Hi, everybody,
a few days ago I did some maintenance work on my old Pinus thunbergii Yamadori from Japan. I got this pretty tree some 20 years ago as a birthday present and I still think it is wonderful! She has been through a lot since she arrived in my garden! Like being blown right off the table by an uninspected storm…twice! The second time straight into the pond I then still hat in my garden! She laid several days completely submerged under water before we noticed that she was missing! And then there was the time that she after I had cut off the old needles, dropped all of her new growth! She was completely bold! But she soon made new buds and now some 12 years later is still doing fine! Although I love the small round pot she is in now, I am still planning to repot her next year in a slightly bigger and heavier square pot so that she can grow some more roots and so that she can stand more safely and secure by herself on my tables. Now she is still tight down with wire and a piece of bamboo to the upside-down pot that you can see under need its pot! This pot is there to hold and weigh her down to the table! Before these pictures were made I removed last year’s needles so that more light can reach the inside of the branches to promote back budding! Tomorrow I will remove the wire from all the branches! I will rewire her just before I will repot her next Spring! But I still wanted to show her to you all and I hope you like her just as much as I do?!
Close-up of the beautiful and all-natural deadwood/ Shari and old bare roots/ Neagari. The trunk winds halfway down the foliage you can see and then curls up again to just under the bottom of its pot!
And then now another (I hope) helpful tip! A lot of us use aquarium tubing (see the picture!) to prevent the wire from digging into the bark of the tree when we are bending thick branches with tension wires between the two branches!
But then we have a problem because this tubing can only be used on one branch because if we want to use it around the second branch (see the picture!) to protect it, we can’t run the wire through it and tighten it?!
Well here is the solution! With the help of a concave cutter (see the picture!) cut out a small bite off one side of the tub!
So that you are left with a piece of tube that looks like this (see the picture!)!
Now you can run both ends of the wire through both ends of the tube en run them through the hole you just cut out! Slide the tube down the wire as tightly against the bark as possible and with a tong twist both ends of the wire as tight as necessary to hold the branch/es in position!
Hope this will help you and that you liked the quick view of my little old Pine?!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.
Info: karamottobonsai@hotmail.com
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The Bonsai Blog of Hans van Meer 