2012 March Meeting – Fun with Tim

Izmayil The March meeting was an evening with Tim Kong who proved once again to be one of the most dynamic speakers in the local area. His program was entitled How to Improve This Tree. Thirteen members brought trees for discussion at the well attended meeting, which was noteworthy considering the rainy night.

purchase ivermectin online Tim started by asking the audience to name bonsai styles. Typical for Tim, he had a handful of chopsticks and awarded respondents with one, two or three chopsticks depending on the quality of the responses.

After the member indentified a style, Tim asked if any of the trees submitted fulfilled the qualifications of that style and then if so, why or why not. One style mentioned was bunjin, characterized by a very slender trunk and only a few branches. One of the trees wasconsidered as a possible bunjin but was rejected as being this style because branches were only at the top of the trunk.

Another style was formal upright characterized by a very straight and tapered trunk. A tree partially met this qualification when viewed from one side, but, when rotated a quarter of the way around, showed a curving trunk. Tim emphasized that the tree must meet the criteria for a formal upright when viewed from all sides.

There was considerable discussion about the differences between clump style, group planting and forest style. In clump style all the branches originate from a single base. Group plantings feature several individual trees which are easily visible. There are usually an odd number of trees and generally the number ranges between five and nine. In a forest planting, there are many trees and single trees do not stand out. There were good examples of each of these styles among the trees present.

A maple tree submitted as a show and tell plant resulted in a discussion of the difference between cascade style and semicascade style. The end of the main branch must be below the rim of the pot for the cascade style.

Informal upright style also was considered for many of the trees. This is the most common bonsai style.

Tim then made suggestions for improving each individual tree. One of the trees was a maple tree collected from a garden. The tree was potted in a five gallon nursery pot. Tim said that his preferred potting technique for a collected tree is to fill the pot half full of plastic peanuts before adding the tree and potting soil. This serves a twofold purpose. It reduces the weight of the potted tree making it easier to move, and it encourages development of horizontal roots, which facilitates eventual potting of the tree in a bonsai pot.

A second tree had a hard ball of old soil. Although the bulk of the soil was good quality bonsai soil, Tim commented that the hard ball of soil around the root base was not good for the long run health of the tree and should be removed. Since the tree was an old tree, all the hard soil should not be removed at one time. The best way to remove the old soil is to divide the area of soil in the pot into quadrants and to bare root two of the opposing quadrants, and leave the remaining two quadrants with as much soil as possible. On the second repotting, the remaining hard ball of soil is removed. In this way the hard ball is removed in two steps over several years which minimizes stress to the tree.

Tim’s high energy presentation was very much enjoyed by the members.  So much so, in fact, that during the break, Tim continued his discussion to a big group who were so enthralled that some passed up on refreshments. What higher measure of value of a speaker can there be?

Since there was no raffle tree, a call was made to club members to bring in raffle items, and the call was heard. There were a large number of items for the raffle and a big thank you to all who responded. Because of the number of goodies, some lucky ticket purchasers won more than one chance at taking something home. The club owes a special commendation to Janet Nelson who gave her winning tickets to new members after she had already selected some winners of her own.

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