Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Trident maple #9

Trident maple, Acer burgerianum, originally form Korea, received in July 2013. Great material, wonderful nebari, elegant moving trunk, much better than what most of these sumo tridents look like, good branching, terrible pot and way too heavy for one person to carry. Today I fixed a few things. The crown was shortened to get rid of this triangular stereotype bonsai look and have a round crown instead of a pointed one on a broadleaved tree. There are still holes in the trunk. I personally have nothing against hollow broadleaved trees. But in this case the holes will close rather soon anyway because of my aggressive feeding and watering scheme.Then the tree was taken out of the container. Everything was full of hard pebbles- this is why it was so heavy. And then the task was to find the right new pot. Fist try with rectangular pot by Derek Aspinall - not bad, but a bit small for the nebari. Then this very nice Chinese oval pot. So now the tree has another eight weeks to grow new roots and establish itself in the new container. It is becoming cooler and more moist every day now. The hot days are over. It will rain more. The tree will be going happy into winter and start right away in spring. I will feed it immediately with everything that's in normal feed. It will be treated like all other trees immediately. For those who have doubts: just wait for eight weeks and then we will see. There is more to bonsai than is in the books.