On Friday, March 23, 2017, Elmer Dustman returned for an Open Workshop with his Japanese maple bonsai which was damaged a year ago. Then soil was added to the container and the tree was allowed to grow vigorously for one year on April 1, 2017. Before planting the entire tree, a ball of long-fibered sphagnum moss was wrapped around the layered area. Usually an air layer would be used, but since the area was not that high we simply layered the tree and he planted the bonsai in a 7 gallon plastic pot. Then the area was moistened with water and dusted with a root inducing hormone. First a clean wound was made using a curved knob cutter. We removed a clean section of the eaten bark where the live tissue was growing and layered the tree. All the bark on the trunk was girdled including the first branch, which was eaten, and he thought the bonsai was ruined and dead.īut I had an idea. Last year my friend Elmer Dustman brought a Japanese maple bonsai he has been training for about 20 years to one of my Open Workshops. When he took it out of the enclosed box all he had was an eaten two inch tall trunk stripped of bark! He keeps all of his smaller bonsai in a box filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts. One friend had a beautiful developed shohin Zelkova bonsai he trained in a perfect broom style for about 30 years. And, I have also seen other deciduous bonsai as well as evergreen species stripped of bark. Rodents love to eat deciduous bonsai, especially maples. In Northern areas, where your bonsai must be protected from the cold winter temperatures and wind, it is heart breaking to remove your bonsai from winter protection only to find damaged trees. This is a topic for a future blog post, “dancing with bonsai.” These must be carefully maintained now in order not to lose an entire year’s growth. Our bonsai think its Spring and have begun to grow, especially maples. Although Spring is officially here, we are still experiencing 21F nighttime temperatures with snow of course.
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