Ho! Bloody Ho! It’s Christmas!

So, here we are at the end of another year pretty much, just the excesses of Ho! Bloody Ho! It’s Christmas! and new years to endure before we launch into 2024 filled with hopes and dreams. I have never been one for ‘marking‘ days. These so called high days come and go and I genuinely could not care less, i don’t even celebrate my own birthday. However I know normal folk like to mark such occasions which is fine by me, knock yourselves out, quite literally if you want too. Ho! Bloody Ho! etc’.

I guess there’s merit in taking a look back over the last year even if it’s only to take stock of how many of those hopes and dreams I was holding just 365 days ago lie dashed to pieces on the pavement of life. 2023 has sucked ass in so many respects I just don’t have the energy to go over it all again.

We do have a great deal to be thankful for in this country of ours. Whilst the reasons seem to have become vanishingly small lately at least we don’t have bombs falling on us and the likelihood of being gunned down in the street is vanishingly small, but, for how long. It’s hard to imagine how peace can be sustained much longer based on our current trajectory.

By and large this year has been shit for many folk. Interest rates, social unrest, inflation, green fascism, Immigration, employment (or lack thereof) or any one of a million other ailments and annoyances prevalent in our country have all taken their toll on our souls. Us bonsai folk have had the added bonus of dealing with some of the crappest weather I have experienced on over thirty five years of cultivating wee trees in pots.

Still, next year we can look forward to the spectacle of a general election.  An unfettered clown show performed by some of the crassest dullards and wind assisted f**kwits it’s possible to imagine. Like it’ll make ANY difference at all. Same bullshit different colour tie. If one thinks it’ll make an iota of a difference then ya’ll as daft as they are.

Most days I like to sit down early in the morning with a thick slice of toast and a strong cup o’ joe and catch the news (or should that be views?). Hard to do these days. Coverage is typically about 2 minutes of news, half hour of ad’s and half hour of opinion. I guess you all know what they say about opinions….. If not search “opinions are like buttholes”

I’m no great fan of Ricky Gervais but credit where it’s due!  “The right to an opinion does not include the right to be agreed with, taken seriously or even listened to.”

Suffice to say my early morning interactions with the ‘box of lies‘ normally ends in me watching an episode of the Simpsons. Whilst this was once considered by some to be the most corrupting and controversial thing on the box, today it’s a bastion of common sense and family values. It’s about the only thing I can watch these days without steam issuing from ever orifice.

As I sit here with a new cold just in time for Christmas outside my window it’s barely light at mid-day, rain is streaming off the thatch and my garage door has a pile of wet soggy leaves piled up against it. Testament to the fact that I have not opened it in weeks.  Dear God I need to get out and ride a bike before I go totally insane.

On a brighter note? Here at KB we seem to have clung on for another year despite the best efforts of our esteemed leaders that are doing everything they possibly can to choke the life out of us. I even managed to whip up some videos and with all our stock piled high in the warehouse ready for next season I guess I should be able to rest easy but that’s just not me now is it.

All I really wanted to say was this last year has been rough on many of us for different reasons but one thing that has remained a great thrill to all of us here at KB is the continued support of so many lovely customers and friends. Despite everything I love how bonsai folk just persevere and keep going and growing. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH, your support means the world both to me and all the family here!

It’s our prayer that you all have a great and memorable Christmas surrounded by those you love most. Have a drink, a smoke or whatever you do and make the most of a few days peace and quiet before we start again. And let’s all hope the new growing season arrives in a timely fashion with kind weather.

God bless you all.

From Graham, Catherine, Richard and Sarah (not forgetting Harley and Diesel).

The post Ho! Bloody Ho! It’s Christmas! appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

Well that sucked! My long anticipated Christmas holiday that is.

When you work from home like we here at Kaizen Bonsai do it’s very difficult to get a real break. Christmas, or as some like to call it now ‘the holidays‘ is one time of the year when we can pull up the drawbridge and take some time to chill out and decompress. Neither of which actions I have the ability to either understand or achieve.

Since I started work at age 12 it’s been work, work work and the only thing that stops that happening is physical injury or sickness. Even when we close our metaphorical doors the work never really stops but this holiday it did because we were all laid low with a bug just in time for Christmas. I’m not one for getting sick, my last bout was 2019 when I picked up my first ever case of proper flu and left me sparko on my back for weeks.

This year it was sore throats all around just a week before we were due to go into hibernation. Since then everyone has been laid so low the misery was palpable and the snot lay all around like the snow in A Christmas Carol. All our grand plans were shot to hell, nothing got done and our ailments have become steadily worse as each day goes by. Now back at work we have a backlog of orders a foot high and we all feel much like the remnants of the festive bird abandoned in the bottom of the fridge. That’s my annual holiday gone for shit then!

As this is my first post of a bright new year filled with hope I should wish you all a happy and prosperous one but if you live in blighty you know full well the likelihood of that happening is as slim as a lottery jackpot. But hey, let’s give it our best anyhow, happy new year everyone. Mine started off Ok with a Premium Bond win, I now have enough to take Catherine out for a meal so that’s well worth the 50k i put in. As for us getting out for that meal I’ll do it when that jackpot happens. I’m all about the fun I am 😉

Before I got really sick I decided to give the lawn a once over. It’s a big one and was covered in leaves and getting it cut and cleaned up nearly killed me. By the time I was done the leaf blower was totally f***ed and in pieces and the mower was badly broke. Now I have had both for over 20 years and it’s only my mechanical nouse that kept them going. So the blower was consigned to the bin but I figured I could fix the mower AGAIN. In doing so (welding) I set it ablaze, along with the shed and the hedge. Thankfully I managed to get it all under control before we needed to call in firefighters but not before I dislocated my pinkie, got a bruise like I was shot and not a little singed round the edges though thankfully I avoided setting my beard on fire so all good.

Looking on the bright side we had a couple of nice days alongside the family with pleasurable moments aplenty between bouts of howking up snot. To top it all I lost nearly a half stone too! I did get one day well enough to do some bonsai work……

Some of you good folk may remember this little tree from the video I did about 15 years ago when I was a clean-shaven fresh-faced youth.

15 odd years ago.

I sold this not long after the work was completed. Last summer the tree came back to me having been significantly diminished in the intervening years. WHY after all these decades since collecting is this beautiful little tree still raw material? What’s wrong with bonsai in this country that 30 years since collection there is no bonsai and very little health either? Now here I am once again having to set up a course and a plan to develop the little pine into bonsai by which I mean a hale and healthy dense compact and well balanced tree with a pleasing appearance and no fucking wire.

 

Thankfully the little tree is reasonably healthy but still some way from its peak potential. Most of the branches from my original design are still present though someone had moved stuff around and hidden the trunk. This was hard to resolve I guess so they went the easy way…. who knows?

 

 

So a little copper and some judicial bending has the whole thing looking much better. These Caledonian pines are a bit special (if anybody has one for sale CALL ME!) and deserve much better than the ignominy this little guy has suffered over the years. I’ve a long way to go with this, it’s staying here with me now simply because I love it and there endeth the lesson.

If you need a New Year’s resolution may I suggest keeping only the bonsai you truly love and concentrating all one’s efforts in bringing those few bonsai to their absolute peak. Trust me that’s a fascinating journey of a lifetime.

Happy New Year folks!
Graham.

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What a Bunch of Tools

So here we are already in the middle of January. I’m finally getting over my Christmas lurgy, my horrible knee sprain is on the mend along with my buggered up pinky and orders are flying out the door to the point we are measuring our output in weight (average 800Kg of goods daily). An almost imperceptible layer of snow is sparkling in the pristine sunlight, there’s a crackling fire in the grate and the dogs are toasting themselves right there. Life is good!

To cap it all Kevin Willson just made me the proud owner of a very special scots pine I have been developing for close on 20 years. Follow the link to his Instagram for a sneak peek. To cap it all I lost a couple of stone too though despite what every born again fatty tells me I don’t feel one iota better. So I reckon many folk are just full of crap (or I have a long way to go)! Overall 2024 has started well in the Potter household and long may it continue….. and that’s all I have to say ’bout that.

So, along with all my healing, packing, humping boxes and waxing lyrical about the good life I have also been busy listing the latest addition to the Kaizen Bonsai range of amazing products on our web site. Pleased to say we now have a very nice little selection of bonsai tools from Kaneshin Cutlery Mfg (Japan) at some pretty amazing prices all things considered. This has taken several months to put in place for reasons I no longer want to remember and the last week has been ‘kin dull as I have been sitting in front of a screen creating web site listings but it’s all done now.

See the range – Kaneshin Bonsai Tools

So if you are looking for TOP quality genuine Japanese bonsai tools please do go take a look. More will follow but for now i’m very pleased with our offering and some pretty keen prices too considering these are all largely hand made in Japan using the legendary Yasuki-Hagane (Japanese steel from Yasuki produced from local iron sand).

These days many things are far from what they seem. It appears to me a modern business can say almost anything in the pursuit of sales. Anyone seen SKY ad’s lately? Sky cinema is JUST NOT THAT GREAT. Shampoos make girls hair softer, toothpaste makes our teeth whiter and washing powder makes things so white they ought to be fecking invisible. Let’s not even get started on tech’, apps, ‘phones’ or the latest CCTV gadget that means we can all watch your house being burgled or you wheels getting lifted in what we used to call ‘glorious technicolour’ and ultra hi def’ streaming to just about and device from a watch to a flat screen the size of a duvet.

Bonsai tools are no exception in this respect. Most bonsai tools, along with almost everything else, are made in China nowadays. There is a perception that Chinese stuff is largely a bunch of crap, indeed I would concur a lot of what we do see here is indeed what the OED calls “something of extremely poor quality.” (crap:vulgar). But, much like everywhere else in life you get what you pay for. Most businesses go to China to source ‘goods‘ (not good actually) because they’re cheap, and also they (the Chinese) like to work hard, unlike us, and get things done. This ensures maximum profit margins but often saddles the customer with a crock of shit that ends up in landfill pretty quick. It’s what they call function of profitability or some such. A lot of utter crap gets made and distributed just prior to being dumped but so long as it results in a profit who cares right? Well, increasingly WE DO!

All of this is NONE of China’s fault, it’s ours. If you go to China and ask for a top quality product they can and WILL make it for you. Sadly not many folk do that, we have seen simply outstanding quality world leading products made there. These do carry a hefty price tag but quality has always cost money and top quality cost lots. Some Chinese bonsai tools are SO good in fact that many of our competitors are openly marketing them as Japanese made which is a crock of shit.

The bonsai tool market has always been a bit shifty or, should I say ‘opaque‘. These complex tools are hard to make, require quality materials and time served craftsmen (people) to build them. Bonsai tools are not made by automated machines in their millions like main stream tools. A few days ago I got an email from a Chinese producer of hammers. Apparently they make 7 million hammers annually. HOW can the world need that many hammers? I’m still using the one my dad gave me for Christmas 1976 and it’s nowhere near worn out. I doubt there have been that many bonsai tools manufactured in the last 10 years….. which is a wild guess on my part. Suffice to say small production numbers and high quality materials result in a high price. There’s an inescapable law at work in the universe much like E = mc2. This one states you get what you pay for.

In reality there are endless brands of bonsai tools. However most are no more than ‘badge engineering’. There are very few manufacturers of bonsai tools and even some of the major Japanese names are just branded packaging for standard quality tools. Not that this is a bad thing but it makes it very difficult when buying bonsai tools to figure out what’s what.

That’s why we have added Kaneshin Bonsai tools to our range, they’re kosher, the real deal, made by the same family and dedicated time served craftsmen for as long as anyone can remember. Not everyone can afford to buy the ‘best’ but it’s nice to know that good quality tools made with integrity and pride are available when we do want to treat ourselves.

As with all things ‘quality‘ is relative. There really is no limit, take Mr Yasuhiro Hirakawa as a fine example. A fifth generation blacksmith shop (Sasuke) who, among many other exquisite things happens to make the worlds most expensive bonsai scissors. These can carry a price tag right up to an eye watering $32,000 (£25,200) though his ‘standard‘ scissors go for a paltry $1100 (£866). This budget range still takes 10 hours a day for one week to turn out a single pair and in my book that’s a cheap tool.

So, having spent a week immersed in all this tool business it got me thinking about my own bonsai tools. Just for the record I love tools. As I mentioned, way back in the 1970’s my dad often gave me tools for birthday or Christmas presents. A lot of those fell off the back of his British Gas lorry but I didn’t care.

When I started doing a paper round at age 12 I had 32 houses to deliver to. At 6.30am I pedalled the 2.5 miles to the newsagent, assembled my papers myself before pedalling a mile and a half with a heavy canvas bag slung over my shoulder to the start of my round. I then pedalled/walked the 1 mile length of my round up one side of the road and back down the other side until the last paper hit the last doormat. I then had to ride back home like a demented person in order to get changed and walk the half mile to school in time for 8.45am registration. I did this round seven days a week come rain or snow. Fridays everyone got a local paper in addition to their regular title which meant a bag so heavy I could hardly heft it onto my shoulder and made for some sketchy bike riding too. To cap it all, on Saturdays I had to call at every house and collect payment for their weeks papers before accounting to the boss back at the shop. Once ALLLLLLL that was done I received the princely sum of £1.35.

When I first started that job I saved up for two weeks before taking what I thought a kings ransom to the local hardware store where I blew the whole lot on a beautiful shiny silver guess what……………… Stanley knife. Not just any Stanley knife though, this one came with 10 spare blades. I was SOOOOOO happy walking out the store I thought I was on a magic carpet.

At school I was the envy of all my mates every time I whipped out my glistening silver treasure. One time (true story) I used it to carve my name into a wooden desk top. What I actually spent the lesson doing was a beautiful intaglio carving of the phrase “Graham Potter is god” (note the small G). Funnily enough the next day I got called into the headmasters office for a bollocking. He took my treasured knife off me and I had to pick it up at the end of the day under a strict understanding that I did not bring it back to school with me ever again. I was about 13 by then, HOW much things have changed. Suffice to say I LOVE tools and in particular knives. Ohhhhh I love knives, but you get the picture right?

For my younger readers, tools are something used accomplish a task that can’t be done on a phone and is beyond the capabilities of ones own teeth or fingernails. With care good tools in skilled hands produce amazing things. Many folk like to collect high quality tools, i’ve seen a lot of folk in bonsai with “all the gear and no idea“. Tools are much like a pencil. In the right hands it can produce a work of art. In my own pubescent hands they were used to jab other kids in the forehead which if done correctly left them with a little tattoo that resembled a blackhead.

I was recently hanging around Kevin’s workshop absent-mindedly going through his ragtag assemblage of hard worked tools. Much like many skilled artisans there was not a single item there of any real significance but no artist in the UK generates more outstanding bonsai transformations than me ol’ mate from Essex. The tool is less significant than the hand that puts it to work. Left to its own devices a tool never created anything. This appears true of many skilled tradesmen and artists, their tools might be a shoddy assemblage but the skill held in the hands that wield them is often exemplary.

So, to my own tools. Whilst these may look to be that shoddy assemblage they are mostly good quality items that only became shoddy because they were good enough to survive me and have delivered a great deal of often punishing work over the decades. Like most long practicing craftsmen I have gathered up a huge selection of tools from some of the best available to others repurposed from other disciplines, some are custom made, some are bastardised bits and bobs of scrap and random busted items that at one time or another were just perfect for the task at hand.

Looking at my own dirty tray of disgrace It occurred to me I do about 95% of all my bonsai work with no more than eight items as you can see here. Were I traveling somewhere to work these are my ‘must have‘ tools that I simply cannot function without. All the other tools get used extremely infrequently but we have a lot of history together so I keep them all.

So here is my MUST HAVE tool kit which consists of two groups of four items. One group I use 100% of the time and the other not so much. Every one of us well experienced bonsaists can probably show their own unique collection and some folk have actually expressed an interest in mine so here goes……

So this first bunch is the stuff I use 100% of the time. From the top we have…….

Masakuni #8309 – This is the long handle version of the very popular #8009. This is the only wire cutter I use for wire up to about 2.5mm. It’ll cut thicker and i have bent it a few times doing just that. Nothing comes close to being this brilliant especially when removing fine wire from densely ramified bonsai.

Next is my beautiful little Yagamitsu SP1. This is a hand forged scissor made by a single blacksmith. I have had it over 20 years and even back then they were very expensive but it’s THE best scissor I have ever owned by a country mile. When pruning densely ramified bonsai the short length allows very accurate work to be carried out at super fast speed. Longer scissors may be needed for deeper access but for top work who needs all that excess length in the way. It’ll cut branches as thick as a pencil and chop 4mm aluminium wire like it’s made of cheese.

The next tool is my Masakuni #8812. I only got this because I typed the wrong number onto an order years ago but it’s the best tweezer I have ever seen. This thing has the pulling power of pliers with the accuracy of a scalpel. Technically it’s a pine tweezer made for pulling needles and thinning candles and congested buds but to me it’s an absolute must have at almost any price.

Finally in this group I have our very own Superior Long Handle Scissors. For the price these are superb and can be found doing anything from pruning bonsai, cutting roots, branches, wire, working like a chopstick, creating deadwood and they are great around my motorcycle workshop making gaskets, cutting rubber, plastic and wires. They’ll open a can of soup, cut a sandwich in half or trim up ‘ur nose hair. This pair have a few custom grinds and subtle mod’s which I like and suit me personally and the way I work.

This next group of tools are items I use every time I work on bonsai but I do put them down from time to time.

From the top we have my little Jin pliers. No idea where I got these but they have been in my pocket for over 20 years at least. From making deadwood to wire work I could barely finish any task without these. The slim straight handles double up as a pair of re-potting sticks too when i’m in a hurry. I have bent them on a few occasions but they can be straightened and a little heat restores everything back to normal.

Below that we have the fine twig cutter or NBBC (narrow blade branch cutter). I recently did a video pruning a maple where these can be seen in action. This pair have been bent and abused to a criminal extent. I cut the end off a broom handle with them one time which was stupid but thankfully I have become very good at sharpening and resetting the blades. They are only made for very light pruning of deciduous twigs and small branches which they do remarkably well as they give great access in a tight spot. I very rarely use any other type of branch cutter since I mastered these little guys.

Below that we have the mighty Masakuni #8007. From time to time I get a tree come in that’s wired and sometimes that’s done in a horrible way or with entirely inappropriate materials like galvanised steel fencing wire. Whilst mini bolt cutters can sort that out these give better access and are significantly more powerful. They’ll cut 10mm aluminium (yes it does exist) 5mm hardened copper and 3-4mm steel including most nails and screws. They also make a great hammer if I find myself short of one and can smash up the largest bonsai pots with consumate ease. Why? don’t ask 😉 Masakuni tools seem to be disappearing fast as I believe there is only one craftsman left now but I may be wrong. We certainly never get what we order anymore.

Finally in this group is the Small Bonsai Knob Cutter. Trimming up a cut to enable it to heal flat is a skill that takes a long time to master and judge correctly. When dressing cuts I like to use the small tool to nibble away at it which I find much more accurate than just blasting in with a big gun. Also knowing that the little tool is somewhat more delicate I treat it with some respect and so it lasts much longer that it’s big brother in my hands.

Some of these tools are stainless and some are black. This just happened and was in no way intentional. Stainless steel will never hold as good an edge as a high carbon steel and stainless tools are not 100% rustproof either. The correct term should be ‘stain resistant‘. A 100% stainless steel is too soft to carry an edge or retain its integrity under pressure. There are some utterly spectacular stainless hardenable steels available today and whilst these make spectacular knives they are not suited to bonsai tools.

As I said I have virtually every bonsai tool ever made somewhere in my old filing cabinets and on occasions I will dive in there for a tool to do a specific job that just can’t be accomplished any other way but this set of eight tools are what I use all the time. There are just two more items I cannot work without. First up is this…..

Bonsai tools that cut mainly work on the scissor/plier principle of two parts joined together by a pivot. This pivot is the single most important part of an opening and closing tool because it keeps the cutting edges in alignment even under pressure whilst acting as a fulcrum to magnify the amount of force one applies at the handles. Once this gets full of crap, wears and becomes loose the tool will NOT cut properly no matter how sharp.

Every day I pick up one of my bonsai tools I put a tiny drop of oil in the base of the blades just above the pivot and two more at the base of the blades/top of the handles just behind the pivot. This is quickly drawn in and not only keeps the union lubricated but prevents the ingress of dirt. Those little Yagamitsu SP1s have no wear in the pivot after 20 years and still have perfect blade geometry. Keep your tools lubricated, it’s the single most important factor in ensuring tools perform well and last a long time.

At this point someone will ask me what oil I use. Currently this is a 30 weight non detergent mineral oil that’s used in vintage motorcycle engines that do not run oil filters. This particular one is made by Millers Oils, a superb UK company, Vintage Millerol 30. The reason I use that is because the last time I filled up my little oil can it was close at hand. Honestly who gives a shit it’s oil for scissors. Don’t go and use WD40 or similar, it’ll do nowt unless your tools are rusted shut, use proper oil and use it often.

And finally we get to my most versatile, treasured and best tool that goes with me ALL the time. Honestly! If I’m dressed this tool is about my person and it is……

As I said, I have a passion for knives. There are hundreds in my house from 200 year old antiques through military weapons and farm implements. Then there are a whole bunch of artisan made and unique pieces that can only be called works of art. However a man needs a good working knife.

My grandad was never without his trusty Sheffield made pocket knife. I never saw him a day in his life without his waistcoat, tie, Zippo and pocket knife. I have no need for the former two items but the later I do.

This Benchmade knife designed by the late and great Mel Pardu is simply the best working knife I have ever owned and it’s been by my side every day for years now. I did modify the blade angle to a much shallower pitch which increases it’s sharpness and ability to cut things like cardboard and plastic. That took weeks of patient work by hand because the steel is SO darn hard. I have used this to cut everything including mild steel wire and my own flesh. It’s so sharp one does not immediately feel a cut from the edge until it touches bone, Trust me 😉

This little bit of incredible steel is one of my most treasured possessions without which I could neither do bonsai or live. A pocket knife must be strong. I have used this to split logs by hammering in into wood with a baton but it must hold a good edge without the need for continuous grinding. A good old fashioned steel brings this back to a razor edge in only a couple of swipes and about once a year I put it across a water stone just to freshen it up.

It is not legal to carry in the UK simply because it’s blade locks. So that makes me an outlaw then I guess. Never buy a pocket knife without a locking blade unless you need to loose part of a finger. I rarely carry a phone when I go out but I will never be found without this in my pocket. In fact I think I’ll have this buried with me when I go.

I love and adore tools, as I said. Tools open up a whole world of possibility and creativity and I love mine with an absolute passion. I hope this little post has passed on a little bit of my knowledge and enthusiasm. I could go on all day but there are parcels that need packing so I need to go.

If you made it this far I extend my sincere thanks and respect. If you have any sensible questions about tools of any sort do get in touch. After all a passion shared is a passion doubled right?

Graham

 

The post What a Bunch of Tools appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

Bonsai Repotting Adventures

This time of year we are always insanely busy. It gets to the stage where we judge our output each day by weight rather than order numbers. A bad day is currently about 500kg of goods but we have shipped over 1200kg on our better days this year. For an old man and his son-in-law that’s a lot of graft. Currently work has ground to a crawl as we have been let down by a supplier and so I thought I would take the opportunity to share some of my most recent Bonsai Repotting Adventures.

Regular visitors to this blog might have noticed that for 14 years i’ve spent this time of year ranting and raving about why I think most folk are re-potting bonsai both too early and too often. Whilst I realise this is good for our business it’s far from ideal for bonsai and there are many things much more important than the few quid we earn supplying ‘Bonsai Soil Products‘ to our lovely customers. Rather than spend my time fussing over what everyone else may or may not be doing I thought I would share some of my own recent bonsai re-potting adventures.

We have had an incredibly mild winter and that’s a GOOD thing by and large. 2023 was one of the worst years for cultivating bonsai that a can remember and I have a LOT of those behind me these days. As in most years I have filled my greenhouse with a huge number and variety of trees, primarily for protection from wet. A long mild wet British winter can be very detrimental to bonsai in a number of ways. Whilst most folk are worried about root rot and the like most hardy varieties in good condition can deal with wet feet. My own concern is more related to the degradation of deadwood and bark quality. A dry winter under cover makes a massive difference to these oft overlooked elements. Protection from howling north-easterly onshore winds that affect us out here on the east coast is also very important especially to finely ramified trees like elm varieties.

The downside of putting plants inside is that they will begin growing much sooner than those left outside. This can cause problems when temperatures begin to rise. A couple of days ago my greenhouse hit 25 degrees Celsius whilst outside it was 9. This means plants flush much earlier but once early summer gets here indoor temperatures are too high for some species like maples. A sunny day in May can easily see the mercury blast over 50C whilst it’s barely 15C outside. As soon as my trees buds begin to open they go outside unless my intention is to keep them in for the entire growing season. These things can get complicated but used wisely a greenhouse can add several weeks to our meagre growing season.

There is a simple rule to follow that ensures optimum timing for re-potting bonsai. I covered that in some detail in an earlier post When To Repot Bonsai.

These days I have largely stopped trading bonsai trees and concentrate on doing my own work and my own bonsai. Everything’s always for sale apparently but you’ll have to speak to Catherine about that 😉 Previously we were just pouring trees out the door and to a greater extent my bonsai activities became little more than a job running a production line. To some extent I lost my soul doing that but now it’s stopped and thanks to some hard work with my mentor Kevin Willson i’m back doing my own thing, not just producing a commodity to sell and I like it.

So, here are a few images of trees I have worked in the last week with hints and tips I thought ya’ll might like to see…..

Japanese Maple

First up a Japanese maple I bought a year ago. Whenever I bring in a new tree I leave it alone for the first season to get a measure of it’s vigour and general condition before I go blundering in unsighted. This little guy was unusually almost too vigorous as can be seen by the ugly coarse growth. This tree needs slowing down a bit which almost never happens especially in such a small pot.

The great thing about Japanese bonsai is that you get a good root system and a nice well prepared flat base to the trunk which makes repotting a doddle. As it turned out this tree was mostly planted in massive coarse Lapillo. A very bad choice in this case for such a small shallow pot where it can hinder fine root ramification and reduce root volume. The grains were mostly the size of marbles and above.

Now planted in pure Akadama graded to about 4mm and with the old soil cleaned right back onto the trunk base this tree should gradually come back into a sensible equilibrium. In time work can begin in developing appropriate ramification and refinement. There’s many years to go on this journey.

Korean Hornbeam

This lovely old tree came from a collection I bought a few years ago. It sold instantly and the new owner put it in this large plastic pot. These hornbeams grow very slowly in Blighty and restoring one like this is the work of many years. Repotting is not something that needs doing very often but when this tree came back to me last year I decided to clean it out to and make sure I have the most vibrant root system possible. A little prune, a little wire and a bag of our Premium Bonsai Compost No1 along with an old Chinese pot guaranteed to wind up somebody and we’re good to go.

Field Elm

Imported from Italy back when such things were easy. This big lump was a cheap and cheerful buy I intended to flip quickly. When it arrived in a plastic tub it had almost no branches. Last year I repotted and cut the base of the trunk nice and flat. A year later it was lifting itself out of the pot. In order to keep elm developing quickly I tend to repot every year simply because these trees make so much root and if they get pot bound they have a habit of dropping branches in my experience.

Dwarf Japanese Maple

Japanese maple tend to be one of the first trees to break cover at the end of winter and of those some of the first will be the dwarf forms like katsura or in this case what I assume it kiyohime. This tree came from a collection I bought a year ago. It looks to me like this is one branch of what was a larger tree once upon a time. Kiyohime are basally dominant and when not cared for correctly often the tops die out in whole or part. I can’t say that’s what happened here but I would wager a hefty sum it did. There was a lot of die back when it turned up.

Not repotted in decades the first job is to get it out of that pot. A rubber mallet was pressed into service and just before I worked up a sweat it all parted company. Once out I found an interesting hack to ensure the pot was not going to become waterlogged, it did come from the north-west. Either that or someone was trying hard to save a bit of soil.

The tree was planted either in John Innes No2 or garden soil. Hard to say but at least it cleaned out easily enough. I did spend some time last season giving this little tree some TLC and it’s vigour improved significantly so a drastic root prune this year is safe enough to complete. Now in a new more appropriate training pot this will grow like a weed this year. A big pot is not always a good idea and in this case a smaller pot full of vibrant root will produce better results than that other big blue fence post.

Chinese Elm

I make no secret about my love of Chinese elm, one of the finest deciduous species in bonsai. Trees like this one (less the rock etc’) are actually sold as bonsai in this country but they are very far from that being an appropriate moniker. However I have proven again and again just how quickly they can be developed into significant bonsai. So I put this one on/in this water worn limestone. I know it’s currently shit but I did make this one out of an identical type of elm about 6 years ago.

Privet Cutting

This silly bit of privet stump clutters up my bench and has done for a long time now. I really can’t be assed to style it so it gets the hedge treatment. For those of you that follow my work this may be familiar from the daft video I did a while back.

English Elm

Ulmus procera are everywhere, easy to find and collect. Over the years I have had hundreds and hundreds of these beautiful elms. However I have never seen one quite as nuts as this one. I gave it a first style last year and murdered the roots but it grew happily all summer. Now allied with the crappiest pot I could find. Not one for the purists….. like I care!

Privet Bonsai

Over the last 35 years I have owned literally hundreds of privets and a lot of them have gone on to become well know and important bonsai. Trouble is I never kept one for myself. I blagged this one from the garden of a mate a few years ago as a bare stump we jacked out of his hedge. It was potted properly about 4-5 years ago when the base was cut dead flat. To be honest I could not really figure out what to do with it and was too busy and preoccupied to care so it languished outside in a corner whilst the deadwood rotted away (that’s a good thing).

So recently I thought it was time to buck up my ideas and sort it out. I intended to make a video of the work but by the time I figured out what to do we were too busy so it’ll have to wait. I have been looking at this for years now and just could not solve the puzzle. In the end I photographed it from every angle. Then with a little chemical help from my friend Jack Daniels and a good herf the answer fell into my lap whilst flicking through those images. I can’t recommend substance abuse as a bonafide bonsai technique but we all have to walk our own path despite what anyone thinks.

Because I have neglected the tree for a long time now repotting was extremely overdue. In general privets should be repotted every year because they make so much root and sulk badly when pot bound. I got fed up trying to water this last summer and so a repot just had to be done. However the rootball was so compacted even a reciprocating saw was not going to sort this one out so I turned to my special root pruner.

Maybe I can shoot my movie in the autumn. In the meantime I would welcome your opinions. Answers on a postcard as they used to say. It won’t change my mind, I already know what this tree will become but it’s interesting to know what ya’ll think.

The post Bonsai Repotting Adventures appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

A little something for the weekend Sir?

Happy Easter everyone…..Enjoy!

 

The post New Video – Japanese Larch Restoration Part 1 appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

Hope everyone is enjoying the EASTER break ……while I keep working. Sympathy on a postcard please 😉

 

The post On A Roll – Yet Another New Video. appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

Two Half Heads are Better Than One!

Creating bonsai takes a really long time. It also takes a long time to figure out exactly how to do it so if you are starting out TODAY assume it will take twenty years to figure out the basics, and that assumes you are busy and not applying yourself in a ‘working from home‘, civil service, tired hands kind of a way.

Having been hammering away at bonsai now for the better part of forty years I might be so bold as to say I figured this all out a while back. I often say it takes ten years to figure out which end goes into the soil. Now that’s not strictly true in a Trumpian kind of a way, it’s not to be taken literally, it’s a figure of speech which illustrates that even after a decade in the saddle one can still be susceptible to chafing. That’s another figure of speech isn’t it but illustrates my point I hope.

Sadly todays society has, by and large, lost the appreciation of things that take time unless that time can be charged for of course. A bottle of Private Collection Glenlivet 1949 74 Year Old will set you back about £35,000 whilst a bottle of Whyte & Mackay Blended Scotch Whisky from Asda comes in at a very reasonable £17.00. I don’t drink Scotch but i know folk who do and they would be very keen to point out the difference of which I would be largely oblivious.

The basics of these two bottles are much the same (a distilled spirit) but the fact is one got left in the shed for a really long time and to a connoisseur who is blessed with a sensitive palate the difference is night and day and quite possibly worth every penny. The single malt had time to develop it’s special unique character alone whilst the blended one was engineered to taste a certain way and always the same way. Long ago I worked as a printer when the use of chemicals was acceptable workplace behaviour and I burned away whatever sensitive tissues I had in my head, my nose has not really worked since and so my ability to taste at all is minimal and as a result I have literally ZERO appreciation of these fine things.

For sure I wouldn’t drink that cheap blended s**t. On the very rare occasion I have Scotch in the house it’s going to be a 15 year old Glenlivet (donations gladly accepted). To be honest my preference is for a single barrel Jack Daniels, donations of which, again, I would be very glad to receive. Leave that blended stuff to the kids getting hammered on a Friday night.

So in this respect I feel I am like a lot of bonsai folk I encounter in daily life. I appreciate, at some level, the difference between good and bad, i know the basics but beyond that i literally know nothing and have no comprehension of the finer points. What I call a good whisky is unlikely to ever touch the lips of a true aficionado who might well look down on my choice as ‘window cleaner’ or some such.

After a lifetime spent immersed in something so deeply and so fanatically it’s impossible not to develop one’s palate and appreciation but it’s far from guaranteed. I know lovely folk that have spent twenty years travelling the world, attending every top bonsai exhibition year after year who see the very best our world has to offer and getting to know all the right people but don’t have a worthy bonsai to their name or a single clue how to make one.

I guess that’s like racing drivers, you don’t have to know how to engineer a car to drive one. If you want to be at the top of the game there’s a lot you need to know about how your machine works, why it does what it does or not. That way you can relay information back to the man that actually knows how it works so he can make it better for you. That’s why racing cars are largely managed and supported by a team. It brings all the best elements together that can never be embodied by a single person and the net result is better.

Seems to me many folk have money, opportunity or both and so have these nice things but can lack the apparatus to genuinely understand and appreciate their true value whilst a lowly person lacking in means but with highly developed senses, acquired through long application looks on in horror at the flagrant waste of true value and lack of appreciation and understanding beyond some notion of smug pride, that ‘look at what i’ve got’ nose in the air notion. Remember Stanley and Pammy……

These days I don’t tend to leave home, i did an insane amount of windscreen time back in the day and unless i am on two wheels I tend to avoid all travelling and stay off the roads. I don’t drag my trees all over the place showing them off and I’m very particular who I let visit my garden. I have no interest in impressing anyone with my work until I myself am impressed and trust me I am very far from that level so I continue to work hard and carefully to improve my results every single day and if I get the time perhaps one day i just might make a good bonsai in much the same way a blind squirrel might find a nut.

Going back to my analogy of a motor racing team it has always struck me that working together is best. However finding someone I can work with has not been easy. Most bonsai folk, certainly those I might choose to work with are a very long way from me. Just nipping over to Milan to work with Salvatore or Marco is not entirely practical. I’m also what one might call a ‘rummun‘. Hard to get along with, opinionated, largely oblivious to the feelings of others and determined to do it my way. Finding anyone to work with therefore was always going to be a challenge but lucky for me I know a guy….

Thankfully that guy lives not too far away, about 40 minutes on a well sorted Shovelhead. On paper Kevin Willson and I should not get on, we should fight like a cat and a dog but somehow, after 25 years, turns out we can actually work together fairly well. Mutual respect goes a long way and as they say ‘two heads are better than one’. Considering our advanced age and history of ‘substance abuse‘ I might say that two ‘half heads‘ make one properly functioning one but that might be unfair on my buddy. Whatever, between us we can knock up a half decent tree when we combine our skills despite our differing ideas on how that actually happens.

I guess we all have bonsai trees that have spent decades on our benches. Some become special to us whilst some are just bulk in our collection. This scots pine was one such for me. It came here from Norway perhaps fifteen years ago. Surprisingly it survived and I even styled it and made a video of the process though that was never released. Ultimately I got bored with it. I tried to sell without success and in time it started to suffer a little from neglect. I just could not bring myself to love it and having spent so long looking at it, as it was, I had absolutely NO inspiration to do anything with it at all.

Sound familiar? You got one on your bench?

Nowadays I stopped selling trees like we did at one time and am just rediscovering my love of bonsai work. I really don’t want anything in my garden that’s not special. So this pine stuck in my craw, can’t sell it, too much heart to dump it and no inspiration to reinvent it. As they say I could not see the wood for the trees. So what to do?

I’m a firm believer in letting folk do what they are good at. I don’t do any book keeping, banking or accounting because I have absolutely no head for numbers, absolutely NO clue whatsoever so I leave that stuff to professionals as I do web site stuff and lots of other things. Now when it comes to reinventing a bonsai tree there is only ONE place to be and that’s 40 minutes up the Norfolk coast and so it was I dropped this pine off on my unsuspecting mate last autumn.

I can’t imagine anything worse than having to create a bonsai tree from another artists work for that very same artist. Especially when you know it’s all going to end up online for the world to see in glorious Technicolour. That’s pressure right there but thankfully my raffish mate has a cast iron work ethic, a thick skin and’s not really that bothered what the hell I think. But then I did tell him to do whatever he wanted with my long suffering scotty.

As anyone who has had a tree worked by Kev’ will know, chances are when you get it back it’ll be tipped up on it’s side. No1 item on the agenda is finding the best trunk line and inclination. After that it’s just the technicalities of how to get the branches in the right place and with a good trunk line that’s usually pretty easy. But, this tree has a problem, one I failed to deal with decades ago and now I have no choice but to bite the bullet.

Now when I first got this tree it was recently collected and I vaguely remember it was a planted in a long thin wooden box that was about a foot square and four feet long. It had been growing in a crack and had a long V shaped rootball with a good couple of feet folded back on itself. The growth was pretty much non existent. Come August Rammon helped me get it out of the box with the intention of sorting out the roots but that long hard V shaped root ‘ball’ was rock solid and mostly composed of wood in the form of big thick roots. The only live root ends I could find were insufficient to fill a teaspoon. I was entirely disgusted with the whole affair and intended dropping it in the bin but Rammon was insistent we give it a chance and so we broke up the rootball as best we could, cut away a load of dead suff, shortened it all as much as seemed safe and stuck it in a plastic pot with all that ugly wood just squeezed into the rectangular pot corner to corner. Miraculously it survived obvs.

So, as soon as I got the restyled tree back for Kevin my heart sank because I could see there was no chance of potting it at the appropriate inclination. Come last weekend and with buds extending i decided to bite the bullet. I would not normally repot a newly styled tree and I certainly would not recommend it but over the years I learned a few things that make a difference and create possibilities where there was none. Sometimes we just have to pull on the big boy pants and step up. Back in the day I would have done this without thinking but nowadays I don’t kill trees because I learned the finer points and have ‘developed my palate’ somewhat.

In conclusion working together, with someone of weight and experience really is the only way to create special bonsai trees worthy of the title. However finding that person’s not easy and if you are lucky and find one in you life hang onto them for all you are worth. Just last week my one and only bike riding mate of fairly recent acquaintance dropped dead on the way to a football match. Never even made it into an ambulance and I am totally heartbroken to have lost such a lovely positive and special friend.

Keep it real folks! Who knows what is just around the corner.

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Open Your Eyes!

My job has, over the years, developed into something more of a lifestyle than just being what I do to pay the bills. Part of that job these days entails putting myself into the public domain. For a socially retarded carrot cruncher from deepest Norfolk with a bit of an attitude and an old school opinion on everything that’s definitely not a comfortable place to be. I get a lot of emails and telephone calls asking for advice on the cultivation of bonsai and many of those leave me dazed, confused, baffled and even angry. The level of ignorance often leaves me shouting at my screen though I do my utmost to help where I can.

“Open your eyes!“

Professionals everywhere, it appears, are often exasperated at the ignorance of their customers. I spend most Saturday afternoons loitering around my mates motorcycle workshop where the endless topic of conversation revolves around events of the proceeding week including great long and detailed recounting of, to us, hilarious tales of ignorance and stupidity. Sadly these days few folk understand the intricate workings of a motorcycle and as a result endanger themselves and those around them. When they come into the workshop for help my very experienced mate can tell instantly wether he is dealing with an experienced and knowledgeable rider bestowed with mechanical integrity or a total numpty. He and I both have an intolerance of fools.

Now before you go off on one let me say, we were all ignorant once and that’s okay. When I was little I wore nappies because I didn’t have sense not to crap myself. However in time I learned what to do, jettisoned the plastic pants and so these days I rarely crap myself. There’s no shame in ignorance, but to remain ignorant is largely unforgivable. These days there’s absolutely no reason to be in ignorance regarding much of anything at all. The internet places almost the entire canon of human knowledge and experience at our finger tips so how can anyone be in the dark about anything?

Of course the issue, as I have said many times before, is that we allow literally any WAF* to publish stuff online. Nobody has to prove their qualification, experience or understanding on a subject before they go posting their two penn’orth. Allow me the bandwidth to recount a tale I read once on a Jaguar (car) forum. The guy concerned had purchased a repossessed Jaguar from an auction. However he could not get it to run in anything other that limp home mode. This was a nice car in good nick, not an old beater. Having tried the obvious he started posting questions online and a whole host of what turned out to be WAF chipped in with their opinions.

This was, as much as it does not sound it, a fascinating example of my point and I sat here and read pages and pages of posts. Over time and at the behest of many armchair mechanics the guy started spending money on things like plugs, coil packs, sensors, fuel pumps, filters and an array of ‘black boxes’. This being a V8 there were a lot of parts and soon the bill reached several thousand pounds. Because nothing worked folk then started to question the quality of his replacement parts. After a year (yes seriously) he still had a limp home Jag’. Eventually he took it to the authorised Jaguar dealership in trepidation, expecting a bowel loosening bill at the end. An hour later the dealer called him and said it was all fixed. The bill was under a hundred quid. Simple fix, a new transponder in the key just needed matching to the cars security system. A moments job with a laptop. Because the car had been repossessed the bailiffs had towed the car without keys, they got new ones but never programmed the car to recognise them.

This illustrates the importance of two things……

1. Ask the right questions. (Spare us you opinions)

2. Ask the right people. ( Sizzle or sausage?)

Of course in our relative ignorance of a situation it’s not easy to hit these points. A little knowledge informs us that perhaps things just ain’t right but who to ask? Is a self proclaimed expert really an expert or just someone who talks a lot? Go into my mates bike shop and ask the wrong question and he might throw you out the door on your ear. A few weeks back a youngster came in on his little 125 and asked for a new tyre. When asked what size he said “ I don’t know, you got a tape measure, I’ll go measure it.” He got chucked out right there, no tyre and no explanation. That just proves ‘the customer’s always right‘ to be a crock of shite. My own approach to customer service and education is perhaps a little more generous…. sometimes.

Trying to keep your end up. Sounding smart, intelligent, informed, knowledgeable or experienced in front of a genuine expert is a fools errand and best avoided. My own approach is always to plead ignorance and ask for help. I then listen hard, accept and act accordingly. In many things I have a little experience but with the exception of bonsai and motorcycles i’m no expert, and even then I have more to learn than I currently know. In general experts are happy to share what they know when approached with respect. However phone a guy at 10pm when he’s half cut and start spouting off about what you know and who you know and how brilliant you are or waste an hour of a guys time right when he’s insanely busy and you can justifiably expect a metaphorical bleeding earhole.

I could go on about this ALL day. These things ARE important but sadly ‘social’ media has given a lot of folk a sense of entitlement when approaching knowledgeable folk. Seeing as it takes a minimum of 10,000 hours relentless practice to master even a simple discipline we should respect folk who have put in the hours and be very grateful for any help. Keep questions short and to the point, refrain from trying to ingratiate oneself into favour and listen to the answer. Then offer sincere thanks, be polite and finally offer to send lots of free money. Experts have spent a lot of their lives learning through great effort and sacrifice and it’s the height of disrespect to simply expect to receive the benefit of their hard earned wisdom just because you feel entitled and that’s all I have to say about that.

So in relation to helping folk ask the right question of their chosen expert, and this relates to most things……

Open Your Eyes!

Let me offer the following example. It’s early spring and today is sunny and warm, the first day of the year to be so. Walking amongst my trees at first light today I noticed something about all the scots pines (pinus sylvestris). Some are still asleep, some are waking up and some are romping away. Thankfully none are dead! So why are the trees all at different stages considering they are all outside in the same yard? Overall the answer is VIGOUR. A strong tree will be raring to go in spring and with all it’s ducks in a row will begin growth early but the old tired sad sack of a tree that’s been neglected or abused will not.

My advice has always been do not go to the internet for answers before you Open Your Eyes! See what you are looking at and think it through. For this you need some peace and quiet both externally and internally. That’s why I was outside at 5am and that’s why I smoke stogies. Some significant skills lacking in a few folk I speak to are focus and an ability to shut up. Put simply there is just too much noise out there. To make great bonsai we need focus, focus, focus, quiet, quiet and more quiet. A lot of the time we instinctively know the answers we seek but learning to extricate what we need is, yet again, something we have to learn by working at it.

So here are a series of photographs, all taken this morning, of scots pines in my garden. I have put a few notes alongside each to explain what’s to see. Notice these go from absolutely no movement whatsoever to displaying significant early season growth.

Enjoy!

Further hints and tips on pine cultivation……

* WAF – Wind assisted f***wit

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Great British Bonsai

Over the last few years I have been buying up a lot of bonsai collections. As a result I have obtained some previously unknown or unseen Great British Bonsai. Typically when that happens I buy everything, we buy live trees, a few dead ones, the benches, old pots, tools, books lock stock the f***** lot. This makes folk very happy to know that what is often decades of their hard work is assured a good future. I don’t sell these trees to just anyone, in fact I mostly don’t sell them at all. It’s sad when we have to part with our trees but that’s life, in the end we leave it all behind.

Sometimes folk have left it a bit too long and some of the trees can be in less than perfect condition, sadly on occasions they are hanging by a thread. These days I spend a great deal of my time restoring and rehabilitating these old soldiers. I have always said that in order to produce significant bonsai long term one must be a gardener first and foremost. You’ll never show if you can’t grow. It’s impossible to create a bonsai tree from a plant that is not growing vigorously no matter how skilful one might be with the wire. Thankfully over the last 40 odd years I have honed my gardening skills somewhat. Within the constraints of the British climate I can grow most anything these days.

The great thing about collections is the discovery of interesting and unusual varieties and bonsai that sometimes have an interesting or long history. I have some very odd plants in my garden and even though they may not be classical beauties I love them. Often the original owners don’t know what they are. 2022 I bought what I was told (and thought) was a massive cascade juniper with strange coarse foliage. This had been in the hands of a gentleman since the 1970s. Nobody who visited could place it but just last week, after it had been here a couple of years I suddenly realised it was cupressus, as in a variety of Italian cypress. Sometimes I’m really slow.

Not all collections are tired, some are simply amazing. I recently acquired a pair of absolutely stunning Japanese larch, collected in the highlands over 40 years ago along with some old collected Scottys. Most of you hopefully saw the old twin trunk larch growing out of a rock I potted recently and there are a whole host of other amazing old bits here that hopefully I can introduce ya’ll to as time goes on.

Unlike some parts of the world, bonsai is a fairly recent introduction to our country. Bonsai may pop up around the periphery of British history prior to the 1970s but these were little more than glimpses of oriental culture and curiosity. Back when I started bonsai there were a few books and Colin Lewis had not long since begun publishing Bonsai Magazine here. A far cry from today indeed. There were few professional bonsai artists working in GB back then and a bonsai show was typically a niche event hosted by a fledgling bonsai club within the confines of a larger horticultural event….with very limited exceptions.

Let me interject with something i’m pretty sure I have recounted here before about Mr Doubleday. He was the first person that I met in the bonsai world and inspired me to take up my life’s work. A third generation nurseryman who produced roses from his little nursery on Walnut Hill, deepest Norfolk. He lived in a caravan without electricity, wore tweed, a brown felt hat and hobnail boots and had hands like ancient gnarled branches. His father had seen bonsai in the far east during the war and decades lated Mr D was still practicing the art. Andrew had trees he and his father cultivated together from the end of the 1940’s. I still have a couple of those trees but I can be sure nobody but a couple of local old hacks and I might know him. Mr D would be well up in his nineties by now assuming he’s still about but a little of his work lives on here.

The Trees Apprentice

In my experience bonsai clubs typically frowned upon “check book bonsai”. My own local club banned showing any tree one had simply purchased. Hoping to encourage home grown talent though with limited learning opportunities i’m not sure how that was supposed to work. That’s all a little bit off IMHO.

As I have said many times, when buying a bonsai tree or raw material all one is doing is shortening the timeframe involved. Now if you buy something nice it’s not right to go and claim credit for the work that went into producing it but one can be happy with the pride of ownership. If after several years one has significantly improved your charge then a degree of credit can legitimately be claimed. I often wondered what my club hoped to do with those rules. In the end it largely discouraged good bonsai and ensured mediocrity and might go some way to explain how membership fell from 70/80 in the early 2000s to a typical attendance these days in single figures but I digress.

With very few notable exceptions there were few ‘names‘ producing great bonsai back in the day. In time some  trees did get here from Japan but mostly finding something special was akin to a blind squirrel looking for nuts, one had to get lucky. And so, we have very few trees from the dark ages* that one might perhaps call heritage bonsai or some such. In the past I have owned some famous bonsai like the yew that launched Kevin Willson’s bonsai career commonly known as ‘The Upright’, I also owned ‘The Bow’ and stupidly sold both. Now I am older I think differently but then I am not broke like I was back then which makes all the difference. I sold both these for practically no money because I failed to realise perhaps just what I had even though both were a little tired at the time.

So, whilst big names with big impressive trees were somewhat scarce in blighty back in the day there was an absolute army of enthusiasts and hobbyists alike scouring every corner to find good bonsai material. Thankfully some of those guys persevered over many decades and as it turned out, produced some pretty good, dare I say Great British Bonsai. Lucky SOB that I am a few are residing upon my benches as I sit here. Some need help but others are special and unique and need a little respect for being simply amazing even if they don’t conform to what some folk think a bonsai should be or look like.

It’s no secret I am a total car crash when it comes to dealing with people. My social skills are by and large non existent. Just a couple of days ago I took Catherine grocery shopping (first time in years) and got a right bollocking simply for getting something out of a chiller cabinet in the wrong (and inconsiderate) way. It’s a long story I would rather not go into. I am utterly hopeless, clueless and entirely feckless with absolutely NO understanding of how these things work. By and large I prefer my own company and work hard at avoiding social contact because I am so bad at it my head hurts. I don’t hate people I just don’t get how it all works and so usually end up with my foot in my mouth. I have tried very hard but Catherine says I ‘just don’t get it’. Apparently i’m too ‘task orientated‘ whatever that is.

So with other folk not exactly big on my radar I find it a little strange to be thinking about the people who’s work I now have entrusted to me. I have been thinking a lot about what little bonsai legacy we have in GB and how to both raise awareness and respect for the old bonsai we do have. Do we have a moral, social or ethical responsibility to keep the history of our trees and the memory of their creators in our sights? I am finding this new dimension to bonsai I never had before but is that just because i’m getting on a bit or getting soppy in my old age? Should we treat these old bonsai with deference and give respect to their former owners? Or perhaps we forget all that touchy feely crap and just bulldoze over our forbears in the interest of self-aggrandisement.

For once I don’t have an answer but, dear reader, I would like to know your CAREFULLY CONSIDERED thoughts.

I would also like to see any OLD (50 years +) Great British Bonsai trees you might have in your care and hear their stories. I would also be interested in the possibility of purchasing some of those trees if possible. Either way please email me stories and pictures to – [email protected].

By way of introduction to one of these old bonsai I have put together this little repotting video of a scots pine that came to reside here last summer. Grown from seed around the end of the late 1970’s I think this is going to be a special tree once I get it back on track. Here you can see the first step in that restoration/refinement process. My No1 rule is always roots first.

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thought on Great British Bonsai

Enjoy.

Graham.

* By which I mean prior to the late 1970s.

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It’s Time To Relax a Little

Bonsai takes time and lots of it.

A great deal of water has passed under the bridge of life since I purchased my first bonsai, a serissa, to stand on the side of my little koi pond. On occasions I ruminate over all that time passed, about thirty five years I guess. The trees that came and went, the stupid ideas I grew out of, the bonsai I made, the trees I killed, the people I have met, journeys undertaken, the friends I made and some I have sadly lost. I have reached an age where I have more to look back upon than I have going forward. I have aged parents, grand-babies, everything is paid for and so I guess life is good so long as I focus on the positives which is hard for me.

I got a slow start in life. I remember my school teachers telling my parents ‘Graham is sharp as a whip but he just will not apply himself‘. Every school report noted ‘Can do better!’ ‘Must try harder‘ or some such. I unofficially left school at 15, I figured out how to register my attendance then bunk off for the remainder of the day. Nobody noticed I was missing. I just turned up for woodwork and test days, the rest of the time I was AWOL. Nobody at school, except my woodwork teacher, managed to get through to me exactly what i was doing there. I just could not see the point.

When I officially left school at 16 I had nothing to do and nowhere to go. I didn’t know how to get a job or even what jobs there were to do. I did a bit of part time (floor) cleaning at a store and spent my time (more than three years) applying to be a postie because it looked like an easy job to me. On my own, walking the streets, poking mail into doors, how hard can that be? They never even wrote me back….or maybe the letter got lost 😉

So, age 17 I spent my last £150 savings and put it into a part share of an old printing press. I spent a year learning to work the beast and the rest is history, I spent 21 years full time in the printing trade. Eventually that got in the way of my bonsai and so the stark choice was to stay put in a cushty job with decent pay and good security or launch myself into thin air. Against all advice and with every nerve screaming at me to stop I walked out of my job into nothing. Long story short, thanks to all the lovely people in the bonsai community I did not loose everything, we didn’t starve, we’re still here. Thank you all so much, my little family is eternally grateful.

Don’t…….DON’T, for a moment think it was easy. At times the pressure and stress was so great I thought I was going to have a stroke or something and I know about that having been hospitalised for life threatening problems related to work stress. At times I have been close to running my bike into a tree. Just living in GB today, trying to make a living makes me feel that way. But now I am older I find myself focusing more on what’s right than what’s wrong.

Sure there is a lot wrong in society today and as we get older that seems much more threatening than when we were younger but, on the other hand there’s a lot to be thankful for. My glass may well have been half empty for most of my time here but at least it wasn’t empty right?

I have written many times about the value of spending quiet time with our trees. Back in the day I would often be found out in my garden at 2am. Over the past few years I got out of that habit because basically all I was doing was stacking up trees to sell, over 1500 trees were going through my hands annually and everything was for sale. Eventually I just lost my way in it all. Today, thankfully, things have changed for the better. I now no longer sell trees, or at least not many and thanks to the efforts of my close friends, not least of all Kevin W I am back doing bonsai and rediscovering what I lost.

These days I can be found out in my garden at first light, expresso in one hand and a small cigar in the other just looking, listening and feeling. The peace and quiet can be magical, nature is so expressive and engrossing if we can shut up long enough to hear. I’m sure this is news to no one but the things I am seeing and hearing are simply amazing. I have been insanely busy 24/7 for so many years but now I begin to realise a great deal of that pressure was self inflicted. Don’t worry, i’m not about to do something daft like take a vacation, after all everything I want in the world is right here at home but I do see a chance to stop and smell the roses.

This very (cold) morning I was outside at 5am accoutrement in hand and noticed this monster elm. I bought this in Southern Italy back in 2018. Back then it was in a massive tub nearly four feet wide. The previous owner had roughed it out and it arrived in my garden as can be seen in the image below.

Thankfully I never offered it for sale. Since then all I did was sort out the roots and pot it. Each summer I run over it with scissors a couple of times. My intention being to create enough material to justify a winter styling session. Largely I just ignore the old thing but maybe that’s not so bad right?

My regular readers will be aware I have been gathering up a lot of very old British bonsai over the last year or so. Doing so has significantly changed my mind about a great deal of the ‘bonsai’ I was doing. Having so many trees that have been bonsai for many decades, many of which were created in ways different to those we take for granted today has left me questioning a lot of the things we “do“.

I have a very exacting standard and a high bar for what I personally consider to be ‘bonsai’. However, recently I have begun to realise the magic we seek is something that comes from a mixture of nature and time rather than just our skill, we need both on our side. For many years I have been of the opinion that a lot of bonsai we do should in fact not be ‘done‘ at all. I’m now beginning to realise we have to find the balance between making bonsai and letting ‘bonsai’ happen. This elm is a great illustration of that principle. Very often trees that are just left alone with the minimum of interference can develop into very special bonsai trees.

In the early days I was led to believe we could ‘age‘ a tree but that’s utter bollocks. Time ages a tree and on occasions something very special and unexpected can turn up seemingly by magic.

Going back to my more recent posts here, our particular lack of bonsai heritage and old British bonsai trees can’t help. For a start finding an old tree that’s been left to the passage of time is hard, most are either beyond help or deceased. The big issue is achieving the balance between doing enough to keep a tree happy and healthy but not doing so much that we spoil the enchantment passing time has left. Time can give bonsai a cloak of magic that we simply cannot make but we sure as hell can wreck.

This big old elm is very far from what I had intended to do and it’s far from being bonsai but I thought it was a good example of what can happen with the minimal amount of interference from me. It appears we often put too much pressure on ourselves for a multitude of reasons. Pressure can be a good thing but just as easily it can be destructive. I have put immense pressure on myself, my family and my bonsai for far too long to the detriment of all. Time to live life at a trees pace not our own, after all a decade to a tree is nothing.

Sadly that seems to be the story of our time and we are all the worse for it. Do more, get more, be more, go further, take it to the next level etc’ be dammed! I can’t believe I am saying this but perhaps it’s time to relax a little, take the pressure off and give our trees a break. You never know they just might teach us all something valuable right?

Graham.

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Juniper Pruning Video Available Now

Apologies for the recent silence but I have been working on this Juniper pruning video for weeks now. But then the weather here has been atrocious and going outside has been largely unadvisable so it all worked out.

This beautiful juniper came to live earlier in the year. A tree with history created by Harry Nicholl who might be a name familiar to those who were around bonsai back in the nineties or those living north of the border.

Harry’s juniper was not exactly like anything I have had before and so a slightly different approach was called for. I was very keen to only enhance what the trees creator had passed to me because I respect his 30 or 40 odd years of effort and work.

With a tree like this there can be a tendency to rubbish what was done before, storm in and turn the thing on it’s head, put one’s ‘stamp‘ on it or ‘take it to another level’ (God forbid). However doing that is not about the bonsai, that’s all about folk trying to look good or earn.

I know that in general folk believe science and technology will save us and provide the progress our species so desperately needs. How’s that going? Personally i tend to think most of the answers we need are not in the future but in the past. I include bonsai within that, most of what we need to know is to be found behind us. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep our noses firmly pressed against the windscreen (windshield) of progress, I just think we should spend a greater proportion of our time learning and mastering the basics and paying respect to those who came before prior to blasting off all over the place like some ‘Johnny come lately’. I may have been guilty of that in the past, please forgive me!

There is all the difference in the world between knowing ‘about’ something and actually knowing that thing as an instinctive part of our being. For example, after 45 years riding motorcycles I can accomplish some pretty amazing feats on two wheels*. However were I to square up to a master like Guy Martin I would appear to be a complete and utter fool.

I like to keep in mind those who came before, who mastered skills and aced life. Knowing what they know, what do they think of me or what i’m doing?

I have grandkids now and they seem kind of dumb sometimes but when you are 1 or 4 what do you know? It’s for old scrotes like me to clear the way, support, protect and make their growing up and learning the best it can possibly be. I know they will think grandads a dumbass with all his silly little trees but long after I am gone and they are my age those memories of playing amongst the trees or mixing soil in the greenhouse will be absolute gold to them just as the memories of my own grandparents are to me now.

There are some very skilled people in British bonsai, they may not be all over social media or travelling the world but many have a deep understanding of bonsai that can only be gained by decades of experience. Most youngsters cannot possibly hope to know what us old buggers do, simply because we have put in the hours and lived the years. Like we had any choice…….

Let’s make things a little better by paying our respects to those who laid the path for us when we were young and dumb!

G.

* Relative to being an ageing old fart.

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Graham Potter’s Big Weekend.

First up let me apologise for the lack of posts recently. Summer’s a funny time here for many reasons and this one has been unusually funny (not) for all the wrong reasons. My trees started off the year raring to go and by end of February buds were breaking left and right. Then by the time we got to May (which is our most significant period of activity in the growing of bonsai here on the east coast) the temperatures were colder than February and we didn’t see blue sky for weeks whilst enduring biting northeasterly winds right off the cold North sea that tore the skin off anything daft enough to assume it was actually time to start growing. It was actually mid-June before we experienced a warm day here…..honestly.

In 35+ years of growing bonsai this summer has been the absolute worst I can remember. I have a big magnolia outside my window and it flowers faithfully every April. This year the wind tore it to shreds and now here we are in September and it’s covered in flowers. The wisteria growing up the back garden wall flowered in August whilst Satsuki azaleas were flowering in April. The last month has been alternatively hot with vicious drying winds one day and cold the next and no rain for weeks. Catherine had the heating on at the beginning of the month.

As a result all my carefully laid plans for the season have gone to shit…. much like the rest of the country but don’t get me started on that. However some trees have responded very positively to low temperatures and very little sun. I have rarely seen so much growth on my junipers. Larch also have been simply outstanding. Most high mountain species have been really good, maples have been average but most others have been lacklustre at best. It’s been necessary to change a lot of the care regimen we use for our bonsai this year in order to help the struggling pants do what little they could.

I am often asked what’s my favourite species for bonsai? That’s an easy one….. scots pine. Were I limited to one species or one tree that’s what it would be. Nothing in life is more reliable than a scots pine and if that’s all that were in my collection I would still be a happy man.

Regular visitors here will remember the little pine I worked with Kevin Willson last year. In case you missed it see….

Graham & Kevin Willson’s First Bonsai Creation Collaboration

We worked this old scots last October for the first time. Apart from my TLC and a serious re-pot in 2019 nothing was done in a styling context. It’s my conviction that success in bonsai is all about patient preparation and here is the proof.

A Bonsai Wrestling Match

This coming weekend I have been asked by Peter Chan to exhibit a tree at Herons Bonsai. Something of a milestone for me as I remember visiting Peter’s nursery the thick end of 40 years ago as a spotty clueless youth with my pockets turned out. To be asked to join a stellar cast of other talented bonsai folk from around the UK in presenting a few decent trees for me is a bit special.

I was invited to Herons last year. I knew I had arrived when at 2am after a long evening of excess I was to be found in the kitchen of Peter’s guest house drinking strong coffee whilst Kevin made hot buttered toast for us both. Funny the things that you remember!

So I am not too sure what’s going on this weekend but I will be there with me ol’ scots. I’m sure if you contact Herons they will fill you in with the details. Kevin and I got together and gave the tree a little polish recently and I have to say, despite the weather and some ham fisted work on my part the tree is looking pretty good, especially considering this is ‘first work’. It’s entirely likely this tree is several hundred years old but has the strength and vigour of a seedling. If only I could say the same! Now, where’s my Hawaiian shirt 🙂

G.

 

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Getting Out and About

I have to say I was somewhat uncomfortable dragging my old ass and a van load of trees down to Herons last weekend. I rarely leave home these days and once I get outside my little part of Norfolk & north Suffolk I get the jitters. Being on the M25 sees me break out in hives. Still, in a moment of weakness I promised to support Kevin Willson who pulled us all together for the event. It seemed like a good idea months ago but less so as the day arrived but i’m not one to let a brother down.

Despite my innate fear of large groups it was my job to tough it out and do my utmost to be friendly and sociable. I’m so out of my depth at these kind of things it’s painful. But everyone pulled together and put on a fantastic event that was sold out. The aim was to raise £5k for charity which i’m pleased to say we did. To the best of my knowledge I avoided pissing anyone off and so I guess the weekend was a great success.

I have to thank Peter, Kevin and all the crew at Herons for all their hard work. Also my fellow exhibitors who turned out some beautiful bonsai trees and a fine display. Whilst it may have been small it was exceptional in quality and the best I have seen in the UK. Once I got over myself it turned out to be a very memorable weekend. You’ll find lots more about the event on socials i’m sure. I didn’t take a single photo, i just forgot so here are some I trawled off FB. If any of these are your photos and you would like a credit please post a comment.

Ipswich Bonsai Society Demonstration.

It’s now Wednesday and my head has finally cleared. Bonsai folk are champion drinkers 😉 It’s now time to start getting ready for my next trip, this time just down the road to Ipswich, well within my comfort zone.

This Friday evening I have a demonstration at Ipswich Bonsai Society. I’ll be discussing the process of building bonsai trees, in particular scots pines. The focus will be on the long term work required to build a bonsai tree from raw material. Most folk rely on wire to keep their scots looking good but it’s entirely possible to create a densely ramified and self supporting tree over time providing we understand the process and plan it all out well in advance. So if pines leave you scratching your head in bewilderment might I suggest ya’ll come along and hopefully I can explain. I know this friendly bunch of folk will be thrilled to see new faces.

Graham.

 

 

 

 

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The Summer That Was (not) & Upcoming Bonsai Projects

It NEVER ceases to amaze me how you lovely folk are (generally) so impressed with with my silly little blog. I was humbled during my recent visit to Peter Chan’s to receive so many comments on how my dear readers just love to peruse my ranting bullshit.

This all started about 1998/9 when I took on the newsletter at our local bonsai club. Back then I didn’t know shit about shit as far as bonsai was concerned but, having got my little Bondi blue Imac hooked up to the interweb via a telephone modem I figured I could do my research and compile enough, what we now call ‘content’ to fill a page or two every month.

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Stop ‘Doing‘ Bonsai!

Not a phrase I bet you were expecting to hear from me right? My mum always called me Tommy Opposite because I was such a belligerent and awkward little bastard incapable of doing what I was told. Every school report had words scrawled across it that amounted to “Graham can do this shit standing on his head but the awkward little cuss just WONT!” I might have mentioned that before.

Now, I’m a working class lad. My dad dug holes and put gas mains in them for a living, my grandparents owned a village shop and butchers (Open All Hours style) whilst the Potter elders were respectively in the merchant navy and nan was a scullery maid at a big country house. My mum worked in the library which made her a bit posh, having attended a grammar school she could actually read. Back in the late 1950s my dad was thrilled to be marrying up the ladder, Grandad owned a TV, a car AND….. a bathroom whilst dad grew up without indoor plumbing and rode a bike.

When I was 11 going on 12 I lied to the man who owned the local newsagents telling him I was 13 and got my first job delivering papers. I had a dirty grey canvas bag with about forty papers in it that weighed nearly as much as I did and went wobbling down the road at 7am every day on me bike. We didn’t have health and safety back then, or minimum wage, I was getting £1.50 odd a week. Saturday I had to collect the money from my customers, with a little red accounting book and stubby pencil. I did that round every single day except Christmas, NO MATTER what the weather and never lost a penny or missed a single delivery.

Imagine giving a job like that to some of todays affected teenagers never mind twelve year olds. It made me! I have worked every single day since unless I was sick, broken or in hospital and loved every minute of it. The only time I am not happy in life is when I am not working, or stuck in front of a screen.

I like to work and I think work is important. Where I come from a man is what he does, the men in my life have always been defined by what they do. There’s honour in real work and it brings both respect and fulfilment. There are people who walk the walk and then there are those who talk the walk but actually are full of you know what. It seems to me we have a lot of those second kind’a folk these days and sadly too many of them are in charge. Working folk can no longer function properly but today i’m going to leave that particular subject.

The problem, it seems to me, is we have too many folk telling us all how it is done but very few actually doing the work. Starmer’s dad may well have owned a company that made stuff but, and I’m guessing here, I very much doubt the old fella could take a little bar of high speed steel and turn out a functioning tool…….. but then again……… i’m sure you can fill in the blanks here right? *

Unfortunately being Tommy Opposite I don’t cope well with being told what to do, particularly when ignorant folk are doing the telling. The reason I thought school was such a pointless exercise, for me, was simply not a single person could convince me it was particularly important to my own prospects. Once I got past the basics the rest seemed like self perpetuating claptrap. Growing up I knew quite a few very successful local characters who made a lot of money and most couldn’t even read. So age 15 I ducked out of school for good. I may well be wrong here, this may be a stupid approach but at age 15 I set my journey in motion much like the little bonsai tree we’ll get onto later.

Now years later I can say, with a single exception I got every job I was ever interviewed for. In fact I turned down more job offers than I accepted and now in my advanced years I can hand on heart say I have never once been asked for my exam results. I know it’s different today, it’s difficult for a bright hard working lad to get on but that’s only because we put toolmakers (tools) in charge for far too long now. Folk educated beyond their intellectual capacity with cookie cutter brains trying to form all of us into their image. These days one needs a degree just to shovel shit or mop up. I’m SO glad I’m on this end of life and not starting out again. Maybe one day I’ll expand on this particular modern scourge but that’s not today y’all be glad to know.

I have said here, multiple times, plough you own furrow, go your own way, follow your heart. Seems to me the folk who get the most done in life are often mavericks by which I mean folk who follow their own rules. Think, study, meditate and learn every aspect relating to what you are doing whilst drowning oneself in activity, remember everything and learn from then, given sufficient time, experience will lead to confidence and understanding which I believe is what we call success. Success is obviously relative but that depends upon what metric we apply. Accumulation of money is not always a great indicator of success. History is full of people who acquired great wealth before going off the rails or turning into despots.

Now i’m 60 I have a lot of shit. House ✔️ Business ✔️ Family ✔️ Grandkids ✔️ Cars ✔️ Bonsai Trees ✔️ A stable of bikes ✔️ Koi ✔️ Good knives ✔️ A big garden✔️ and so on. Does that make me successful? I don’t think so, it makes me comfortable but being comfortable is only really important when I need to sleep, not something I do much of. To me the only marker of success I care about is doing a good job. That does not mean I do the best job ever or to use a Trump-ism ‘the best anyone has ever seen… ever’. It’s about doing the best that I can. Nobody but me knows if, after applying myself to a particular task, I left anything on the table.

Back when I was a teenager I didn’t know how to get a job. School’s careers adviser had nothing for me. The job centre didn’t have any in 1980 and so I bought a printing press, as you do, a big heavy lumbering metal machine from the 1960s. I installed it in my Dad’s shed and armed with nothing more that a 20 page Quarto (8″x10″) instruction manual I proceeded to screw up paper and get ink in all the wrong places until I mastered the bastard thing. About eighteen months later I got my first full time job as a press minder before going on to teach myself every single machine in the place. That put food on the table for the next 21 years. Everyone else had to do a six year apprenticeship on piss-poor money. Not me I went right in on full pay. All I had to do was show the boss what I could do and they locked me in.

I figure we all start life at zero with a pack of seeds, some cultivate the little ones, others the yellow ones, some the big ones etc’. How that goes depends upon many factors, often beyond our control. Some folk have better seeds, some have better growing conditions, more help or greater opportunity and we all need a little luck and a fair wind. Overall our own degree of success tends to pivot upon the amount of effort we put in, what we are prepared to sacrifice, and how readily we retain and use learnt information whilst simultaneously using experience to dispose of irrelevant or erroneous thinking.

I don’t suppose I will ever get an MBE for services to bonsai but then other than you and I few folk give shit about little trees, so long as I do the best I can i’ll go to my grave happy. Besides I don’t give a crap what those folk think. If Charles called me up to tell me “come get your gong” my retort would be along the lines of… not going into Khan town, pop it in the post mate!

So what ‘nearth’s  this got to do with bonsai, and in particular this sorry looking little Acer deshojo?

Stop ‘Doing’ Bonsai!

This little Japanese import came my way as part of a messy deal including a bunch of swops back in 2018. It has always seemed to me some trees are destined to be passed around endlessly. In my experience this seems to happen with folk who are basically ambitious but have a high degree of fecklessness. The trees usually come in with good basic bones, the start of a nebari, some half decent bark and hastily grown branches. This allows them to be pretty cheap for what you get but they are, in reality a very long way from being bonsai. With leaves on they do a passable job of fooling the uninitiated (being a triangle on a stick) and of course this variety always wows folk with it’s crazy colour leaves in spring.

Over the years I have bought a lot of trees in this category. The trouble is our ambitious owner probably bought it because it was what ‘looked’ like a nice bonsai, the right variety and a bargain price. However once our mates see it or it goes on socials it’ll get torn apart for all it’s ugly faults and coarseness. Therefor our owner starts chopping, bending and battering the tree until it’s, frankly, much worse. But, because it’s a popular variety folk lower down the food chain are forever keen to purchase it for their collection. So the owner, by now realises the tree was not such a bargain after all, given how long the development’s going to take,  and passes it on to another ham-fister and so it goes on until, mysteriously it ‘just died’ one winter. Truth be known it’s little light was snuffed out by, excuse me…. fuckwits following many years of abuse and battery.

So what’s to do? First up I have to ask, why on earth would you put this in a Bryan Albright pot? This tree needs a decade of development, that tiny pot and UK weather pretty much guarantees no real progress at best. My rule is never mess with a tree until you have owned it for a full calendar year. This gives time to determine what you’re dealing with. The picture above shows the tree after a full summers growth. Pretty poor right? So, I sold the pot which recovered most of my outlay. The following spring I bare rooted it, cut back really hard top and bottom then put it in a big pot twice as deep and four time the size of this one.

Result? A year after the picture (2019) it had 18″ of growth all over. That was pruned in autumn and then the following summer (2020) it was defoliated and wired completely. Subsequent growth was stopped at one or two nodes and that’s all I do now. Deshojo are notoriously slow to grow, develop, ramify or bulk up in Blighty. A green leaf maple might well develop at twice the pace here. So here’s the tree right after leaf drop a few days ago.

Ultimately two factors have resulted in this improvement. First up has to be a plan. I know what these trees are capable of (not a great deal) and so i plan to make the most progress I can each year. Second factor and relevant to my earlier diatribe is the ability to do nothing. Not easy for me, I like to work, I like to be busy, hands on. Trouble is often in bonsai we have to know when to walk away, when to stop and when to just leave alone. Every time I hear about folk ‘doing‘ bonsai I cringe. For sure at some point we have to take charge but I see some very heavy handed work performed far too often.

When I got this maple it was obviously not happy. Right there I made a simple plan. That was to improve the vigour which ensures a strong response to later works. Once that was done I set the bones in place for it’s future. After that all I have to do is let nature take it’s course and keep it healthy. I recon bonsai’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s certainly not about impressing others, it’s not about making us popular or prosperous. Bonsai is all about the tree, it’s about working with nature and the nature of the tree to allow them to thrive and flourish. Once that happens likely the tree will be it’s own unique shade of beautiful. In this case my ten year plan included several years of doing virtually nothing. Sure we’re still building structure and refinement but since I got this, all told it owes me less that about three hours. Where I come from that’s me doing nothing.

If you are ‘doing’ bonsai make sure what you are doing is part of a long term plan to help the tree flourish and be beautiful in it’s own unique way. Accentuate the trees strengths and best features and for the lesser parts dilute those that cant be fixed into a natural and harmonious whole. Work for it’s own sake, ticking boxes or hitting our bullet points makes no sense. For instance this tree has had no ‘autumn pruning’. It got a piece of wire and I have a cut to do in spring, anything more is pointless. Like everyone around me keeps saying I need to learn to stop, take it a bit easy, smell the flowers etc’. Trust me I know that’s not easy but here we have the highest form of bonsai. That’s when a tree teaches us how to achieve and enjoy a better life. Man and bonsai in harmony. What’s wrong with that?

We’ll come back to this little maple in the future but for now thanks for you attention. Remember to like, subscribe and share etc’

I’m off to not do some bonsai, thought I might try my had at making some tools;-) Sweet dreams folks!

Graham Potter

November 2024

 

*Just for the record here is the definition of a tool maker courtesy of Wikipedia.

Tool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing industries. Tool and die makers work primarily in toolroom environments—sometimes literally in one room but more often in an environment with flexible, semipermeable boundaries from production work. They are skilled artisans (craftspeople) who typically learn their trade through a combination of academic coursework and with substantial period of on-the-job training that is functionally an apprenticeship. They make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools, gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes.

Working from engineering drawings developed by the toolmaker, engineers or technologists, tool makers lay out the design on the raw material (usually metal), then cut it to size and shape using manually controlled machine tools (such as lathes, milling machines, grinding machines, and jig grinders), power tools (such as die grinders and rotary tools), and hand tools (such as files and honing stones).

Art and science (specifically, applied science) are thoroughly intermixed in their work, since they’re also in engineering. Manufacturing engineers and tool and die makers often work in close consultation as part of a manufacturing engineering team. 

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2024 Milestones & Bonsai Videos

With Christmas madness about to descend upon us all I guess it’s that time of year when tossers like me who conceitedly write blogs have to take stock of the year all but passed. 2024 was a year of milestones and some bonsai videos too. Growing up my family weren’t ones for making a fuss, birthdays, Christmas etc’ would come and go with relatively little fanfare. So forgive me for not being overly effusive but it seems appropriate to at least mention a few significant milestones that both I and we here at KB passed over the last year.

I have never been one for celebrations but seeing as I passed the grand old age of 60 in September I thought it would be nice for once to stage a celebration with my besties. However by the time the day arrived I had scaled back my plans to virtually nothing and so mostly the family got together for the evening and that was pretty much that. My first birthday celebration since I was a kid!

Another big mile stone that went by without a thought was the 20th anniversary of my full time employment by Kaizen Bonsai. YES it’s now more than 20 years since we bought Colin Lewis’s Bonsai Mart and dear God has that been an experience. Looking on the bright side we are still here, just about. Hanging on by the skin of what few teeth I have left thanks to the British, so called, ‘government‘ rogering us with a toilet brush every time we try to do something. Back when we started it was so much easier but nowadays the price of everything makes my eyes water and the margins are just too small. I’m committed now so we have to carry on but if you were to ask me, as is traditional at these moments of reflection, if I would do it all again my reply would be “Absolutely not!”.

What would I have done 20 years ago assuming I knew then what I know now? Think Budd (Michael Madsen) from the film Kill Bill. My ideal life would be just that, less the ignominious end of course. I now know all I need is a shitty trailer home in the desert, a pickup truck and a Harley shovelhead, possibly a little dog with attitude and a shitty job. My sister went to the US back in her teens and never came back, it broke my mothers heart and I just couldn’t follow her but there’s rarely a day I don’t wish I had.

2024 was also the year I lost my mother-in-law, the mother of my first lady who I lost to the big-C thirty years ago. Whilst we were never close, she was a unique sort of person, her passing reunited me with Tina’s brother who I had not seen for decades. Shane’s reappearance has been a fantastic and enriching experience for the whole family, it’s like those intervening years never happened. This whole business and a funeral bought back some very powerful memories for me and what we had to endure back then and that’s all I have to say about that.

I have been exceptionally blessed this year to have acquired several large bonsai collections. Once upon a time these would have come and gone within weeks. However now that the movement of trees is more difficult than moving cocaine or illegals around I keep everything I get. For decades now every time a tree started to look good it was sold. As a result I have been denied the joy of seeing my bonsai develop and mature. Thankfully now that’s not the case and I’m able to make plans and develop my lovely bonsai without being concerned they might disappear at any moment. As it turns out I do have some skill and the trees are making sterling progress.

I was particularly excited to obtain the collection of Harry Nicholl. A stalwart of the Scottish bonsai scene for many decades. We met at a shitty motorway services on the A1 in the depth of winter and loaded his beautiful trees into my van. Whilst I only spent a half hour with Harry (in his eighties) I took to him instantly, what a lovely man. Imagine my horror when three months later I learned he had passed quite suddenly. I had been so looking forward to telephone conversations about the stories and techniques behind those trees. I don’t take to most people, folk scare the shit out of me and because I lack almost any social skills i’m best on my own. To meet a gentleman like Harry and instantly take to him, for me, never happens and I’m so sad he’s gone but I love his trees that I will cherish for the rest of my days.

Talking of being social…. This year I was equally pleased and apprehensive to be involved in Peter Chan’s Bonsai Journeys event in September. Were it not for Kevin Willson’s intervention I would NEVER have done something like that. In the end I had a great weekend, met some interesting folk and came away with a little more understanding of how you lovely folk appreciate what I do. It’s a bit odd to be held in high esteem by so many people and something i’m just not really aware of seeing as I don’t go out much these days so, thank you all so much and please, don’t be afraid to send me compliments at any time. Also please do pick up the phone once in a while, apparently it’s good to talk.

Other notable events in the last year include a second grand-baby Eveline (no 3 is in the oven). My 29th anniversary married to Catherine without whom I would be utterly useless. My parents 65 odd anniversary and its been 25 years since I first started working with Kevin Willson. Then just for good measure I lost a bunch of weight which has been utterly miserable and continues. Sadly something had to be done, too many good men have been lost in my life these last few years which makes you think. ALSO I was having trouble riding my sportier bikes so the gut just had to go. I’m much more interested in crafting the perfect high speed cornering manoeuvre than I am eating or drinking. Trouble is I’m still wearing all the same clothes so I look like a sack of shit tied up scruffy most of the time.

2024 presented bonsai growers with a shitstorm of weather, at least it did on the east coast. Hand on heart we did not have a warm day here until the latter part of June. I spent less time watering between April and July than I did over last winter. In 35 years I have never known such a piss poor summer. My maples were so late many only finally let their leaves go in the last three weeks. Some trees loved it though, i have never seen so much growth on larch, juniper, spruce and mugo pines. Those mountain trees really don’t like heat so they were right at home in the wind-cut chilled expanse of my Norfolk garden. Bike riding was also seriously curtailed and i’m still not over that.

September 2024 also saw the launch of our new web site. This whole e-commerce business is a PITA. There are so many rules and regulations these days and of course staying up with all the latest trends, giving customers so many options, payment channels, functionality and security across so many platforms/devices just never seems to end. This latest iteration is by far our best, it took nigh on two years to achieve and costs a shit load of money both to create and run. For all this I have to thank Sarah who you don’t know, she’s the absolute foundation of KB and without her we would be gone.

Like a good few of our customers I look longingly back at those days 20 years ago when I spent July and August compiling our paper catalogue. November was always a throwback to my printing days when we spent the month addressing and stuffing envelopes with crisp fresh glossy print and the whole house smelt of ink and paper. Unlike our first web sites, those paper catalogues still bring in orders. It must be close to fifteen years since I last mailed out a catalogue but some folk are STILL ordering from them.

Sadly my annual Christmas holiday break will be interrupted this year thanks to the arrival of several ton’s of bonsai pots this week. These will all need to go onto the website pronto as so many canny folk are getting their spring supplies in early. For the first time I am aware of in the UK we have supplies of BIG high quality glazed pots up to 27″ in a multitude of styles, shapes and colours. We also have hundreds of exceptional exhibition quality shohin pots never seen before. This will appear alongside our extensive range of quality Japanese glazed and unglazed pots now all fully restocked. If I had to guess we probably have 7-800 pot options available and about 15-18 tons of stock.

We have also had shipments of all varieties of bonsai tools, carving tools and 2 tons of Japanese fertilisers like Biogold etc’. There’s over 50 tons of soil products and two tons of wire so whatever you are likely to need chances are we have it in stock right here. It’s safe to say I have never held so much stock of everything but that’s just how this business has to operate these days. Gone are the days when we could pop over to a wholesaler and buy a few odds-n-ends.

And finally I thought I would bend to the endless cries of my adoring supporters. It’s new video time folk (bottom of the page) and this time I have made a throwback to those heady days over 15 years ago when, largely for the first time Youtube got to show proper bonsai in the making. Yes! We have made another Crappy Taxus video. I really didn’t want to spend a week (on and off) in mid-winter doing a tree like this. These days the call of an open fire, the Chesterfield, a very large JD (or 2,3,4) and slippers is strong during these long dark days. However it turned out okay and i’m very pleased I did get off my ass. I managed 9 videos this year which is the best for a long time. If there’s something you think I need to cover in a future edition I would like to hear from you though I can’t promise anything.

For next year Kevin’s been stitching me up again so now I have to make another public appearance at the newly planned Bonsai Fest in Newark or some such next March I believe. I’m looking forward to that, and not, in equal measure but for now I have to go and move this mountain of pots.

So, all told, election results not withstanding, 2024 has been one for the books. Not everything went to plan but I didn’t fall off a bike, loose any good bonsai, go broke or die so I recon that makes it a good one even if the summers tan has long gone. I’m happy, the family’s good and business is sound, BOF the shovel is now working 100% and ready for next summer and my benches are full and as we say around here “At least we don’t have bombs falling on the roof” for now at least.

I sincerely hope you have had a good year on balance. The world’s a crazy place right now but even so we have a lot to be thankful for and those little trees work hard at keeping many of us on the right side of sane. From all of us here at Kaizen Bonsai we wish you a very merry and hospitable Christmas and lets all just chill the fuck out and get along.

Cheers and God bless ya’ll good folk!

Graham & Catherine & Kaizen Bonsai!

 

The post 2024 Milestones & Bonsai Videos appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

Most people involved in bonsai for any period of time will likely be familiar with Lime Sulphur. It’s that grubby little bottle of stinky red stuff in the bottom of your tool bag that’s used to preserve and colour deadwood and dissolve little paintbrushes. Doing that particular chore is on nobody’s wish list. BUT did you know that little bottle contains a miracle solution that can significantly raise your bonsai game? Lime sulphur has a huge number of uses and solves a significant number of pernicious problems faced by growers. From pest control to fertiliser, Lime Sulphur is remarkable. So, please give me a few minutes and let’s learn something!

 

What is Lime Sulphur?

There are a lot of ‘old wives tales’ out there concerning Lime Sulphur. Forget all that, let’s take a look at the facts.

Lime Sulphur is a red liquid with a distinctive rotten egg smell that’s soluble in water. Lime sulphur is used primarily to control pests and disease in horticulture. It’s a saturated aqueous solution of calcium polysulphides, and its use is accepted and approved in organic cultivation in both the UK and EU. Lime sulphur is made by reacting together sulphur and lime in water.

Lime sulphur is alkaline with a typical pH of 10.5-11.5 so it’s considered caustic or corrosive, to put that into perspective, it’s alkalinity is somewhere between milk of magnesia at pH10.5 and many household cleaners that have a pH between 11-13. It has to be handled very carefully due to fumes that are hazardous but beyond that it’s a fairly safe product to use.

 

A Fascinating History.

Lime sulphur is believed to be the earliest synthetic (man made) chemical used as a pesticide sometime around the 1840s in France to control grape vine powdery mildew, which had been introduced from the USA in 1845 and reduced wine production by 80%. In 1886 it was first used in California to control San Jose scale and peach leaf curl.

Commencing around 1904, commercial suppliers began to manufacture lime sulphur; prior to that time, growers were expected to manufacture their own. By the 1920s essentially all commercial orchards in western countries were protected by regular spraying with lime sulphur. However by the 1940s, lime sulphur began to be replaced by synthetic fungicides which risked less damage to the crop’s foliage. With hindsight we know that was something of a mistake. Now many of those chemicals have been banned folk are discovering many of the old ways again. Lime sulphur is an effective, safe and sustainable product when used correctly and wisely.

Lime Sulphur – How It Works.

Lime Sulphur is an agent of eradication, a substance that destroys a parasitic organism or infection at the point of contact (i.e. not systemic) and has been used in horticulture for centuries due to its fungicidal and insecticidal properties. Lime Sulphur is highly effective against a range of pests and diseases, making it a valuable tool in the arsenal of growers.

Lime sulphur breaks down after it’s applied, releasing valuable plant nutrients. The sulphur dioxide is the main element that’s toxic to insects and fungi, and it eradicates them through direct contact or through fumigation which can work from a slight distance. In simple terms sulphur is absorbed by insects and it interferes with their ability to create energy, it also releases hydrogen sulphide gas (smells of rotten egg) which poisons them. It is toxic to insects and mites due to hydrogen sulphide formed through reaction of the polysulphide components with water and carbon dioxide, or put more simply, lime sulphur reacts with the atmosphere to produce hydrogen sulphide which poisons the pests.

A short time after application lime sulphur breaks down into it’s constituent parts of lime and sulphur. The hydrogen sulphide quickly dissipates and what’s left are two extremely valuable plant nutrients in the form of ……lime and sulphur. More on that later.

Lime Sulphur can be used in the UK and EU as a fungicide, insecticide and miticide. This includes organic crops. As covered in EU Regulations (EC) No 889/2008.

Is Lime Sulphur Safe to Use?

In a word…..no. However all manner of everyday products aren’t safe either but used correctly the dangers are minimal. There’s a tin of Brasso in the office, it’s great for cleaning metals but were I to drink it or pour it into my ear daily it’s almost certainly hazardous to my health. Same with bleach, fertilisers, fuels, glue and even some food products, my dad recons my home made hot sauce is extremely dangerous! We live in the age of overbearing ‘health & safety’ rules which might lead one to believe even being in the same building as a chemical could be injurious. We need to be sensible, take suitable precautions and all will be well.

If lime sulphur were 100% safe it would be useless. Taking simple precautions will ensure complete safety for the user whilst successfully achieving the desired result. It has to be handled very carefully due to fumes that are hazardous. But, Lime Sulphur is an extremely effective tool for pest and disease management and presents minimum risk to the user.

It is essential that you follow the proper safety precautions listed on the label when using Lime Sulphur, including wearing protective gloves, goggles, and a FFP3 type B filter mask. As part of its action, Lime Sulphur releases hydrogen sulphide gas which smells of rotten eggs and is hazardous to humans. So only use in well ventilated areas.

A few hours after application Lime Sulphur will be fully reacted and is no longer hazardous. It actually converts into plant-available nutrients (calcium and sulphur). As Lime Sulphur has a non-residual action, and is composed of simple chemicals, it can be used in organic growing and has no detrimental long term environmental impact.

Lime sulphur should be kept well away from the aquatic environment, children, animals and anything else you do not want to kill. When spraying always work outside and try to stand upwind to avoid being covered in overspray or breathing vapours. Spray yourself then walk in the house and the consequences may well be dire if your other half is home! Fortunately lime sulphur washes out of clothes easily but skin contamination may take a day or two to dissipate completely.

Whilst it feels redundant to point out the following I have seen folk do all of these things. Keep lime sulphur off your skin or it’ll smell for a couple of days which is both embarrassing and detrimental to marital harmony. Keep out of your eyes, splashes will sting like hell, irrigate with lots of clean water. Avoid exposure to fumes, these can sting eyes and should not be inhaled. Do not rinse used brushes in your tea or drink. Lime sulphur, being alkaline would react with stomach acid releasing that sulphur dioxide and could end in a Mr Creosote type scenario.

Lime sulphur reacts with strong acids. NEVER MIX WITH ANYTHING OTHER THAN CLEAN TAP WATER.

Due to its high sulphur content, Lime Sulphur has a strong odour but this quickly disperses. When using in glasshouses or covered areas, ensure adequate ventilation. Store in a cool dry place, away from heat and free from freezing. Keep sealed in it’s original container and secured away from unauthorised users, children, wildlife and pets. STORE AWAY FROM ACIDS.

Always source Lime Sulphur from a reputable supplier. Home made products are just too variable to be considered safe especially when treating expensive bonsai trees. Just don’t take the risk on a cheap bottle your mate whipped up in his backyard or you found on an auction site.

Good Lime sulphur can last for up to five years if stored properly in a quality container, but it’s best to use it within two years. Use diluted solutions immediately. An old, out of date or contaminated product may be suitable for painting onto bonsai deadwood but do not use for treating plant P&D (pest & disease).

So, enough of all this health and safety, what can Lime Sulphur actually do?

Pest and Disease Control with Lime Sulphur

Most bonsai folk will be familiar with the use of lime sulphur to winter wash. Winter washing is the process of spraying dormant leafless trees in late winter to eradicate fungi and pests that may be hiding in the bark and branches. These often emerge as the weather warms up and cause problems. However as I mentioned at the top, lime sulphur has a lot more to offer.

Lime sulphur can be used to control a range of fungal diseases including Black Spot, Powdery Mildew, Peach Leaf Curl, Rust, Shot Hole and most root zone fungal rots. Lime sulphur can also be used to control most insect infestations including Vine weevils, Scale insects, Mites, Saw fly larvae and Caterpillars, Spider mites and Spiders, Aphids, Thrips, Leatherjackets and most anything else that walks or crawls.

Lime sulphur is generally considered safe for bees so long as direct contact is avoided. Avoid contact with bees by spraying during the dormant season or when it’s too cold (typically below 12 Celsius) for bees to be flying. When application is required during the growing season take precautions to avoid bee contact for 24 hours by putting sprayed plants into a closed greenhouse overnight or covering with horticultural fleece. Once the spray has completely dried on the plant it will be safe for bees. Avoid spraying when plants are in flower, it’ll achieve very little and will also discolour and spoil blooms. Never spray Lime Sulphur when it’s hot.

In bonsai Lime sulphur is primarily used as a treatment for the preservation of deadwood. This is achieved thanks to the deposition of sulphur deposits which prevent fungal growth that causes rot. The whitening effect is a secondary benefit resulting from the residual lime within the solution. Lime has good disinfectant properties and will destroy many bacteria and fungi.

How To Use Lime Sulphur –

Preserving Bonsai Deadwood

A simple task but as always there are some tricks of the trade that will significantly improve results. For this task Lime sulphur is used neat, decant from the bottle and don’t put dirty solution back into the bottle or it will contaminate the remainder.

Lime Sulphur is best applied to dried/seasoned and oxidised wood. Recently carved green wood is best left for a year to dry out completely before the first application. Applying to freshly cut wood gives the solution almost no chance to penetrate the surface because of moisture or sap still present. In time the residual lime will begin to flake.

Preserve bonsai deadwood at least once a year, or ideally twice, once in autumn before the winter wet arrives and again in mid-summer when the wood should typically be at its driest (internally) thus ensuring good penetration into the surface.

Applying lime sulphur is simple. All you have to do is very lightly damp the woods surface with a mist spray of water and then apply sparingly with a brush. Don’t apply to wood whose surface is completely dry as it will endeavour to just bounce off. Once finished you will need to allow the product to dry naturally in a protected spot for 24 hours. This ensures the sulphur fully penetrates the wood before rain has a chance to carry it away. Once weathered the wood will become whiter and look very natural.

To learn more about preserving bonsai deadwood see Graham’s article – Preserving Bonsai Deadwood

Winter Washing With Lime Sulphur

Winter washing will significantly help in the control of many fungal and pest problems later in the growing season. Issues like peach leaf curl (seen on many fruiting varieties like blackthorn), elm leaf and other forms of gall and powdery and sooty mildew as often seen on oaks cannot be treated once symptoms are visible. Often visible effects are consequential symptoms of an already active disease or pest. Using Lime Sulphur during the cold weather before pathogens become active is extremely effective.

Winter washing is generally associated with deciduous trees, particularly fruiting varieties but the technique is extremely effective at controlling problems suffered by evergreen varieties too. Over the years I have had personal experience of stubborn pest issues like sooty mildews, scale insects and other pernicious pests that, ultimately were all eradicated permanently by winter washing with Lime Sulphur.

Winter washing is a simple and safe process that requires spraying plants with diluted Lime Sulphur. However some precautions have to be taken to make the process safe and effective. First up, personal safety as mentioned above. An old overcoat, hat and hanky around the face might have been ok for your grandad but let’s up our game a little folk. I have been in serious trouble at home for stinking the house out and spent nights on the sofa.

In the UK winter washing is typically done around late February time. Washing too early may reduce the effectiveness. We want to wash as close to spring as we can but too late can cause problems for embryonic leaves as bud scales crack open. If that happens it’s too late and the opportunity has passed. Timing will vary according to local conditions and being a little too early is better than missing the chance by waiting too long.

Use a horticultural pressure spraying device to apply Lime Sulphur winter wash. A trigger spray will not produce an even and effective cover. It only takes a small spot of untreated bark to allow pests to survive. Use a fine misting spray and cover every part of the plant by spraying from above, beneath and both sides, including any deadwood or jin. Spray until the bark is evenly wet but avoid too much run off. Winter washing solution is stronger than that used for soil treatment so try to avoid too much solution running into the rootball though a little will not cause any problem.

Lime sulphur can temporarily discolour or stain some types of pot used in bonsai. Unglazed pots are particularly at risk but many older valuable and antique pots can be marked or permanently stained. Personally I use an old large bath towel that’s slightly damp. This is curled around the base of the trunk so it covers soil and pot in one go prior to spraying.

Evergreen plants are treated in much the same way though I personally tend to avoid soaking the entire foliage. I have found spraying the trunk then spraying branches from beneath is sufficient. Hydrogen sulphide gas is effective at a little distance and the evergreen canopy of foliage will help to retain this for a very short period that seems to be sufficient to get the job done.

After winter washing is complete allow the plant to dry naturally. If rain is expected plants should be placed under cover, like an open greenhouse and allowed to dry. Once the plant is fully dry it will have a ghostly grey appearance, when you see this the plant is safe to place back outside this is typically about 24 hours. After a couple weeks of exposure to the elements the grey colour will magically vanish along with the pests.

Dilution rates for winter washing with Lime Sulphur –

• Deciduous trees without leaves  –  Mix 30 ml of neat undiluted lime sulphur per litre of clean water. (1:33 solution)
• Evergreen coniferous trees  –   Mix 20 ml of neat undiluted lime sulphur per litre of clean water. (1:50 solution)
• Stronger solutions are possible but over the years I have found the above rates of dilution get the job done in almost every circumstance.

Vine Weevil Control Using Lime Sulphur

Vine weevils are literally everywhere these days. Personally I don’t loose any sleep over the little critters but I know a lot of folk do. I am constantly asked for a solution which up until now has entirely centred around the use of Provado whose availability seems patchy, there are a couple of other similar chemicals available. These are typically systemic action products that are extremely effective. However at £12-15 a pop this is going to cost a great deal to treat a half decent bonsai collection.

Many folk swear by vine weevil control using nematodes but seeing as I have no personal experience I’ll not run up that particular tree.

If you need a quick, cheap and 100% effective solution for controlling vine weevils and other soil borne pests from leather jackets to wire worms look no further than our little red bottle of Lime Sulphur. I must admit this freaked me out when I first heard it yonks ago but it works and it’s safe!

Vine weevils are small beetles that pose a threat to a wide range of ornamental plants, fruit trees, and vegetables. They are especially problematic during their larval stage, as the grubs feed on the roots of plants, causing significant damage and even death in severe cases (unlikely where trees are concerned). Adult vine weevils, characterised by their dark brown or black colour and distinctive “elephant snout” appearance, feed on leaves, leaving unsightly notches. Fortunately the beetles don’t fly, they walk, and they walk all over the place so controlling them is largely out of the question but the grubs stay put and are easy to get at.

So for vine weevil control using Lime Sulphur we are going to prepare a root drench for application when plants are fully dormant. First up we need to mix a solution of 25ml neat Lime Sulphur per litre of clean tap water (1:40 solution). Pour the diluted Lime Sulphur solution slowly and evenly over the infested soil (which needs to be a little on the wet side of damp prior to treatment) making sure to thoroughly wet the entire root zone. The solution works by releasing hydrogen sulphide gas which sterilises the soil, killing any vine weevil eggs, larvae, or adults present. It also helps in preventing fungal and bacterial diseases that can further weaken the plants.

Treatment in autumn should eradicate grubs and eggs laid over the previous summer. If your plants continue to suffer from Vine Weevil after two treatments, fortnights apart, you can increase the dose rate to 30 or 40 ml of Lime Sulphur per litre of tap water, however, the compost must be wet already, and sensitive or active plant roots may also be harmed by higher doses than this. There are a very few plants that are sensitive to sulphur, these should not be treated, do a little research ahead of time.

Root Drench Treatment Using Lime Sulphur

A root drench is often used to treat either pest or fungal problems hidden within the soil. Personally I have used this technique to control persistent pests like root aphid which can be a pernicious critter that severely weakens the plant it infests. This is also a useful technique to help get on top of hard to eradicate fungal problems like black spot, sooty and powdery mildews and the like. Many of these survive the winter via spores in the soil.

Use a simple solution of 15/20ml per litre of clean tap water and flood or dunk pots, again the soil needs to be a little damp to slightly wet prior to drench. Do this either in autumn once the weather turns cold or in late winter before dormancy breaks.

The best part of using Lime Sulphur for root protection? After a few hours, diluted Lime Sulphur will be fully reacted and is no longer hazardous. It actually converts into plant-available nutrients (calcium and sulphur). As Lime Sulphur has a non-residual action, and is composed of simple chemicals, it can be used in organic growing. Bonsai often suffer from a lack of sulphur which shows as yellowing of young foliage, often mistaken for a nitrogen deficiency.  Lime Sulphur will also combat over acidification of the root mass, a common problem in soft water areas or where large amounts of organic fertiliser are used over extended periods.

If using lime sulphur as a root drench bothers you, and it did me for some time I would recommend using a very weak solution at around 10ml per litre, this can be extremely efficient at preventing problems arising in the first place. This rate is also good for sterilising soil and killing pathogens if you are using any form of recycled soil or material coming from a compost heap or some such.

Scale Insect Treatment Using Lime Sulphur

By far the most difficult and problematic pest issue to afflict bonsai trees has to be scale insect (scale and mealy bug are in the same family). Often this nasty pest goes unnoticed. I remember a lad who came to a workshop a few years ago with a little tree and was telling me how it had amazing bark quality. He was crestfallen when I shew him that crusty appearance was in fact a complete and utter covering of scale unlike anything I have ever seen.

Scale insects belong to the family Coccoidea and are known for their protective, scale-like coverings that shield them from predators and harsh environmental conditions. These tiny pests come in various shapes, sizes, and colours, but they all have one thing in common: they feed on plant sap. Scale insects attach themselves to the stems, foliage, and branches of plants, depriving them of vital nutrients and weakening their overall health.

These pernicious creatures do a lot of damage to most varieties used in bonsai from pines to maples. There seem to be some very specialised types of scale that are hard to recognise, like juniper scale that appears as tiny white spots among the foliage. I’m not here to discuss the unpleasant world of scale but other than physical removal with a brush and methylated spirit (effective to a degree) no commercial preparation I have found will even touch them but…….

If you need to control scale when they are inside their hard shells then a good option is to apply diluted Lime Sulphur. This will act as a fumigant. Lime Sulphur works all year round, so can be applied when the plant is dormant and so there is no risk of scorch damage to the leaves.

Lime Sulphur solution is extremely effective and fast working. It can entirely eradicate scale insect in 24 hours. As an example a while back I obtained an extremely old and mature specimen of Elaeagnus, a beautiful old Japanese tree. When it arrived I immediately noticed it was absolutely covered in tiny white scale insects, by my estimation they had been there for at least three growing seasons. I tried all summer to clean it up with limited success. Once February came around and in a little desperation I broke out the Lime Sulphur and the next day I washed the whole lot away with the hose. Two years later the tree is thriving and not a single scale has returned.

For the treating of scale insect across the dormant season dilute 30 to 40ml of neat Lime Sulphur per litre of clean tap water and spray using a heavy mist directly onto the insects which will almost always be on the underside of the branches. Spray the entire surface of the tree and allow to dry naturally for 24 hours.

When treating scale on evergreen trees I personally spray at the end of winter using 20ml of Lime sulphur to 1 litre of clean tap water. This it then sprayed, again with a heavy mist to cover the entire tree including the foliage. Repeat after 2 weeks if necessary.

 

General Pest Control Using Lime Sulphur

Lime sulphur is primarily used when plants are dormant as we have seen above but CAN be used as a growing season spray. If at any point you are unsure about the use of lime sulphur make a test by applying, as you intend to, on either a small less important similar plant, part of a larger plant or a few leaves growing on a plant in the garden. After a couple of days what you see is what you are likely to get. Always start using a weaker solution and increase the dilution rate for a subsequent application if required. Don’t be afraid to test but always try to use the weakest solution possible in order to get the required result.

Growing season applications can be made when leaves are present but should be applied in the evening when temperatures are cooler to avoid leaf burn. If it’s very warm don’t use lime sulphur. Avoid spraying soft young foliage of broadleaf trees. In general it’s safe to apply lime sulphur solution to conifer foliage so long as the solution is a weaker one and the foliage has been dampened with clean water. Don’t spray immature young foliage that has not fully matured and hardened off.

Before application give the plant a good covering spray with plain clean water. Then mix 10ml per litre of Lime Sulphur to 1 litre of clean water and apply using a fine misting sprayer to infected parts of your plants. Allow to dry naturally outside overnight, keep covered but well ventilated if rain is expected. Once dry return the plant to it’s normal place.

To avoid plant damage caused by lime-sulphur, DO NOT spray when:-
• temperatures exceed 20°C
• when soil is dry and plants are suffering from moisture stress.
• when freezing weather is expected.
• within 14 days of an oil/pesticide or fertiliser spray.

Disinfectant Use of Lime Sulphur

Lime sulphur is an extremely effective disinfectant for general nursery use. It can be used for everything from sterilising compost or previously used pots to sanitising benches and standing areas. Use a solution of 50ml per litre of clean tap water and spray to thoroughly soak surfaces. Soil sterilisation is best achieved by thoroughly soaking using a watering can, pots etc” can be dunked in a container of solution. Sterilised soil should be allowed to sit for a good few days before use.

Lime Sulphur As Bonsai Fertiliser

This is perhaps the most surprising use for Lime Sulphur in bonsai cultivation. The notion that because something smells bad it must be harmful is a modern one borne of our ultra-processed existence. Forget all that, smelly lime sulphur is extremely beneficial to plants as we have seen but FERTILISER! Really?

Bonsai that grow in tiny amounts of soil need to have nutrients added skilfully throughout the growing season. Many traditional and proprietary fertiliser products have little or no sulphur included or present. Up until the 1970s sulphur deficiencies were fairly rare. In the developed world, sulphur was common as dissolved sulphur dioxide; a pollutant from industrial processes. As industry cleaned up its act, and we have moved away from coal-fired power stations, the supply of sulphur nutrition from pollution has dramatically reduced and now needs to be added artificially.

In bonsai our use of largely inert aggregate products as growing media exasperate the sulphur issue. Organic matter can be a good source of sulphur for plants but this is short lived in our limited soil volumes. The widespread use of organic fertilisers like Green Dream,  Biogold or Rapeseed Pellets go a long way towards taking up the slack and supplying important nutrients but over time the cumulative effects can lead to over acidification of the soil. Most plants typically struggle to absorb nutrients from acidic soil and the lower the pH the harder it is.

Most nutrient deficiencies show as yellowing foliage making diagnosis difficult. A sulphur deficiency is a little unusual as it presents as noticeable yellowing of immature foliage. Yellowing is most commonly diagnosed as either nitrogen or iron deficiency but can just as easily be the result of sulphur being in short supply. Additionally if the plants soil has become overly acidic this quickly manifests in much the same way.

The solution is simple. Lime sulphur will quickly reduce the acidity of soil thanks to its lime content thus improving nutrient take up. It will also supply sulphur in a plant available form that’s quickly absorbed. Just add a teaspoon (5ml) or two to a watering can of clean water and apply to soil at any time throughout the growing season. The first application should be in spring as growth gets under way, another around mid summer and the final just before leaf fall and before frosts in autumn. This has the added benefit of keeping pests under control.

Obviously don’t apply lime sulphur to ericaceous plants like satsuki azaleas etc’. There is also no need to apply additional lime sulphur if you have recently used the product as a root drench. Remember you should NOT mix with other fertilisers, apply lime sulphur alone and only mixed into clean water.

In Conclusion – Lime Sulphur – A Miracle Solution

As we have seen Lime Sulphur is a simple, widely effective and safe solution to many of the problems encountered across the infinitely variable world of horticultural P&D control. It has no residual harmful presence in the environment and both elements, the lime and the sulphur are ultimately absorbed by plants as helpful, in bonsai often lacking, nutrients. The only real downside is the short lived smell. In my experience this is no worse than that experienced following the application of a good organic fertiliser and is of little consequence so long as it stays outside.

As with all chemicals Lime Sulphur should be respected, used responsibly and with appropriate safety measures. Diluted correctly and applied with care and forethought it’s an extremely good and effective answer to some very persistent pest issues. Clean up is easy with nothing more than warm soapy water required. Lime Sulphur is a simple, easy and extremely economical alternative to modern chemicals and has been proven over close on two hundred years.

Remember, if in doubt about Lime Sulphurs use begin with a weak solution. You can always test a few leaves or a less important plant just to satisfy oneself your plan is safe. Where application to foliage is required make sure the foliage is damp before spraying. Protect ceramic pots from contact with anything other that weak solutions and don’t use when the weather is too warm.

Finally use a good product from a reputable quality source. Store in a dark cool place protected from freezing and away from animals, kids and NOWHERE near any acids. Do not spray when bees are active and protect waterways from contamination in any form. Don’t drink it or rub it on your boils, absolutely keep it out of any small cuts and ones eyes and other orifices and all should be well.

Disclaimer.
All of the above advice is given freely in good faith based on my own experience using lime sulphur in my own UK garden based on over 35 years of bonsai cultivation. Techniques, dilution rates and timings may vary where you are and dependent upon the product you are using. Always follow manufacturers advice and familiarise yourself with local rules and regulations regarding the use of Lime Sulphur. We accept no responsibility for the actions or outcomes of anyone acting beyond our control.

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Base Dressing Fertilisers & Bonsai

Way back when I started bonsai in those halcyon days just before the internet ruined most everything, after I had exhausted my local library, I stumbled into a local bonsai club. This had what might kindly be called a parochial attitude to our hobby. Very traditional in approach, were it not for the lack of impressive produce one could be forgiven for thinking it was a meeting of allotment holders. In fact many folk there were indeed allotment holders, me included eventually.

I remember vividly how entrenched ideas were and anything new, especially from a whipper-snapper like me (yes I was young once) caused much furrowing of collective brows. The debate around Akadama vs John Innes and grit eventually became quite aggravated but the one I loved most was the conflict over chemical vs organic fertilisers.

Back then gardeners had a lot less choice and with an almost complete lack of bonsai tree specific fertilisers our options were minimal. I remember that chicken manure in a dried pellet form was just becoming widely available at the fledgling ‘big sheds’ like the new B&Q mega stores that were popping up all over. Fish/blood & bone was another traditional “organic“, nasty stuff! On the other side of the equation there was Phostrogen, Miracle-gro and Tomorite.

We did have one enlightened individual that introduced me to the use of Rapeseed as fertiliser. This could easily be turned into ‘tea’, pellets or even applied in its raw state. I had seen it’s use in Japanese books but at the time no commercially prepared products were available here and besides I would NOT have been able to afford them.

I instantly understood the value of organics as fertiliser. Not only did they provide nutrients to the tree but they also supported invaluable bacterial and fungal activity within the soil and somehow it made perfect sense to me. Today I use 99% organic fertilisers across my garden wether for bonsai, my wife’s flower garden or veg’ and fruit growing.

I have to say that within our genteel pass-time still those two subjects are contentious. I don’t see the need for so much tribal conflict though. At the end of the day, if it works for you keep at it…. a la salud! Still, it’s in our nature to be tribal and fight and if that’s your thing ‘have at it‘.

At the end of the day it matters little what soil or fertilisers you use for growing bonsai. What matters is how you manage the whole process. Everyone seems to want a free draining ‘soil’ for bonsai but I have had a great deal of success using straight garden soil. One lovely old fellow I met had used nothing else for 30 years and when I got the chance to buy his collection I kept most of it personally because the trees were so good.

The soil bonsai are in matters less than how we manage it. Using sandy garden soil certainly reduces the need for watering in summer but then it does need careful management in a soggy British winter. Fertilisers are the same, included within an intricately structured care regimen most will supply what the plant needs. However….

Managing a bonsai tree is always going to be complicated if we want it to do more than just survive. There are infinite variables to consider and these constantly change. Maintaining optimum growing conditions all the time is impossible but we need to do the best we can. Fortunately most plants used for bonsai are tough and tolerant so that helps us. For instance if a tree gets a bit too much sun during the height of summer it might get a bit scorched but it’ll live.

Ultimately it’s a lot easier to use a modern bonsai soil mix and purpose designed fertilisers than it is to craft our skill of managing a plant and all the complications that come with it. Now I firmly believe refining our horticultural skill to that level has great benefit but it’s not for everyone and not everyone has the prerequisite skills to achieve success. So it’s good that nowadays we have lots of great products to help us out, make our bonsai better and free us up from the slavish devotions of fanatical horticultural discipline.

I came here to introduce the concept of ‘Base Dressing’. That is the process of adding a nutrient rich substance, in our case a prepared fertiliser to soil. This is a common practice in gardening. As I sit here tapping away at my keyboard fanatical gardeners and allotment holders across the country are busy digging in mountains of festering animal poo before the new season gets under way. This is a time honoured ritual and ensures a good crop from a hard worked garden.

So why don’t we use base dressing in bonsai cultivation? I’m sure some folk do but I was always lead to believe that fertiliser and a newly repotted tree should be treated in much the same way as a bathtub full of water and a toaster. As little contact as possible for the good of all concerned but why?

Last year we put out a little booklet containing my thoughts on fertilisers and bonsai cultivation. If you have read it you will know how fertilisers work and how they release nutrients, you will also know the golden rule, never fertilise a plant that’s not actively growing. There’s a lot of that information contained in the multitudes of old posts here if you search the archives, lots more is contained within the articles posted on our web site. I will try to get the booklet text up soon.

Fertilisers release nutrients in different ways. Refined chemicals tend to be a bit like an intravenous injection, they quickly dilute in water and are rapidly absorbed into the plant, often within minutes or a few hours. Organics however rely on fungi and bacteria to break them down and release the nutrients. Some poorly suited organics do both.

I have talked endlessly about reverse osmosis, what is commonly called fertiliser burn. This is when too much nutrient around the roots causes water and nutrients to be drawn out of the plant causing its water column to collapse. This typically manifests as wilting initially followed by browning or dropping leaves. In time twigs and branches can be lost and entire plants can quickly die. To see a similar result try sprinkling cucumber slices in a bowl with salt.

So if the golden rule is don’t feed a tree that’s not actively growing and knowing fertilisers can cause reverse osmosis why would we add fertiliser to the soil of a bonsai tree when repotting, especially as most trees are repotted at the end of the dormant season and therefore not actively growing?

First up bear in mind that a bonsai tree grows (very slowly) in a small amount of soil. Unlike your hanging baskets and grow bags that get composted at the end of the season bonsai trees need to be healthy for many decades. We have a very unique set of circumstances and so the horticulture used for bonsai is entirely different from that used for almost any other container cultivation.

An actively growing bonsai tree can be expected to strip out most of a soils inherent nutrient within a couple of weeks and our constant watering will do little to help. A growing plant needs tiny amounts of nutrient constantly therefore we need to have a drip, drip approach to fertiliser application and that’s easy to set up with organics. It’s not so easy with chemicals, it can be done but it needs constant monitoring.

There are largely two types of folk in bonsai. Those who are in a hurry, typically newbies, who believe they can push their trees to go faster by the copious and repeated application of fertilisers. Secondly we have those who don’t feed much at all, possibly because they believe it’s all ‘snake oil’ or commercial hokum. I once met a guy who only used water from his koi pond believing the nutrients (which grew copious amounts of blanket weed) were all the bonsai needed. After decades this particular theory was entirely disproven after I saw his poorly looking tree collection.

On the other hand I remember when I was landscape gardening I got hold of a large volume of lawn fertiliser/moss killer/weeder. One of those fucking wonder products that turn your crusty old mud patch full of divots and dog piss patches into a snooker table without any effort whatsoever. Used correctly that might be the case (not) however I gave a sack to my dad. Rather than read the instructions he dumped the whole 25kg onto his fairly big lawn in one go. Ten days later the grass had tuned to nasty black slime.

Getting it right with fertilisers is important whichever way you decide to go and base dressing is an important part of that. Modern bonsai soils are almost entirely devoid of nutrient, they are largely made up of processed aggregates which either have no inherent nutrients or the nutrients were destroyed in processing, firing, washing etc’. We like it that way because we gain control. It’s a bit like when I make cornbread. If I don’t get the preparation right when putting everything together what comes out of the oven won’t be right. In that example it’s no good blaming the oven.

Here at KB we spend more time getting soil right than anyone in the country, it’s always been my passion and today we move close to a thousand kilos of mix every day. This goes to folk growing everything from bonsai masterpieces to plants that eat animals and those growing plants in their wardrobes. We know it’s right so long as it’s used right.

What base dressing does is to light up our inert soil mixes. Unlike normal fertilisers those designed for base dressing in bonsai have been carefully crafted to bring maximum vitality and life to soil without excess NPK which can, as mentioned, cause damaging reverse osmosis. Those nutrients are not required in volume during the crucial period after re-potting. However micro nutrients are, particularly as new fine feeder roots emerge and need those nutrients to create new cells and tissue.

Base dressing also fires up the flora and fauna so crucial to building a dynamic ecosystem within our little pots. Continuing with my cooking analogy base dressing products for bonsai put the heat in the oven. No matter how careful we are in creating a good bonsai soil mix, without the fungi and bacteria required we’ll not be ‘cooking’ and nobody wants to eat raw cornbread batter.

I think part of the problem is where a base dressing product is referred to as a fertiliser which causes the confusion about not feeding newly repotted trees. Over the past several years I have been using base dressing products for all my repotted trees. It’s something I now consider essential at every repot across all the species I keep including deciduous and coniferous varieties. We now carry two primary products for base dressing and my extensive use of both has moved my bonsai forward significantly.

Green Dream™ Soil Source Natural Micro-Biological Soil Additive

There is an extensive explanation of this products use and benefits on the product description page of our web site (click text above for link).

Green Dream™ Soil Source is a product that we have developed over the last few years. This is a groundbreaking microbial soil additive product unlike anything else available that is simply added to your chosen soil mix or growing media at repotting time. The product, which on the face of it looks like our Green Dream Original product (small dry crumbs), is packed with beneficial micro-organisms like Trichoderma harzianum which are very well documented as being supremely beneficial to the cultivation of plants and the development of roots in horticulture.

Over several years we added this unique new product to well in excess of four hundred repotted plants at various stages of bonsai development. The results were surprising to say the least. Every plant has thrived, regardless of the growing media or species involved, every plant started growing much earlier than normal and much more strongly and once good growth was underway we noticed a significant improvement in the plants uptake of nutrients from fertilizers with improved growth rate, foliage colour and robust appearance. Over the summer period we also saw a dramatic reduction in problems with pest and disease reducing our use of chemical sprays by over 75%.

Biogold Classic Motohi Premium Organic Bonsai Base Dressing Fertiliser

The original fertiliser from the renowned Japanese BioGold range. There is an extensive explanation of this products use and benefits on the product description page of our web site (click text above for link).

“The origins of Bio Gold date back to around 1970. Toshio Tsubaki, a doctor of agriculture who was heavily involved in the product’s development, had been researching microorganisms related to plant growth for over 10 years. However, the discovery of effective microorganisms did not go as expected, and during the days of struggle, he met Kazuo Yamaguchi (then Professor Emeritus at Ibaraki University), an authority on applied microbiology, through a book.

From there, the two began joint research, and in 1983, they finally discovered the bacteria (microorganisms) that became the source of Bio Gold. It was a product that allowed plants and soil microorganisms to draw out each other’s strengths, improving the soil environment and promoting strong plant growth. Bio Gold was developed to take advantage of the functions of these microorganisms and make it easy for anyone to use.

The natural activator that would become Bio Gold was born. This product was later improved and evolved into “Classic Base Fertilizer” and “Bio Gold Vital.”  First released 1986 and in continual production ever since.

This is a solid, organic, slow release base dressing fertiliser. Ideal in autumn and at the time of repotting all bonsai. It creates and nourishes vital roots which are very important for plant growth. Because it is carefully matured over time, using a unique fermentation method, there is no need to worry about damaging plant roots.

Besides the above it’s also possible to add products to your soil mix that are not referred to as fertilisers but contain high levels of nutrient that takes longer to release. These provide a base level of nutrition, often for several months. This is a very useful technique, particularly when dealing with poorly trees. My own personal favourite is….

Green Dream™ – Seaweed Meal – Soil Conditioner & Fertiliser

100% pure sustainable dried British seaweed meal (ascophyllum nodosum). A natural organic plant feed and soil conditioner packed with nutrients. Safely encourages and sustains growth and vitality in all plants from seedlings to ancient trees. Improves pest resistance, soil bio-activity, fertility, water and nutrient holding capacity. Broad spectrum nutrients that are released to the plant slowly over a whole growing season.

To Sum Up…

Personally I highly recommend base dressing when repotting bonsai. It’s something I now do as a matter of course for all my trees. A good modern soil mix with organic base dressing coupled with the use of quality organic fertilisers throughout the growing season and careful watering is a combination that’s hard to beat.

When you grow bonsai in a crappy climate like the one we have to endure here in GB every little advantage must be sought out in order to get the best results and base dressing is an oft overlooked, proven and time honoured technique that needs to be universally adopted. Give base dressing a go this repotting season!

Graham Potter

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New Bonsai Videos

7 months to the day  since my last blog post. I know how many of you lovely folk appreciate these posts and so all i can do is apologise for my absence. If I’m honest I have had the year from hell for a multitude of reasons and entirely lost my way to the point I was contemplating  dumping everything for pennies on the pound and fucking off. Im not going into detail at this time but WTF. I know i’m not alone here either.

So, i’m in a fragile state and in order to try and get back on an even keel i have made a few changes. I had largely become nocturnal, getting up at 2am and only sleeping 3-4 hours at a time took it’s toll. Now I have gone back to what I did for decades, i go outside to work on my trees from about 9pm until 1am. I’m still permanently knackered but at least some of the trees are coming along nicely which is making me feel a lot better and i’m feeling inspired again.

That means (so long as I can be bothered) there’s a lot more bonsai work to share with ya’ll. I actually filmed several projects early in the year but entirely lost interest and they are still on the camera entirely undisturbed. I utterly detest having to sit in front of this fucking screen for so many tedious hours every day and night, it absolutely wrecks my mental state and by the end of most days I become an intolerable savage, just ask Catherine next time you speak to her!

Perhaps it’s the little artist in me. Catherine says I am never happier than when I have my teeth into a project. I love to create things but the moment the projects done I loose interest. I have never met a happy artist in any discipline. Having the ability to imagine what COULD be simply serves to make everything that IS look like a piss poor second rate option.

I take that view of my own work, like all my school reports ever stated ” Graham can do this standing on his head but just can’t be bothered. Must try harder.” Right from the first day I sat up in my cot I have had a significant problem being told what to do so when a teacher told me I must try harder I just did the opposite. My mum always called me “Little Tommy Opposite” because I was such a cantankerous little toe rag.

Smart folk will figure this out right away. I currently have a 10 week old puppy in the house and he simply refuses to do as he’s told. If we need him to sit in his bed he just won’t, he’ll duck and dive and hide, he’ll run all over the house in obstinate defiance. However chuck him outside in the cold and he’ll rush back in and hide in his bed.

Years ago my mate Stuart bought a yew to a workshop and suggested that even I would struggle to make much out of it. Turns out it was some of the best work I had done up to that point and now, 30 years later I own the tree and it’s still pretty good. Tell me I can’t do something and watch it happen, unless it’s something that really matters. Had my teachers told me I was hopeless waste of skin incapable of learning I think I could have gone on to be a fighter pilot. Turns out i AM just a cantankerous old scrote, a dinosaur and even at the age of 60 I can’t quite figure out which way is up. Just another ordinary working class Englishman then!

I say that to say this……

Two new videos posted this week. Seeing as so many folk really like these it makes me happy to share my work even though it cost me three days screen time this week and my heads frazzled. I’m open to offers of help editing videos but before ya’ll rush to offer your time an assistance do bear in mind i’m what they call complicated.

ENJOY…….

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Another Bonsai Video!

As it happens I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting on three imports. We’ve goods coming from Japan, China and Eu and so I have had opportunity to complete yet ANOTHER bonsai video.

 

Just before you go off to see that let me get this off my plate….

Trigger warning! Don’t read the following if you are a Trigger, you may be offended. My apologies to any RM or PF employees.

For one reason or another these imports are all being delayed, nothing ever seems to happen on schedule any more. For instance….  Just getting a parcel delivered by……so called PARCELFORCE (always sounds like the name of some shit superhero to me) is a task.

Just last week I had to take a half day out and do a fifty mile round trip to pick up a parcel they were incapable of delivering. Just to make matters worse I also got a flat tyre which cost me a ton to replace. I couldn’t park within a half mile either. When I eventually got to the counter the guy glibly threw my way “You could have done this online you know, would have saved a trip.”🤬

Just to fill in the blanks Catherine (she’s expert at this stuff) had, to that point, spent more than 12 business hours trying to resolve their incompetence. Businesses charge clerical work at £30-40 an hour so that sucks. I then lost a whole morning and aforesaid tyre alongside another score for diesel. I won’t tell you what I said to the meathead behind the counter. To be fair I think I woke him from a nap.

Now I remember (as I understand it) when so called “Parcelforce” didn’t exist, we used to call it Royal Mail* before some bright spark decided to split the parcels operation from letter post (1986). No doubt there were some handsome rewards for the creation of this new wonder of the modern age. However, following a spectacular ‘oversight’ someone failed to consider falling mail volumes and how the world was changing. That and some other factors led to Royal Mail letters division basically going broke because their remit is almost impossible to fulfil profitably without the parcels business, especially as bulk trunking services were also contracted out to third parties leaving the poor old RM with the so called ‘last mile‘. What we might colloquially call the shitty end of the stick.

Again as I understand it the gov’ has a legal obligation to ensure a daily postal service to every home. However they don’t want to pay for it but the money we pay barely covers operating costs (which of course are too way to high). The business had it’s hands tied by that same gov’ because people like the idea of cheap stamps leaving the RM incapable of controlling either it’s charges or to some degree it’s costs. And so the two are now merging again, as it turns out, with typical British incompetence.

Parcels are profitable, letters are not so here’s an idea…..why don’t Royal Mail do both…………………………………… as they used to. Like my mum used to say ‘Put it back where you found it!‘ The whole story stinks to high heaven IMHO.

The reason my parcels (there are 30 of them in total) vanished is because both companies are using different systems which do not communicate, nor do the people and there is no person to person contact in the system and nobody to call or mail. Catherine spent FOUR hours on hold calling these f***wits only to be told you can “do this online” WHICH YOU FUCKING WELL CAN’T!

Add to that customs randomly taking items out of the system for weeks at a time and failing to make contact. The whole system then seems to rely upon a little card dropping through our door. There was one for each box, only about 7 turned up, the rest were either never sent or lost. If the parcels were not claimed they are dumped (i’ve over a grand in each parcel). So far i am £980 out of pocket (we’re not finished yet) directly and then I have to add all of my own costs. Thankfully Catherine is brilliant, she knows how to get this shit done even if the folk doing it don’t.

The above account is accurate for my part, my knowledge of the actual events historical and otherwise is limited. Pissy comments will be ignored. I am quite simply beyond giving a Scheiße any more. Thank you for hearing me out lovely readers.

Now, i’m off to lay in a quite dark place. Enjoy the movie 😄

Graham.

*1516: Sir Brian Tuke is appointed the first Master of the Posts by Henry VIII, establishing the initial postal system for royal use. 1784: The name “Royal Mail” is officially given to the service during a period of increased use of mail coaches across the country. 

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Not Bad for an Oldun!

I’ll be brief today, the sun’s out, it’s warm and I do not want to be inside slapping this keyboard. It’s been an insane week here at KB world headquarters but as of this Friday morning it’s mostly worked out okay.

It all started so well, Sunday saw me off bright and early in beautiful warm sunshine, destroying the early morning peace of the county as me and my Softail headed to the flatlands of Cambridgeshire to do a deal on a vintage Harley. That went very well.

Back in the beginning of September we had a bit of an issue as the Plastic Hoop-house of Bonsai Dreams (my poly tunnel) opened up like the pocket of a cheap suit. We had a 20′ opening in the roof which, if you’ve any experience of such things, you’ll know is almost impossible to patch, even temporarily. I’ve been dreading the day but it finally arrived.

I assembled our tunnel way back in 2008. I bought the very best materials available, took my time and did a proper job and as a result the cover (known as the sheet) has lasted all these 17 years. Now covering a tunnel’s not hard but after all those years it was so completely packed inside and built up around the outside to the point it has taken Richard and I over a month to empty it out and remove all the surrounding benches, screens, fencing and undergrowth. There’s about 2 tons of concrete blocks and almost that in railway sleepers and of course everything has sunk into the ground a bit too. The undergrowth, ivy, bindweed, brambles were nearly 2 days work alone.

Then, as is the way with greenhouses, i had amassed hundreds and hundreds of used plastic plant pots and the like. There was a 1000L water tank and crap I had forgotten entirely. Almost all of that was given away thanks to facebook. Then I had to remove nearly a ton of bonsai pots that had been squirrelled away under the benches, found some utter shite alongside a few gems. The spiders were a force to be reconned with. Then the benches all had to come out and their blocks, even the famous green filing cabinets are on the move.

So after a month of being a sweaty dusty old man we were finally ready for the guys from First Tunnels to come and refurb’ the whole thing. They were booked for Monday but called to put me off until Wednesday. They arrived Wednesday lunch time and left Thursday late morning. If you need anything to do with poly-tunnels get a hold of these amazing guys. It’s NOT often i’m impressed but credit where it’s due. Incredible work, service and priced just right. It was a bit weird looking down the garden and not seeing my hoop house for a couple of hours there.

So now that sheet’s replaced (lets hope this one goes 20 years) the real work can begin, everything’s getting renewed, replaced or upgraded, i’m hoping to be done by Christmas. We’ll see.

 

With all that going on we have also been wrestling with Baxter the puppy (pissing machine). He’s a Patterdale and an instinctive ratter. That means he gets into every tiny crevice, sticks his nose into every hole, digs, chases, chews and generally makes an f’ing nuisance of himself and once he’s done that he sleeps. He’s loved the tunnel work and has been constantly covered in cobwebs and worse. Still, at least he’s not been in the pond again this week.

Catherine has been buried in VAT paperwork and I have been continuing to bang (literally) my head against a wall over a customs issue that’s been loosing me sleep for six weeks now. I have also been moving goods from all over and next seasons pots (at least some of them) are now on the water. I have been busy listing lots of new Japanese goods this week too after a troublesome time, again with customs reg’s and inefficient tossers in Broken Britain. We’ve also been busy getting your orders, for which we are extremely grateful, out the door in a timely fashion. This running a business malarkey’s not for everyone I know and increasingly I wonder if it’s for me either.

 

 

So, overall a successful week, at least the tunnel’s now secure and dry and the refurb has begun. And then, to top it all off I have a blog post and a new short video to share too. Not bad for an oldun i recon. Of course I could not do any of this without YOUR support. THANK YOU!

Graham

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All Good News!

Thought I would post a quickie just to keep you lovelies updated on what I have been up to this week. For a change it’s ALL good news.

Most importantly I have finally resolved a very serious issue with an import we have been struggling with since mid-June. The goods are now safely tucked up in my warehouse and last night I slept properly for the first time in weeks. The main stream media were mostly obsessed with inflation figures yesterday. I can tell you exactly why UK inflation is so high. We are absolutely and entirely dependant for almost everything we need to survive upon foreign imports. The burdens put upon that process by government have made it all but impossible in some cases and in just as many an unattractive proposition. That’s why we no longer import bonsai, it’s too complicated, expensive and risky for a little guy to touch. That’s now beginning to effect a lot more than our little world. The end result? Everything costs more.

In a rare upbeat moment I would say I am in favour of us living smaller lives. Many of us seem to have everything these days, the average Joe seems to have riches and privilege my parents would only have dreamed about 70 years ago. Folk today need a lot more respect for what we have been given. I think I would like to live in Great Britain in the 1920s and 30s. Life was a lot harder for most, dentistry was not what it is now and most everything was local.

Our village has a magazine, some glossy affair that appears on my floor from time to time. In a recent issue they featured an excerpt from a Kelly’s Directory from the early 1930s. Back then this village only had a few houses, nothing like today. However within the stretch of a decent walk I could obtain everything from a loaf of bread to a surgical operation.

Our little village was primarily a market garden area but we had a solicitor, a pharmacist, doctors, dentists, bakers, farmers and growers of almost everything including cut flowers. There were vets, school teachers, builders, a car garage, machine shops, a blacksmith and even a trucking company.

However today I want some bits and bobs for my poly tunnel rebuild and I have to go online and order everything up from some monstrous shed in the midlands for delivery tomorrow because these huge soulless companies have put all the little local guys out of business.The best old fashioned family owned hardware store in the world was just 3 miles from here. It had traded in the area since 1938 and spread across the county. The big store by me was doing great and had done for decades before Screwfix opened directly opposite.

Recently that hardware chain closed it’s last little village shops and is no more. Now if I want to buy a pair of hinges these faceless shops with virtually no employees don’t carry much of anything. I can go pick one up today and get the other delivered tomorrow because they only have one in stock. Sorry but WTF use is one hinge? I used to pop into that old store, it was called Coopers. I knew the folk there and they had time for me and my stupid questions. Now all i get is a blank stare from some poor kid who has no ability to connect with anything unless it appears on a screen. Ask him a question like what type of screw is best for oak wood and you’ll get those familiar two syllables so prevalent in our society today. ….dunno!

So, just a quick update on the tunnel project. This has turned into something more than I anticipated but seeing as it’s no longer required for the raising of large numbers of commercial trees I have appropriated it as my own. I’m reusing all the old materials and adding quite a lot of other peoples old stuff too. I’m hoping to create a practical, useful and somewhat more appealing space than what had become, if i’m honest, a bit of a shit-hole. The last week has seen a lot done both inside and out. For an old wheeze who spends too much time in front of a screen this has proven to be what shall I say…..? Hard! K’in hard in fact but I love doing this stuff. It’s been 17 years since I did this all first time around and back then my dad was helping which he no longer can and I miss our constant arguing and bickering plus everything takes so much longer now. Still I’ve not managed to break myself yet and progress is good.

On other fronts we have had a painter in these last couple of weeks which has caused chaos. We work from home and when we came into this house nearly eighteen years ago it was pristine. It’s not been touched since, running our business has been all consuming. As a result the place is trashed. There’s even places where the laminate flooring has completely worn away down to the underlay. Time to put that all right.

And even more good news. A new bike this week, in the spirit of living a smaller life I have been busy condensing my crazy collection of bikes into fewer but better examples. I’m losing my shirt on most sales, the demand for average bikes has collapsed though special and rare machines are in ever increasing demand and so that’s what i’m doing. The last deal of the year was this 1981 Harley Davidson Lowrider (FXS for those that know). It’s an original factory paint matching numbers bike restored with a light touch by one of the countries best classic Harley guys.. I own a hens tooth folks 🙂

Meanwhile outside the  autumn colour has been blazing and Baxter’s been sleeping between bouts of tearing the place up and finding clever places to crap. I love my life! Now, where have my boot laces gone?

Graham.

The post All Good News! appeared first on Graham Potter | Kaizen Bonsai Blog.

As we round out another year i’m sitting here in the gloaming of a late December afternoon staring at an empty text box and a flashing cursor. At this precise moment I have nothing to say though, i doubt that will last long. A little Rambling Flummery & Tidings of Comfort and Joy are therefore in order.

My last post in October was, for me, quite a positive one which many folk seem to appreciate. Following the year I have had it’s best I keep it that way, focus on the positives because the negative side of the scale is getting a little heavy of late.

I could easily ‘loose my shit’ over what’s going on in the world but I have come to the realisation that does me no good at all. I can easily rant and rave until I pass out, Kev’ and I regularly do just that over an afternoon phone call. It’s that old idiom, we’re just ‘blowing off steam’ which Google defines as…

“blowing off steam”  is a common idiom meaning to release strong emotions like anger or frustration, often through physical activity or energetic expression, preventing them from building up to an explosion, much like steam from a boiler. 

I have had a few of those moments this last year, times when I felt like doing a Mr Creosote. Running a small business is no longer the wonderful enjoyable and rewarding task it once was. It seems we are being assaulted on every front. Tasks that were once very simple have become tortuous, fiendishly complicated and invariably expensive. There have been moments this year when I have literally banged my head on the desk and cried in frustration.

From the day I was born my old dad instilled in me the importance of being honest, polite and above all else conscientious. For me, doing the best I can is more important than any profit, gain or acknowledgement. Doing the best I can at whatever I turn my hand to is more important to me than breathing. I am not remotely interested in being the best, having the best or the most. I have never given a thought to being the most popular or involved. The world of clicks, likes and subscribers fills me with abject horror. I was born into a world where folk kept themselves to themselves and as my lovely long gone Nan always said ‘mind your own business‘. She would be horrified to see me putting this drivel out there for some of the world to read. I don’t like it one bit either but here we are.

Way back when I started to uncover the world of bonsai and realise what was involved I made the conscious decision to do the best work I could. I have not had the opportunities some folk might have but all I really want to do is MY best and only I know when that’s happened. When it has I will probably vanish without warning. However, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon looking at some of the shite I turned out this year.

One of the very important things I learned about bonsai right at the outset was the importance of good, appropriate and skilled work. Good work consistently applied over a lifetime is what makes great bonsai. Walking around a top European exhibition back in the late 1990s with the great David Prescott I learned the difference between those big flashy impressive and popular bonsai that always steal the show and those oft’ over looked quiet little wonders produced by dedicated virtually unknown masters of our art. Even if we only have the most simple and basic materials to work with the patient, precise and skilled application of good technique over extended periods of time will always produce a tree of superior quality. Artistic merit is another thing altogether but that’s for another day.

Even though I have been guilty of putting it out there myself this modern need to dramatically transform the most unlikely scruffy and impossible material into an exhibition bonsai in an afternoon is little more than ‘Pub bonsai’. A bit of a lark, a bit of showboating and a lot of ego are the primary requirements and the result is largely entertainment. It’s better than it used to be thankfully and it is a buzz but as I have always said, the end of a demo’ is just the beginning.

My old mate Blacky always said “bullshit baffles brains”. I doubt that was original with him but wherever it originated, it’s still largely true. Folk look, but many do not see. ‘Pearls before swine’ was the summation of a demonstration I heard recently. We try so hard to give away our knowledge but so often I would say it just goes in one ear and out the other. Understanding how to apply the correct technique, combine different techniques and time that all correctly whilst adjusting for factors like weather and doing it with a flexible ten year plan consistently is all that’s required to turn the most mundane plant into a a notable bonsai tree. Falling asleep in the front row will NOT get you there, trust me!

Those of us with too many decades of bonsai under our belt have the privilege of being able to see more clearly. I am SOOOO glad social media was not available to me back when I was a feckless know all, cocky little shit. I have a massive box full of paper photographs of so much of my early work. I was so impressed with myself back then when everything was new. The good part about that is YOU will never get to see any of it. I feel for folk in that position today, knowing a bit (but not a lot) and having to put it all out there. I’m looking at it and quietly cringing. The internet has opened this all up for all to see and there are thankfully some incredibly talented individuals but for every one of those there seem to be about a million numpties posting roadkill and that’s all I have to say ’bout that.

Here at Kaizen Bonsai every year pretty much begins the same way. We take a couple weeks break for Christmas and new year because it’s the only time we ever get to not work. When we return in January there are literally hundreds of orders to get moving and by the time that’s done what we call soil season is upon us.

I’m not going to go into just how hard soil season is but we move literally tons’ of goods every single day until the end of April. There’s not a minute to take a breath. Thankfully each year it gets bigger but a lot harder. Reading it back that sounds bad but my point is we REALLY, REALLY appreciate and need your support. I desperately want to do the best job I can but that’s getting harder and harder thanks to outside interference but i’ll literally die before I stop working. Your orders make an old man and his ol’ lady very happy. You are keeping us both fit and active and I know for a fact Richard and Sarah appreciate the roof ya’ll put over their heads.

This year, right in the middle of the chaos of springtime I was, metaphorically speaking, hit by a truck. Entirely out of the blue and without a hint of warning I was faced with one of the hardest choices a modern man might face. My beautiful little dog of eight years suddenly and without warning lost his sight and a week later we had to have him put down. We got thoroughly rogered by thieving vets and so by the end of the week I had a massive hole in my pocket running to several thousand sheets and a dead dog in a cardboard box. Simply savage, brutal and an experience that has left me both heart broken and scarred. I normally shrug this stuff off, I seem to have suffered quite a few losses and setbacks of weight over the years but this one broke a part off me and threw it in the road. Even the arrival of little Baxter has not helped heal the wound. Guess i’ll just have to suck it up buttercup.

My summer went well all things being equal. The weather was good and the bikes were rolling, or at least some where. Often the weather was just too hot to be out riding but on those days I was busy watering anyway. Vintage Harley Davidson motorcycles (with the exception of a ’45’) are, at their very best, fragile and prone to sentimentality, delicate flowers. As a result one is now not working and needs tearing apart for the third time in five years and a couple others have been turned out into the cold world of commerce. However the net result was I got to buy a couple of stonking new rides but this is a bonsai blog so i’ll not get started on bikes.

At the end of August late one balmy afternoon and entirely unexpected we had rapidly darkening skies not unlike an eclipse before an absolute hooley blew through. Ten minutes later it was warm and sunny again whilst we stood there in three inches of water with icy hail floating in it wondering what the hell just happened.

Well, what happened was this little shit storm opened up the roof of my fabled poly-tunnel like one of those cheap shirts the Hulk always wore. An eighteen foot split right at the ridge. It was bound to happen but for a few years now I have been nursing an aging sheet attempting to squeeze every last day from it. I absolutely knew this was coming, i was dreading it but here I was staring at the sky where once there was a roof. Now this is important to me because the poly-tunnel is also my workshop. Having a workshop is much more important to me than having a telly, a phone or even a meal. In fact if I could live in a van and turn my house into a workshop i would, in a heartbeat but Catherine won’t have it and so I’m relegated to my tunnel.

As it happens I’m a bit lucky because I have four workshops. The garage is where bike work takes place, it’s got a lathe, compressors and chests of tools all suited to engineering work. I have a shed where dirty shitty work gets done. In there are welders, blast cleaning paraphernalia, fabrication equipment, pillar drills, chests of tools, paint spraying kit and a dozen little two stroke motors attached to all sorts of gardening kit (I have a big garden with lots of big hedges and trees). There’s another workshop for business where Richard and I (but mostly Richard) sort out all the stuff you order and finally there’s a bit of my poly-tunnel which gets used for everything from bonsai work to restoring/storing motorcycles, carpentry, painting and almost anything can happen in there. Most of the time it’s dry, well lit and spacious.

Way back in 2008 when I moved here I needed a workshop in a hurry, I had nothing else at the time. After just a few weeks my tunnel was in place. A massive task that required weeks of preparation and endless graft from my, then much fitter, hard working Dad and any other folk that happened to be nearby. Whilst the tunnel was constructed to last everything else was a bit rushed and temporary. My benches were cobbled together mostly out of piled up blocks topped with either old oak railway sleepers or decking.

As is the way with many small nursery businesses working long hard hours for small returns we just wore everything out and cluttered up the whole place, so fast forward seventeen years and i’m staring at the gaping harbinger of a massive task. I found a little crew who were going to come and refurbish the tunnel but there’s about a million tons of crap piled in their way. All my benches have sunk and there’s not a level pot in the place. It had been very embarrassing for a while and the only way to put it right was to completely rethink the whole place and start again.

Now I no longer need a producing nursery I decided to make a very practical and useful spot that would be nice to spend time in and also be very practical for how I work. I was also keen not be facing this dilemma again the next time I needed a new sheet so everything has been built around that consideration. Rather than spend five weeks breaking my back humping filthy heavy crap out the way, next time preparation for new cover day will take no more than a long afternoon. Also everything has been built properly even down to all stainless steel fasteners so stuff comes apart should I need it too.

If you do not have the pleasure of tunnel ownership it helps to understand the environment inside. A poly-tunnel is little more than a cold frame with bad ventilation. In summer the temperature can easily hit 60 Celcius (140f) and at other times it can freeze for days on end. The winter leaves a still and very damp atmosphere that will not fully dry out for about half the year. The temperature can easily swing 40 degrees in an hour. Materials that get used inside a poly-tunnel has a hard life. For instance a good few years ago I installed jigsaw style rubber flooring in the workshop. It’s now eight inches smaller than when I laid it.

Wood and metal do well in a tunnel environment but anything plastic will quickly fall apart. Wood must not be allowed to remain wet for long periods, warm summer temperatures can turn a tanalised deck board into sponge in eighteen months. So regarding choice of materials, experience has left me much wiser. By the time I was cleared away and the new sheet fitted I had so many piles of transient materials I looked like a bankrupt builders yard.

The project is still ongoing but I have posted some images below for anyone sad enough to be interested. I will be finished by spring which, seeing as I have done full days on this since September including weekends just goes to show I was either right to be concerned about what lay before me when that hole opened up or i’m just a fucking tired hands who needs to get his finger out.

My main run of benches sits right in front of my tunnel and it ALL had to be shifted. That included about half a ton of blocks and two dozen oak railway sleepers. Turns out these are impossible to get rid of these days so I used some of them to make a floor. The new benches are sitting on concrete foundations over 3′ into the ground, perfectly level and super easy to maintain and importantly…. move. I now understand why so many Japanese working nurseries use simple planks and plastic crates for benching. It might not be commensurate with some folks sense of bonsai aesthetics but it’s very practical. My tunnel sits on a hill and there’s just under a meter drop end to end. This time around I tried to incorporate that feature as best I could.

The reason for doing all this is because it’s high time I started seeing folk again. Since all that Covid malarkey I have been very happy to hide away on my own. To be honest that’s not been the best idea and so from next spring I will be getting busy with workshops again. I will be making more videos and hopefully be welcoming anyone who would like to visit what I can now, finally after too many years call my very OWN bonsai garden. In fact garden sounds a bit grand, it’s not Omiya but I have a big spacious garden with a shit load of old bonsai in it so i’m going with that. If at any time in the year you would like to visit just for the hell of it just get in touch. PLEASE DON’T JUST TURN UP!

Workshops are going to be a small personal affair. Whilst I am happy to do one to one sessions these will be a bit expensive. I will be hosting small groups of three or maybe four by mutual agreement. These will run from 10am to 6pm and be a mix of Friday and Saturday dates. If you would like to receive details and dates do get in touch. Drop me a line – [email protected]

One high point was the arrival of grand-baby number three. Little Elias was born in August, the first boy in my corner of the family since I came along way back when. Well done to Sarah who’s turned into a fantastic mum to her tribe. I’m told this is the last one. I’m fascinated to see how they are all going to cope as everyone gets bigger inside their tiny house. I’m mean that way 😉

So now you have the skinny on all that and so, in other news I have now finished listing our new shipment of Bonsai pots. There is another shipment arriving in January with by far the best high quality handmade pots I have ever been able to offer and I have new stock of a few old favourites still to come in. Have a good scroll through all those categories, we have a few absolute gems this year. I have also managed to get together a good range of very nice Extra Large Bonsai Pots Many of these are limited numbers so don’t hang about.

For next year we are now fully stocked with our whole range of soil products, fertiliser, wire and tools. In fact we have never held so much stock and thanks to a lot of grovelling and twisting arms most prices have remained stable. In fact most pots that we are restocking have actually seen a small drop in price thanks to some favourable exchange rates. Business continues to be intensely challenging entirely thanks to our atrocious ‘government’ attacking us in a way that, frankly, I never thought I would see. I’m not going into it all but if you run a little company or a strong side hustle you will know.

Be sure that as long as I draw breath Kaizen Bonsai will be here, fully stocked with everything you are likely to need direct from UK stock at fair prices which enable us to sustain our huge range of nearly 2000 items. If there’s something you need but don’t see just ask. If there are changes you think we should make drop us a line. Alternatively if it’s pissing and moaning that’s your thing be strong and suck it up buttercup!

Apologies for the lack of blog posts and other content this year. I have had a very tough few months since I lost my little Harley and with everything else going on I got into a very low place. A few visits to friends and some trips out to clubs and a couple of shows this year has lifted my demeanour no end. As always your continued support is absolutely invaluable, we feel so privileged to be supported by the bonsai community and for over 20 years now. God bless every one of you and we pray you have a happy Christmas followed by a safe, healthy and possibly even a prosperous new year.

Have a great Christmas everyone!

THANK YOU

Graham, Catherine, Richard, Sarah and the kids.

 

 

 

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Happy New Year Moi Luvlies!

Just a quickie to say Happy New Year Moi Luvlies!

I wish you all well for the coming year but I fear we may have been weller in past years than we will be in the coming one. All I know is those years keep passing with alarming speed so make the most of every minute.

To cheer you on the way here’s an little doobrey i put together last week.

Enjoy my friends 🙂

Graham.

Bonsai Larch Ramification & Refinement with Graham Potter

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There’s A Lesson Learned

On the face of it growing old sucks. In my head i’m still the invincible twenty five year old version of me who could carry a Ford crossflow engine down the street, but that’s a whole other story. Back then I was doing a lot of collecting and it came in handy to be able to single handedly dig a 20′ yew tree out of the ground, cut off the top and then carry a 125kg stump half mile back to the van. Over 30 years later my main concern is getting out of my chair without straining something whilst wondering how much longer i’m going to be able to eat peanuts. Still plenty of time to mull that over as I rest my aching back on a hot water bottle in the middle of the day.

I’m a bit pissed really. How come nobody warned me? I just figured I would keep charging on like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Turns out that’s not what happens and I know a lot of you are smiling in recognition right now. BUT there is a positive, in fact there are a lot of positives to being at the far end of a lifetimes hard graft, i’m not broke for one. Another is the fact I no longer need to do so much of that hard graft since I can afford to pay a younger and stronger man to do it for me. But above any of these trite day to day concerns there is an overriding advantage to being older that is almost entirely overlooked amongst the cacophony of white noise that is society today and that is…

Experience. Yes folk it’s experience. Something we all have to a greater or lesser extent. In theory the more experience one has the better. Experience is a vast data base we can call upon to aid in making good choices. Not everyone seems to be able to do this, some folk manage to make some appalling choices and end up in a right mess. This may be excused to some extent if you’re a kid but not when you’re a grandad surely? In a bonsai context, back when i was a metaphorical bolshy teenager full of piss and wind I made some dreadful choices and either wrecked or fatally destroyed a fair number of trees but now i’m older There’s a Lesson Learned and those things no longer happen.

This week I have managed  to clear a few days to put together a new video. I’m on a roll this year so far, this is number two!

Looking back over the relatively brief bonsai history of this particular scots pine I realise I made some mistakes. For sure I got a lot right in it’s preparation but mid way through the process I lost faith in that process and succumbed to the noise, I got the tree styled prematurely. Over the years I have learned that the fastest way to make significant progress in bonsai is to take my time, to make time for nature to take it’s course.

There are a good number of special trees in my care these days, many have been developed from not a lot and some have come from very special and wild places. Bear in mind i’m a yamadori guy which is a very different process to that involved with working on more predictable sources of bonsai trees. This development of yamadori takes a long time, especially in the British climate and as far as I am concerned if I never put another tree on show for the rest of my life that’s okay. So long as those trees continue to develop and improve in quality i’m good.

Taking time to establish our tree in a bonsai context is the work of years. Careful preparation and development of a root and branch system capable of becoming a beautiful bonsai tree that can grow well for decades into the future is not easy. Mistakes made early on cost us dearly in terms of lost time or quality. Until that root and branch structure has been developed we have no business wiring and styling a tree since ultimately all that does is push the finishing line further into the distance. Knowing when to get involved with a tree, when to take a significant step. That’s about the most important thing in the development and long term maintenance of bonsai trees.

So how does one know when the time is right? Having been patient, resisted the urge to dive in, done all the right things which have resulted in a strong, healthy and vigorous tree brimming with vibrant health and possibilities, when is the right time to finally reveal that work and uncover the trees future form for the first time? There in, my friends is the value of experience, some of us have it and some don’t and thats’ all I have to say about that.

Enjoy the video and have a great weekend.

Graham.

P.S. Do let me know if there is a subject you would like to see in the future. I’m not promising anything but am curious what ya’ll might like to see.

P.P.S. Whilst emptying out my workshop last autumn i came across this old print. Amazing it survived really. That’s me (in the Kaizen Bonsai t-shirt) about 25 years ago when gardening royalty in the form of Charlie Dimmock came to visit.

 

 

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