The Importance of developing good Nebari on Bonsai.

[craigw60]

I grow around 300 trees in various stages of development Jamie, the vast majority of the plants I produce are not bonsai related. I also charge way more than $30.00 an hour for my work in other peoples gardens.
We are very happy to see you posting here Gary and judging from your blog you grow very fine trees, I am sure most Australian bonsai people would be very happy to pay for your stock. Costs involved with on going potting and training would as Jarrod has stated be there regardless of the quality of the root work.
Brett if you leave your trees in the ground for 5 years roots untouched you will end up with very long thick roots, you will also find the weaker roots will die back and the big strong ones take over so the spread will be less even. I lift my trees every year and root prune quite hard I would say a maximum of 2 years without pruning.
Craigw

[shibui]

Agreed, Craigw. 5 years in the ground might achieve a thick trunk but usually poor taper and a few thick roots. Few people would leave the top unpruned for so long, why leave the roots?
This year we dug some that had been left for 3 years and most had a couple of very thick roots rather than a nice even spread. I usually aim for 2 years at a time as I find that most trees don't grow much in the first year under my conditions.

[Handy Mick]

I think as a sole trader, i.e nursery owners, need to earn whatever $p.h. to survive no matter what you do, trim the roots or not, we all need to earn so much just to survive and to continue trading.
It all comes down to, how hard do you work, if a bonsai nursery is willing to put the time in to get great results, well they will get the work and the income. If it is found that someone is selling above their product, well, we will find out. (loose lips sink ships)

Mick

[Bretts]

Yes a tree will have better roots if you pull it up out of the ground and trim the roots every two years but it also costs more money in labour.
If you want to do several root prunes to a tree before it goes in the ground instead of just the one as it goes in the ground this will also cost more in material time and labour.

Again I am only guessing but we get trees here in NSW that I figure are cuttings that have been established and then roots given a work over before going in the ground. Left to grow with only top pruning for several years and then sold for $35-$50 Which I think is a bargain. Maybe even cheaper than a normal nursery for a 75mm thick trunk. Add one lift and root prune to the labour and I would understand that price almost doubling.
How much do you sell your 75mm field grown trees for Craig?

This is not to say that I would not pay the extra money for that better prepared stock but I can understand a bonsai nursery not doing that (especially in the past years) as most punters will go for the cheaper stock.

But if a bonsai nursery was planting trees out in the ground with pot tangled roots then yes that is a different story all together and possible just very slack.

[craigw60]

Trunk thickness is not really a factor I would charge for. I am more interested in the overall quality of the trunk starting with the nebari, then taper, may be movement. The prices I ask for my trees are entirely based on the quality of the trunk and root base so they would vary a lot from tree to tree. Thick trunks with very little taper and a large scar at the top are not my aim.
To grow very thick trunks with great taper would be a 20 year project, I am in my 50s now so they are not really viable but if I was in my 20s or 30s I would be aiming for those trees for sure, a much better project than mucking around with skinny little junipers.
Craigw

[Jamie]

this is a good topic and is going much better than the last time!

I have to agree with craig in the fact that growing in the ground and leaving it for to long without some form of trunk chopping can make things rather stagnant. straight trunk, no taper, no movement. really its just a tree that you would put in your back yard for a shade tree.
to lift the tree every 1-2 years and give it the work is definately what I would call ground growing bonsai. the thing is doing these things will slow development, but will also give a higher quality product. I still beleive that root work should be done but it will require a high price. I wouldnt expect anything less with labour and time going into the tree.

with what has been said, if I went to a nursery with a set amount of money and a idea in what I wanted and was offered two choices, both had been ground grown, both have had the same years. one has been lifted, root pruned and the top chopped and allowed to develop. and the other one had been left without any work done to it but was possibly double to triple the size of the other one that had the work. I know which one I would pick. I would be happy to pay that extra for the worked tree then get the un worked tree and possibly a couple of other smaller ones for the same price as the worked tree. I know what i would do.

Im not saying these things cant be fixed, they can. but craig and shibui and others I am now understanding what you are saying.

the unworked tree's will need a lot more time and development. unfortunatly some places do this, ground grow for several years and leave a hard tree to work with. then sell them for a similar price for something that is really not to fair, and is just a garden tree as some have said.

some one mentioned juni (craig i think) I tend to stay well clear of these staked juni that are all over the joint these days, the more I look at them as "pre bonsai, or untrained stock I find it hard as a lot of the top a lot of trunk isnt useable apart from taking airlayers to bring the heights down as the taper in these trunks just arent really there and to develop the taper in is as craig said is going to take a huge amount of time. so in reality these trees unless used in a literati style a lot of the tree is possibly wasted unless air layering is done.

just my

[craigw60]

Jamie I have trees in my collection developed from nursery stock and not grown on that are 30 years old and they still look like trees developed from old nursery stock. Its so much better to put the initial years into growing trees on developing the trunk and root base before you even think about starting to style them. Since I started growing bonsai I have seen people stripping down junipers and putting them straight into bonsai pots, treating them like that it will take 50 years for them to develop into good trees.
Craigw

[Andrew E]

I think one of the things that people are missing is that you need thousands of plants to run a bonsai nursery. Running a backyard nursery with a couple of hundred trees won't see you making much of a living, just a sideline income. The reason we only have a couple of bigger bonsai nurseries ( I say bigger as compared to the big plant nurseries they're tiny) is because the effort involved and the return don't match up. Smaller nurseries which tend to have better quality as there are fewer trees just can't survive, as they just don't sell enough. There aren't enough bonsaiists to support many nurseries so we end up with only a few.
A bonsai nursery needs not only bonsai but stock to sell, as well as stock for the future. I had close to 12500 plants at one stage as well as 1500+ bonsai. Plants sell, die, etc and you need to have back up stock to sell. I know I root pruned everything I potted but I didn't necessarily pay close attention to every tree, theres not enough time. I chopped the obvious wrong roots and tried to get a nice spread then straight into the soil. If a tree had potential I may spend more time on it but that would increase its price, both the fact of its potential but also the fact that I spent more time on it. And you can't spend all your time on the plants as the rest of the business needs attention too.
I always had the opinion that the purchaser of the tree needed to have the final say in what is cut off or kept. Options for the purchaser is very important in selling stock trees and certain cuts to a tree can establish a style or lean the tree towards one. This can put some people off or entice others to purchase it. But what ever work is done to the tree it must be charged. Thats business.
Great thread
cheers

[Guy]

It's the old supply and demand --we simply don't have the population as compared to Europe , America and Asia to carry lots of high end nurseries-(on the internet we really only see the best that these have to offer)- just imagine the number of poor quality bonsai produced in these areas that we never get to see-all we can do is chose what we can afford and make the best of it-if you buy rubbish then use it to practice- or buy more rubbish and make a group planting

[craigw60]

In my nursery I grow thousands of plants the bonsai represent just a fraction of my stock, i propagate and grow on 90% of the plants I sell, everything takes time and at this time of year the workload is pretty heavy but I make time to do certain tasks in certain seasons. Every nursery has its frantic seasons but the jobs have to be done and "not enough time" doesn't come into it. If the trees are properly trained from their very inception then the root pruning is a pretty quick job and one would hope they are potted regularly to prevent them becoming too potbound so whats an extra 5 min with the root cutters
Its true that most people enjoy working on the trees they buy and making some design alterations but getting the roots right is fundamental, all the trees I grow will need work on the root systems in terms of refinement but the basics have been done and this is I believe how pre-bonsai should be presented. I make no decisions with regards to branch selection or placement thats the new owners job.
I believe that any tree sold as advanced pre-bonsai should be able to be potted into a bonsai pot without any major root work
Craigw

[Jarrod]

And you can't spend all your time on the plants as the rest of the business needs attention too.

Hi Andrew,

Can you please go into more details about what other parts of the business there were for you? I am interested to know what you thought your core business was and what you wanted to achieve in your business. I will hopefully have a small/home nursery in the future and I would like to know what your experiences were.

Thanks,
Jarrod