish/green.  Or, I suppose, one could view it as greenish/maroon-ish/brown-ish/grey-ish?  Is that a color? (That is a lot of 'ishes'.) I snapped that photo and then went looking back in the garden diary here.  I found this post from two years ago - December of 2020 .  Good news:  it was (then) the same color as to

I had four bonsai-related items on my 2021 to-do list for the yard and garden .  One of them - Number 10 -  was to buy some pre-bonsai materials that I can purchase as smaller stock (and thus, lower prices) to use in later seasons.  Number 10 on the list reads: That idea of buying some pre-bonsai is something that I've done before by buying nursery stock and sticking it directly in the ground.  The guys at Bonsai Empire have a page up about pre-bonsai where they give you some tips on how to do it; including what to kind of look for when buying nursery stock.  I currently have three pre-bonsai junipers that I've picked up over the years - two in the ground and one in a larger container .  My plan for this year - #8 on the list - is to 'work' those three this season.  That means digging them up, pruning them a bit and likely sticking them back in the ground to overwinter in their pots at the end of the season.   But, this post isn't about those old pre-bonsai tre

 Back in October of 2020, I posted some photos showing a juniper cultivar that I have kept in a large patio container for the past few seasons and talked about how I had wrapped some wire around some of the limbs as I began to learn how to bonsai the past few seasons.  I overwintered this container both inside the screened porch and then, due to A LOT of fungus gnats, ended up moving it back outside. This is the same juniper that I posted snow-covered back in February that really got my brain going on bonsai for 2021, so when the snow melted, I immediately went and looked at the state of the tree.  And, it turns out, the wire that I wrapped on the tree (either in 2020 or 2019) was on far too long and too tight.  Because there's quite a bit of wire damage.  You can see it below, but it was on their so long that it was difficult to remove as the tree began to grow AROUND the wire. This is a tree that I'll move work pretty hard this year ( it is #2 on my 2021 Bonsai to-do list  a

Back in October of this year, I posted a photo of the new growth on this unknown conifer that is in a large container on our patio and remarked at how good it was doing this growing season .  I had overwintered this in our screened porch last year - which was OPEN to the elements, but it was protected from some of the harsher aspects of Winter including a little bit of the wind being cut down and a roof over the top of it.   I mentioned that I was going to bring this one in this season , too.  But, I was just outside and saw that I had forgotten to bring this one in and it now looks like this:  almost maroon-ish in color.   What is going on?  Drying out?  Sun scald?  Winter damage?  Seems a little early, doesn't it?   I'm going to bring this in to the porch TODAY and give it a little water to see how it responds.  

Yesterday, I posted a photo and talked about this 'unknown Juniper' that is in a large container on our patio.  In that post, I mentioned the other two Junipers that I have in the ground - Youngstown and Chinese.  I bought them as small $5 nursery stock from Home Depot and at kept them around the patio all season while I tried (it was hard) to NOT prune them too much.  My goal is to work them into tree-form as I learn (just a little bit) about bonsai.   I've documented my "bonsai journey" over the past few years on the blog and you can find those posts here .  I've learned (and killed) from one tree and have tried to be patient.   At the end of the season, I read that it is smart to dig them into the ground to overwinter them in their containers (people do this with all sorts of bonsai pots).  So, that's what I did:  dug up a couple of holes, stuck the junipers - pots and all - directly in the ground, covered them and tried to mulch them in with leaves.

 On our back patio, we have a container with a small conifer that I'm not sure the cultivar.  I bought it last year and worked on it a little bit - as there is some wire on parts of it - but I'm not sure which kind of juniper it really is at this point.  I have two junipers - Youngstown and Chinese - that I have in containers that I planted in the ground .  My plan is to dig them up next Spring and give them another haircut/style.  My Bonsai journey has been one of buying some nursery stock initially and KILLING my first one.  In a matter of months.  Due to over-pruning it, I think.  As a result of that experience, I've kinda taken the 'lazy bonsai' route on these - by giving them an initial wiring up and then planting them (in their containers to restrict the roots) in the ground (or in this case in a larger container).  By next year, all three will hopefully able to handle a little bit of pruning. Here is the unknown Juniper that has grown nicely in the container

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the Youngstown Juniper that I bought at Home Depot to work into a bonsai tree and mentioned that I also picked up another tree.  Here's that tree:  A Chinese Juniper 'Pfitzeriana Aurea'.  Same deal:  from Home Depot in Darien in a #1 pot that cost less than $10.  Above you can see the tree that includes some gold-ish needles in the new growth.  Below, you can see a close-up of the tag. This will be a tree that I'll work on in a similar fashion to the Youngstown Juniper.  I'm aware that since these things are so small that the trunks are very thin - and it is going to take a LONG time to work this into anything substantial.  But...it is a cheap way for me to work on some pruning techniques, right? This will make three nursery stock trees that I've started.  I also have identified a tree on our property - it is a cut-down of one of the American Elms that the U of I Master Gardener identified - that I am going to try to ha

Back on May 7th of this year, I shared a couple of photos and talked about my initial excitement of giving the art of bonsai a shot with a piece of nursery stock that I picked up at Home Depot for $10 .  It is a Cypress Hinoki and had one large(ish) trunk that seemed to have decent trunk taper, very little reverse taper and priced so cheaply that if I killed the poor thing, I wouldn't be that upset. In that initial post, I talked about how I was following some of the Mirai Bonsai Basics video directions and started with the roots and trunk.  More recently, I moved on to the next few steps and began to try to prune the Cypress into a bonsai of sorts. I know that every article you read talks about how you aren't supposed to prune more than 30% of the tree at any one time and that pruning an evergreen like this Cypress is best done in the late fall when it the tree is heading to dormancy.  But, I couldn't, umm, help myself.  I dove right in. I began by pruning off

With my past few trips to Japan for work, I've increasingly become interested in Japanese-style gardening and the art of bonsai.  I've been thinking about the large-scale conifers that I saw across Tokyo like this one and these pines in the outer gardens of the Imperial Palace  and thinking about how I can bring something like *that* to our yard as we grow our conifer collection. At the same time, my visit to the Morimae Bonsai Shop in Ginza along with subscribing to a few bonsai YouTube channels like Heron's Bonsai out of London  and Mirai Bonsai's Beginner Series has sparked my interest in the art of bonsai. This video that talks about nursery stock material selection from Mirai Bonsai pushed me to head to Home Depot to see if I could find something I could buy that was inexpensive to try my hand at shaping a small tree. My bonsai journey starts with this Cypress Hinoki that you see in the photo above.  Bought at Home Depot for $9.98, this Cypress is going