Hey everybody. I just want to let you know that whenever I filmed the
repotting and the pruning of this video you're about to watch,
the wind was really bad. I've been able to isolate the wind out of the audio
but the vocal suffers a little bit because of it. Just be patient you'll understand it. If you need
to check out the subtitles, I've made sure that those are good to go, too. So I hope you enjoy it.
Hello everybody and welcome back to Appalachian Bonsai. It has been a long time for sure,
and it might be another while before I can get back to another video. But it's spring.
It's March 7th 2022 here in southwestern Virginia, and I am working on this Lonicera m....
it's an Amur honeysuckle. Lonicera maackii. That's my guess. I don't speak Latin. Anyway this is a
very vigorous grower, which means that its roots are prolific, which also makes it a very invasive
species. It's definitely an invasive species here in Virginia and throughout a lot of North America.
It is not native. I'm okay with, you know, chopping this thing down and if it dies, it
dies. I'd hate to do it because I have spent some time with it. This tree in particular needs to get
repotted every year. That's what we're going to do today. I'm also going to prune up some of these
branches which are starting to bud out a little bit. We have little green buds here and there.
You may remember this tree from a video I did a few years ago where I collected it.
It was a much taller tree, and what I didn't know at the time of collection is that parts of it were
alive and parts of it were dead. Let's see, yeah. You might be able to best see that this side has
a live vein, very strong. It comes up to this top point. This side has also got a strong vein coming
up here, but everything in the middle is dead. It's most pronounced over here. That's all dead.
Nature has done a little bit of work by worming it out with termites and
they have since mostly gone away. I've done a little bit of carving on it just to clean it up.
I'm not gonna do a whole lot of carving on it this year. Time
is of the essence for so many things, including videos, but also including working on some trees.
I can get to that another day. In the meantime let's get to repotting this.
I'm going to start by removing the wires that hold the tree in here by cutting those.
I'm also going to WHOA!
remove that. You should be able to see that there is some crazy root growth going on here. grab
my little thing here. This is filled with roots. That's from one season, just one season.
It's just a big pancake. Let me shake some of this top soil off.
You can see the whole thing is just one big root pad. Pretty incredible. I'm going to... we've
got a windy day today, so I'm sorry for any sound issues.
Let's tease some of these roots out. The
nice coarse bonsai soil is allowing it to fall right out
and allows for lots of vigorous root growth.
I apologies for not getting out videos. I tell you what, teaching is hard. You hear it. It's true.
And they don't get paid much. It's true.
It takes away from all sorts of things including
my ability to work bonsai, on camera, and edit videos.
I'm just going to kind of break this up a little bit here.
Look at that mass of roots! That's incredible!
Smells good.
Look
all of those roots there.
I'm just going to prune these up. All right. I'm just going to kind of come around here.
Nice fine roots.
I'll tease these out just a little bit more. Feel around for anything dead or large,
like that's a large root right here. I can prune that back.
So I have my pot. It has these screens on the holes. I want to go ahead and put this wire in
here, but I'm going to do something different. Last year I had wires coming back and forth this
way. This year I'm just going to put them here, and then have them kind of spread out from the
top on both sides. But this screen is not really strong enough to be able to do that, so I'm going
to do something just a little bit differently. What I'm going to do, let see if we can zoom in,
is I'm going to take this piece of copper wire, which is strong and will fit over the holes,
and I'll wrap this around tightly. All right, and then I can slip this into the holes here.
There we go. It will hold itself so I can pull and tighten on these two wires without hurting
anything. I'll get the other one done and then we'll put this tree in the pot.
There we go. Both of them in there. This method is really good if you've got a pot like a small
one that only has like a single hole in there, and that allows you to secure a tree. I've got my
standard bonsai soil mix here. I'm actually making a little bit of a change this year. I've got
no diatomaceous earth in this. I have a product called SafeTAbsorbent, which has a little bit
of a better color. Diatomaceous earth is a kind of bright white color. The SafeTAbsorbent has a
little bit of a darker grayish color. I've made a little bit of a mound here on the inside,
and what that's going to allow me to do is kind of take this and smoosh it
down, because it's hard to get up underneath the tree. By squishing this, I can get a little soil
down into those roots that are deep underneath. Now I can come across with my wires
here and here. I'll weave some of these
out of the way. Again, apologies for wind
I've got a root there that I don't want to damage so I'm going to slide a little bit of
air hose tubing. This is for aquariums. I'll put right on the top. That'll keep it down
and I can come across.
Cool. Now that was an excess amount of wire.
But I'd rather have more wire than less. Okay, same on the other side.
Perfect. Give this a little pull and twist.
Same thing over here, a little pull and twist. Shove that down.
It should do us good. It's nice and stationary in this wind.
Let's add some soil.
Just adding a generous amount around the sides. This is just regular old chopstick.
I'm starting from the center and working my way out. Hopefully getting soil into the roots.
You can actually feel the roots being pushed down as I'm pushing down with this hand.
Okay let's add a little more soil.
All right just keep working it in, oh yeah! This little back and forth
motion can help with tight pockets. So if you got a tight pocket in there or a
deep pocket, by doing this it allows the particles to kind of wiggle their way in there.
This is a clip-and-grow method for this tree training. This tree doesn't
do so well with wires. I have a couple of crossed branches.
All right, well, that's going to be it for this one. Let's get this in some water.
Ha ha!!
Guess who did not hit the record button when they were finishing up the video?
This guy! Anyway, I hope you liked it. I've recorded lots of other videos that needs to
get edited. So like and subscribe, because there is always more to come. Thanks for watching!