Japanese Maple rebuild

[TimS]

No point faffing about, the airlayer on the primary branch is now set and i'm committed to the new plan!

Not pretty but hopefully it does the job

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[TimS]

I've just been letting this tree run since the workshop, i haven't removed any of the shoots whatsoever, i plan to just leave them for the remainder of summer so come winter i have free choice of any of them for thread grafting. I haven't yet seen any root activity on the airlayer of the lowest branch, but it's not my primary objective anyway.

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In other news the mystery of who the original grower of the tree was has been solved. I asked about the tree and if anyone recognised it or the handwriting of the notes at the BSV club meeting last month, and in less than 5 minutes a name was settled on; a lady who is no longer a member there and in her 90's these days who was active at the time and known for meticulous note taking. A current member later sent me a photo of her handwriting for confirmation and I'm absolutely positive it's the same as the handwriting on the notes of my tree. Nice to have that mystery solved!

[TimS]

Well, it's been a hot minute since i last updated this tree and it's been in the wars in late summer this year when the mother of all caterpillar attacks hit my collection. My fault for not being as on top of checking my trees as i should be, but it was devastatingly bad and i actually lost a very good shohin JM that was pretty much show ready and which I'm still annoyed about. Literally overnight every single leaf was eaten off the shohin maple and it never even leafed out again, just the branches started turning black, so it went to the bin I have also lost my JM 'Katsura' which is one of my favorite cultivars just recently as the new growth it desperately tried to push out through Autumn to recover finally shriveled up. Enough to make you sh*t a nail.

Anyway back to this tree and apparently i suck and mathematics, because I've always referenced it being 60 odd years old, and 3 seconds on the calculator tells me that 2024-1951 (oldest date i have for this tree) = 73 years old so my bad on that The plan had been to thread graft this tree this winter (in July-ish just before bud swell) and i'd let all the shoots extend last summer in preparation for it in the previous post there. The caterpillars had done so much damage however, and set the tree back so badly, that i wasn't confident in the new growth that may come enough to begin thread grafting. Literally they even chewed the buds & bark off the youngest growth so i cut back the long shoots in autumn to what looked to be good growth and hoped for the best. I also moved it out of the blue pot which i needed for another tree and put it into the pink Walsall pot which i actually intended to be the pot for this tree anyway eventually, so it all worked out.

It has started pushing growth for spring which I am very relieved about, especially the apex i was very concerned about despite the photos below suggesting there isn't any growth up there. It is however pushing a lot of dormant bud growth which I'm presuming is a response to be cutting back the extended growth quite late in the season after the caterpillar issues. As a result, it is flushing out very unevenly across the tree, with some shoots extending to 5 pairs of leaves already while others have just pushed out their first pair or two. As a result, I'm kind of leaving it alone rather than trying to even up the vigor right now. I figure it's had a fair bit of stress with everything that it's been through recently and I can balance up the new growth later once it all looks a bit happier.

So this has become a kind of 'rebuild of the rebuild' and set back my timeline a little bit. but i have learned to be more vigilant of pest attacks so swing and roundabouts really.

Photos!

Repotted from the blue into the pink; as you can see it's a reduction in root capacity, but i needed the blue one for another tree as mentioned. I'll just have to be on top of watering.

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old front

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new front

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Today as it is leafing out -> Yes there are new buds at the apex, they're just taking a bit longer to actually break bud compared to lower down.

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The nebari today; the pot measurement is around 38cm x 32cm as a rough guide for how significant the nebari is on this tree.

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So that's pretty much all there is to report on this tree for now. I'll monitor how it goes this year and see if it is ready for thread grafting next year, but who knows i'll just take it as it comes.

[Ryceman3]

Like the pink Walsall pot better I think, both size and colour-wise… so nice choice!
Hopefully everything is all up from here, it’s a lovely maple.

[TimS]

Like the pink Walsall pot better I think, both size and colour-wise… so nice choice!
Hopefully everything is all up from here, it’s a lovely maple.

Thanks mate, yep the pink pot was always purchased with this tree in mind somewhere down the track, not necessarily for now when it's undeveloped but i didn't have any good grow boxes to hand so i used it. I think it will actually look best in spring/ summer with the green foliage against the pink

Fingers crossed for full steam ahead from here, well as full steam as a tree as old as this can manage, and hopefully by summer it will have enough growth again i can be looking at styling/ grafting choices again.

[TimS]

Just stepping in to quickly update that i have now cut back the new growth i had mentioned leaving in the previous post.

The lower branches had leafed out well and were extending exactly as I'd have wanted them to, however the apex and one upper branch had budded but not pushed out beyond that, and it was concerning me that the tree was basically forgoing the weaker apex & branch for the stronger lower branches.

So i went back in today and thinned out a lot of the unnecessary crotch growth and dormant buds that had pushed in the strong areas to hopefully get it motivated to give the apex & one upper branch some more love. If the apex dies off this will become an incredibly long rebuild so I'm desperately hoping to avoid that. Arguably I'd probably end up with a better tree in the end, but that's a decision i'd rather make myself down the line than have it made for me right now.

I also found another 3 or 4 caterpillars on the tree so i think at this point I'm just going to have to daily check it for the buggers, even though there is a systemic in the pot for the tree to uptake that would ideally take care of the problem for me.

Anyway, that's it and I'm endeavoring to be a bit more regular with the updates in future rather than just once or twice a year or when a catastrophe happens.

[Promethius]

Photos or it didn’t happen!

[TimS]

Photos or it didn’t happen!

Hahaha

As always i forget to take a before picture, so this is after i've cut back and thinned out the strongest lower section.

The apex already looks happier about things, the upper branch still lagging a little behind for now

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[Promethius]

Looking good!
I really must get myself a nice big JM sometime. I love growing bigger things from little things, but to have a tree like that is something special.

[TimS]

Looking good!
I really must get myself a nice big JM sometime. I love growing bigger things from little things, but to have a tree like that is something special.

Thank you! This tree is very special to me now with all I went through to save it from death initially, and having the whole written history and now knowing who the original grower is too on top. It's rare to find such old trees, let alone with the history too.

I found that i needed some more advanced material in the end; not necessarily already show quality trees, but trees that had a genuine 10-15 year goal to becoming refined or semi-refined trees. I had so much young material once upon a time, and it made bonsai a chore that i always felt like i wasn't getting anywhere with the young stuff. Now with a few more advanced trees i can actually enjoy the process of doing the younger/ project trees like in the Maple Madness thread.

If the opportunity pops up to buy a nice big JM i say jump on it! They are hard to make genuinely well refined trees with due to their growth habit, and summer leaf scorch right before autumn will break your heart, but i still say it's totally worth it

[TimS]

So it looks like my decision to go in on the tree and thin out/ reduce the stronger lower sections has been successful, the apex now pushing well and looking much happier.

I've thrown some wire on it to start placing the main branches that will form parts of the apex too. The photo below is from what will become the front of the tree

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[TimS]

Finally the last of the lowest primary branch has been removed post a workshop discussion with Scott at Bonsai Matsu

A little further back you will recall i tried to air layer it rather than just waste it, but the air layer wasn't successful, so i cut the layer off and left a stub to die back to the trunk to attempt to avert significant dieback in the trunk. Touch wood for now it seems to have worked, but time will truely tell.

I was intending to let the tree grow this year to do thread grafts next year, i'm still going to let it run, but there's no doubt the tree is really slowing down growth now as it hits old age, so i won't be pushing it to do anything it doesn't want to

Here is the cut site, quite large to scar the trunk with, but better for the future of the tree.

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And as you see from the new front worked on with Scott, the scar is to the rear of the tree and not visible at all.

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[TimS]

Well an unfortunate update but this tree suffered massively through January with a pest attack from mites that i was slow to react to due to some lingering health issues meaning i wasn't as attentive as i should have been. I'm not one to hide failures to present the idea that everything is always perfect with my trees so i'm sharing this to teach others.

I've just about had a gut full of this tree suffering with something every single summer, so i cursed myself for the ball drop when it was looking actually reasonable there prior to Christmas.

I do not advocate defoliating Japanese Maple, but the leaves had already gone crispy, new growth was starting to push so i weighed up risk vs reward and decided to defoliate the entire tree except for the new buds that were pushing. This allowed me to instantly reduce potential hiding spots for the mites and hit it immediately with treatment at the risk of die back or even significant loss of parts of the tree.

It's been living in the garage which has skylights since the defoliation to protect the new shoots such as they are from wind and heat damage, and i've been giving it light fertilising too now the buds are moving

I'm still crossing fingers; it looks like it's certainly unhappy, recovering but not out of the woods yet. I might end up with die back in the apex that I'd worked so long to get set up finally but i'll take that if it means not having the entire tree die on me.

I feel like i've been spinning plates trying to get this tree healthy for the last 6 or so years, and every year plates drop and smash. It's getting mentally draining to be honest but i can only blame myself.

Ah well, what has been done has been done, just wait and see now. It's always been sickly this tree, and while it's been healthy through springs in the past i think something about this tree predisposes it to attacks that aren't hitting anything else in my collection. Whether it's simply age or whatever, it's giving me the red-hot squirts.

Whatever happens to the tree whether it lives or dies i'll post the results.

Early Feb with the buds starting to push post defoliation. Other trees in the background were in the garage for protection on a particularly hot day

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Today, more growth but still weakness in the apex

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[Promethius]

All mine look awful at this time of year regardless. Just trying to get to autumn at this point.

[AndreasM]

All mine look awful at this time of year regardless. Just trying to get to autumn at this point.

i only just got my first maples over summer, but they appear to not like hot sun and wind... might just get them through to autumn though.