Welcome to Appalachian Bonsai
It's been a while since I posted the last video
I want to update you on some trees and some other projects we're working on.
Thanks for sticking around
[Bluegrass Music]
What I have here is the viburnum we collected.
It's coming into its fall color,
and it did just fine this year - no issues.
This coming Spring, I will probably wire these
down after the leaves have hardened some.
That way they're placed into position as they get older & thicker.
I can go ahead & prune some of these back.
It's these upper branches that are the ones that are very strong growers
They're the ones I really need to prune back hard.
These bottom ones here - those need to be the stronger growing branches.
It's good to distribute the energy
from this top, back down.
Where I'm pruning:
I have a bud here, bud here, bud here.
I'm going to prune it right there at these buds,
halfway between the nodes.
Leaving room for any dieback.
Same thing with this guy: bud here, bud there.
I'm going to prune it right in the middle.
This upper guy: I'm probably going to leave it,
and let it grow strong.
That way it will thicken up & allow for good taper.
I should probably prune it back to down here, but...
You know what?
Fine.
So this is a hornbeam.
It has all that beautiful movement, good flutes.
It grew really heathy, and that makes me happy.
I did not wire this springtime.
Just let it grow. It didn't need to pruned.
Just let it regain its vigor - it's health.
I'm going to prune some of these guys down here at the bottom.
I don't need them.
The suckers are nice if you need to create flare.
or if you need to, for instance,
close up a wound.
Utilize these little guys to, ...
bring that callous over the top of it.
But I don't need that down here, so I'm going to prune those off,
and allow this upper section to grow.
A few more cuts
I've not nice little nodes all over this guy.
Because I'm not sure on this one, I'm going to leave it long, and prune there.
A nice little whip here.
There we go.
This will get nice & bushy again - all over again.
Perfect!
Another hornbeam collected this year, in the Hornbeam 2016 video.
Hornbeams & beeches are very similar, in that
often their leaves can linger through the wintertime,
and it makes for a very dramatic display.
When have all these leaves that are lingering,
or some that have dropped from the top and the bottom still remain.
Anyway, let's prune this guy up.
I have really strong growth here.
[wind blowing]
Leave a little room for it to die back.
Same on the back side, but a little longer, so I can bring it down.
Crazy strong growth here.
I don't like the way this comes back up, so I'm going to take it off completely
This whole branch, might end up going.
Still debating, just letting it do its thing.
One at the bottom - take that off.
I've got a little inner branch here, which you might be able to see.
I'll leave that there.
Dead branch here.
This branch, if I decide to let it grow stronger
I want it to grow out.
This branch right here is growing back into the tree
This as well, but it can be pruned back.
This, on the other hand, I want to grow that way.
So that's gone.
I'll prune this up high. That will be my leader.
I was hoping for branches on this side and this side.
but I did not get them.
That's all for that one.
Here's the dogwood that we did this Spring.
I showed the video in June or July.
This particular tree
during the course of the summer
had a little bit of powdery mildew.
I used a copper fungicide, and that took care of it.
Otherwise it was nice and healthy.
I have a cluster down here of various branches.
I'm going to clear those out.
I'm going to get the camera in here and show you what I'm doing.
We have these clusters of branches
A very large cluster here.
This is not a very strong branch. I'm going to clear that out of the whorl.
This guy will be crossing, so I'll take that out.
I like the strong growth of this one, so I'll leave it and prune this.
Leave my strong one here
These had a little dieback with that powdery mildew.
Didn't make me happy.
This one here.
Here's that beautiful hawthorn!
It has all these weeds.
Wowee!
One thing I did not know about hawthorns, when I first started working on these
They can get what's called 'Cedar-Apple Rust'
or 'Cedar-Quince Rust'
This is a member of the rose family, same as apples
Apples are part of the rose family
and they are susceptible to a disease called 'Cedar-Apple Rust.'
Two trees, two different species
are required to make this happen.
One is an apple species such as this
and the other being a juniper
which we call Eastern Red Cedar here in Virginia, USA.
But, it's actually a juniper species: Juniperus virginiana.
It affects both trees, and requires each of them to cycle.
I've got a little bit on this one.
Right there.
That's all it did on this particular tree - that's it.
So, we're going to prune it up quick.
I'm going to let you see this
This has buds all up and down this thing.
And they're really short nodes. I like that.
They'll get even shorter when I start to ramify them down.
But, with just letting this guy grow
you can see
it has buds all over the place. This tree's healthy. That makes me happy.
There you have it.
I've had some people ask me about my benches.
I'm still living in a place that needed a lot of work
when my wife & I moved here.
So, I don't really have a proper bench that's nice to see
But, I'm going to show you a few trees that
I've had for a long time, one I've just acquired,
and we'll discuss a little more.
This is a Pfitzer juniper, and one of the first trees I got when I started this hobby.
It's not the best material, especially when I see them with more matured eyes.
This back-and-forth here is not very natural for this species.
But, I still like it.
It got it's fall-time pruning this year.
What I've done is lay the branches down and open them up.
You can see here, they've been opened up a little bit.
And hopefully fill this guy out some.
There's not a determined front or back.
That may look better for a front, because
it's open on the front side and has some foliage here on the back.
Not bad.
This is a Virginia juniper.
This is the one that is my avatar.
You can see the amazing growth it had this year
It got transplanted into a new pot,
and had quite a bit of growth.
I might prune this up and make a video of that later.
This particular tree is also the one that has
problem with 'Cedar-Apple Rust.'
This is one of the roots of 'Cedar-Apple Rust.'
They call it Red Cedar, but
it's a Virginia juniper.
I keep this tree and the hawthorns separated.
This was taken out of a cow field.
And this is all natural; I haven't done anything to touch that.
This, on the other hand, is all bent & pruned up. I'm trying to bring that back down.
We'll see how well that works.
Speaking of farm fields, this is the privet
that was shown earlier this year in the Spring Update 2016 video.
I did let these suckers grow out.
I have one on the back
You may say that's not a good-looking thing, but I'm just trying to thicken it up.
I did not cut the branches. I left them.
and let them grow long. Why not?
I can decide later.
Here's one I'm excited about.
This is a Rocky Mountain juniper collected in Colorado.
I believe it was collected by Nick Lenz,
and it was sold to me by Jim Doyle,
up at Nature's Way Nursery in Pennsylvania.
Jim Doyle is a 40-year bonsai veteran.
He's a wonderful delight to watch & listen to.
as well as a great trainer & grower of bonsai.
This was started at a workshop at the North Carolina Arboretum.
They had their annual Bonsai Expo in October,
and I have videos that I will be showing, as soon as I can get it all edited.
There was a workshop there that I did with Jim Doyle
and I used this tree.
This had a very large canopy
A picture of it here
I jinned several of these branches
that I didn't think were particularly good.
This branch here, which you may see on the camera,
had not growth up until this point.
That was a long distance for me to try to bend back
or work into the shape.
Same with some of these others.
What I ended up doing with this, though
was come down about like that.
Lines I've written in marker and crayon
shows the horizontal where I trained it
and a vertical here so I can
orient again when I repot.
According to Jim, this should not be repotted for at least two years.
This is a wild piece of collected material. It's old.
It's root system is not like that of young trees.
It's been in this pot for 3 or 4 years,
and he said after this first styling,
it needs to recover.
Give it at least two years before I repot.
Soil is still draining very well,
which means there's plenty of room for it to grow,
and I can trust that this tree will be just fine.
[wind blowing]
All the branches and leaves.... falling.
Happy Autumn, everybody!
[Bluegrass Music]