Well this is the Japanese Red Pine. It has been a fun journey with this pine, It still has a way to go but this is the story so far.
So i brought the tree from the Canberra Bonsai exhibition in 2019 and this is how it looked.
The-Start.jpg
I focused on getting the tree established and growing into a bonsai container. It had been growing in that black pot for some time. So I picked up a cheap Chinese pot which cost me like $40 and started the repotting in March 2020. Repotting at that time of year was a little risky but I felt confident I could get it to survive. I didn't really remove alot of roots on the tree, mainly focused on removing some of the bottom. Just to fit into the pot. The aim was to get it to grow in a rectangle pot, once the roots established on the left and right of the pot i could then reduce the soil line without too much risk. I also wired a couple of branches as well.
March-2020 (7).jpg
March-2020 (4).jpg
March-2020 (3).jpg
This is how the tree looked after the repot. Couple weeks later I lost all of the inner needles, I was disappointed as i was hoping to shorten alot of the branches but now they looked long and leggy.
30-March-2020.jpg
The next 12 months is pretty rough for the tree. I had moved to a new place and the bonsai area was very small. So I spent a lot of time moving the tree to spots in the garden that got a lot of sun. The picture below shows it look sad and the branches looking very bare and leggy.
Jan-2021.jpg
Tree is starting to look a little better in April 2021, you can see the candles starting to grow. I really start smashing the fertiliser into the tree now that it's looking better. I've got little baskets of slow release placed on the soil line and its getting liquid fertiliser every two weeks. I had to get an old shopping bag and cover the soil line to stop all the rain from keeping it wet all the time. It was a real pain as it was always wet. As a result it was attacked by small white scale, it took months to get rid of them. I manged to find confidor for sale at a nursery in Canberra, once I used that I haven't had any issues with the scale. Pretty sure i only used it twice on the tree.
April-2021.jpg
So the next big update is September 2021. The tree is really picking up by this time. I can even see little back buds starting to grow too.
Front-SEPT-2021.JPG
Sept-2021.jpg
DSC_7695.JPG
Back-SEPT-2021.JPG
Back-buds-SEPT-2021.JPG
Candles are really pushing by OCT 2021. I never removed any candle but I did remove the little pine cones before they could develop.
Buds-OCT-2021.jpg
So the tree continued to progress really well in 2022. It didn't miss a beat. unfortunately all the pictures I took have been lost for 2022, if you know anything about ransomware then you know its not worth submitting to their demands. I did do some work on the lower branches. I took the branch on the left and bent it back and down. Then I bent the other branch around the back of the tree to fill the space on the right side of the tree. I am happy with the result. It would look so much better if it had a branch growing on the lower right side. I've also removed a bunch of branches I believe I no longer require.
The tree really needs a repot, it has filled that pot really well in the last three years. I was hoping to repot it before the end of this comp but I runout of time. It really needs a nice pot too. I haven't fertilised a lot this growing season as I moved house again. Two weeks after we moved we got a freck hail storm, this knocked off a bunch of back buds which was very disappointing.
Anyway this is the final image of the tree. I think i have a lot to work with going into 2023.
Final.jpg
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. It was a Ficus microcarpa var Hillii.
