collecting with Philipp nr. 1

This spruce was for myself

Philipp styling the tall spruce

The spruce is about 40 years old, Philipp is 14 years old. He styled this spruce without help. This will be the main tree of my coming up spruce fores. it will consist of about 50 European spruce and this is the master tree. And Philipp's mam is so proud of her son.

a visit to the big larch with the ax

Just to see how it is doing. Good news: it grows like crazy.

Philipp and spruce

This European spruce, Picea abies, was hanging around since a while and I was not so happy with it. When Philipp arrived two days ago I asked him to bring this to the next level. And so he did.

Philipp styling Scots pine

This is a Scots pine which is about 40 years old. And then there is Philipp who is 14 years old. He has been doing bonsai since 5 years !!! He wired and styled this Scots pine without help.

another RMJ

Now this is the second Rocky Mountain Juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, that has suffered over winter and lost about 50 % of its foliage. But it is still OK. Philipp helped me preparing it. He is painting everything with algea/moss remover.

feeding again

I wrote this mail to a friend and thought this could interest many others. The friend had asked why I would feed a lot more than other folks.



Normal feed mixtures are for normal plants. Normal plants grow in soil which already has nutrients. They just grow and should not grow too much anyway. Like house plants.

Bonsai sit in very well draining substrate and are watered aggressively. The minerals are washed out quickly. Bonsai have to grow MORE than other plants during development phase. 99 % of bonsai are in development phase. They have to grow much to make it possible to style them quickly. They have to grow lots that can be cut off several times during a summer.
I definitely use three times the advised strength of fertilizer. I definitely use regular cheap fertilizer for normal plants. That is 10-10-10 or 20-10-10 or similar, anyway lots of nitrogen. And I feed every ten days to two weeks throughout the whole growing season. Compared to regular bonsai folks I feed about 20 to 60 (sixty) times more.
My trees look as happy as trees can look like. Yes, they grow much stronger than in other gardens and I have to cut off lots and lots. I think this is great because my trees can be developed much faster than others. My trees have no pests because they have very strong immune systems. So far I have not realized any damage from my super-feeding-program.
I feel that in America the following happened: During the past fifteen years the overwhelming majority of bonsai folks have changed from soil to modern substrate with their trees. But they are still applying the old wisdom concerning watering and feeding which was correct with soil. As a result many trees are suffering from drought and are starving. Nobody is telling people that with the new substrate they RADICALLY have to change watering and feeding schemes.

I hope this helps
Walter

Rocky Mountain Juniper coming nicely

This one suffered severely over winter. It is kind of strange that trees form the high Rocky Mountains which have the most adverse kind of climate should not be totally hardy in my garden. Well, after all these years I found they are not. They seem to suffer from sunshine onto their frozen foliage. So I will have to protect them well from sunshine next winter. This one lost about 50 % of its foliage. But as one can see it will still be OK.

trees for Salzburg exhibit

The bonsai club Salzburg, Austria will have a public exhibit this coming weekend. They asked me to provide a couple of trees which should appeal to the broad public. I chose the Rocky Mountain Juniper as it is a good example of a really old collected tree. And it is around or more than 1,000 years old. This appeals to journalists (tv expected) and the broad public although it is not so important.
And then the Japanese maple looks like folks expect a Japanese bonsai to look like.

new Scots pine nr. 2

Finished for the time being. As a tree styled in the naturalistic style should, it has many possible fronts. Now the tree will rest for the summer and we will see whether some branchlets suffered. As you may know this is not a good time to style a pine tree, right when the new growth is half out. But in a professional nursery there is so much to do that I choose to ignore this wisdom and just tray to be careful.
At the end of summer this pine will be under 'offers' I think.