Alpineart's Blog

This was the garden tree used as one of my first bonsai .It was cut down several months ago and allowed to sprout .With a keen eye i watch a mini trunk sprout so i thought i would take a look at this one .It had also began to shoot , so with the help of my Wife i decided to carve the stubs back to improve the movement and taper .Moving around an carrying tools on crutches is like getting a 3 legged horse to win the derby . Karen even set up a camper bed for me to work off .Originally i was going to carve them out and hollow them for features .A close look at the growth and the stubs revealed he bark had already began to heal over , so i decided to carve them into a convex shape to blend in with the trunk once the bark has covered them . With over 60 shoots present , i removed the unwanted ones and began to carve the old stubs off .Using an100mm Angle grinder with 3 tungsten blades attached make for a very good powerful carver .Working my way around the trunk i blended the carved sections in so as to follow the movement of the trunk rather than fight against it .I have reduced the apex by around 100mm to a new shoot leader growing in the opposite direction to continue the flowing movement all the way to the apex .Several weeks ago i severed the 4-5 main stay roots to help with the feeder roots closer to the trunk . They will be shorten again in a month or two in preparation for digging out of the garden ..In the mean time it will grow on under a watch full eye to keep the shoots where they are best suited .With the job done its onto the next trunk .

Cheers Alpineart

Sitting around watching the grass grow most certainly has whiskers on it .I get tired of looking at tree’s in pots and with the body out of action well i have all the time in the world . I decided to style the big Zelkova rather than wait another season . Using stripped 20 amp electrical cable recycled from building renovation jobs done prior to the motorbike accident , with the inner insulation left on i wired the main branches into position ,The center earth wire was utilized by unraveling it and wiring the secondary branches and shoots . Close to 40 meters of wire has been placed on the tree  . I  have never used bonsai wire since i started playing with tree’s finding over head power cable made from aluminium and electrical cable does the job as god as i need . While it may not suit the most fastidious players   its each to his own after all they are only trainers .

I use around 5 km of wire in  a full season so that expense is out of the question . All theses wire if stripped can be annealed to soften them or used as is . With all the wiring done its onto the styling and shaping into an Informal Upright , yes it will have a broom shaped canopy  . The finished height of the trainer is around 700mm with a width of 500mm .. The base at ground level is 90mm however once the new roots have developed it will be raised up in the pot and then it will exceed 110mm .The sacrifice branches will remain on the base for this season, however the will have wired applied to them and some movement placed into the new trunks before they are layered off to begin their life as trainers .

After the new flush of growth begins this will undergo a defoliation of the leaves and possible another later in the growing season .I’m more than happy with the progress of this tree .

Cheer Alpineart

This is what i think is an American water elm .It was collected about 2 years ago from a swamp that had a bulldozer push a fire break through a plantation test plot along with several other area’s .As the blade cut it path through the tree’s these root clumps were shave off the original matted root mass in the swamp . I just happen to locate the track and collect numerous specimens which were brought home and placed into a garden bed .

The first season was extremely hot and most suffered from die back , last year was quite the opposite being very wet . They all  re-sprouted growing to a height of 1-1.5m , this particular clumping tree was 1.2 m and has been entered and used for the  “Ausbonsai Shohin Competition”  for 2011 . I removed it from the garden bed and cleaned of the mud it was collected in

. With a simple selective trim the clump was planted into a bonsai dish 

then a basic wiring job was done and allowed to grow on for a bit over 2 months .I located it after a working bee

here due to a broken leg and major back injury .

With plenty of fresh growth to work with a basic trim was on the cards

,then the main trunks were wired

using coated electrical wire recycled from renovation sites worked on prior to the injuries .With another day passed its onto the fine tuning of the selected foliage and the wiring  off the branches , the last picture is the chosen front

.From there its a simple matter of styling and shaping the whole forest into what i have here

. The finished dimensions are 440mm wide x 250mm deep x 190mm high .This will now be allowed  to grow on before a defoliation of the foliage takes place after the new growth has hardened off  .I hope to manage several defol’s through out the year . Hope you enjoyed this progression .

Cheers Alpineart