Schley’s Bonsai article

An article about a bonsai nursery that I have bought from in the past has been put online.  It’s a pretty good article about the art and gives you a look into the bonsai industry.  Schley’s Bonsai is a store in Florida and can be a good place to order from to get some bonsai ready for Southern heat.  He also carries some great tropical bonsai.

If bonsai — Japanese for “tree in a tray” — are like children, Jason is a prodigious father. He’s tended hundreds of plants and trees from seed to bonsai, and nurtured many students from beginners to hobbyists. And he even used to carry pictures of his bonsai in his wallet, he admits.

http://www.mytopiacafe.com/detail/21744.html

bonsai, trees, japanese, art

OT2 — Bonsai software

OT2 is software for keeping up with your bonsai collection from top to bottom.  It has tree and pot management.  It contains plenty of room to record events and make notes throughout the life of your bonsai.  It also has good picture management and botanical sheets for many different species of trees.  The best feature?  It’s free.  I highly recommend checking this software out to keep up with the progress of your bonsai trees.  Remember to always backup the information though, and I would keep a printed version as well.

Here’s some of the newest features:

• Types of the species, events, pictures, shapes of pots, tree styles can be now fully managed by the end user (including deletion),
• pot management should be fixed,
• All views are kept synchronized when you introduce a modification in one of them,
• possibility of having sheet facts for species.Sheet can be exported and imported through a xml file.
• One can add several pictures at once (nice for left, right, back, front series) and integration with the graphic editor has been improved : choose some pics in the add pic dialog, launch the graphic editor from within ot2 , modify and save the picture in the editor, then the picture preview in the dialog is automatically updated.
• Resizing values can now be configured in the pref menu,
• added multi-core or multi cpu support for lengthy operation like adding pics,
• navigation in the event view improved : you can choose also the type of events you want to see and open the tree history to which an event belongs to directly from the event view (the goal is the following : I decide, for example, to repote some trees, I open “to do” events for them, at repoting time, go to the event view, chose “to do” and “repoting”, you have the list of events, you click on one event and you get the history of the tree).
• Assistants to export OT2 and its collection to a removable media and to import back into the main collection the modifications,
• Better html export (the pic size can be choosen),
• Assistant to export a picture to a determined file size : handy to post pictures in internet forum !

Download Here

OT2 Website

Bonsai list for the South

I have attempted to put together a list of suitable bonsai for the Southern United States.  I would not say it’s complete, but something I’m trying to put together as a reference for beginners trying to take up bonsai as a hobby in the South.  If you have any additions or any species that you have successfully raised in zone 8, please post them in the comments.  I did not list tropical species since those are not specific to zone 8.  Also, some trees may be listed in some books as being fine in zone 8, but may result in stunted growth or constantly weak due to heat stress.  I have tried to leave these trees off.

The Deep South Bonsai List

Rhododendron ‘Shanghai Rosie’

Another item I picked up from Guy Guidry at Bonsai Northshore was a Rhododendron ‘Shanghai Rosie’.  I liked the shape of it and because my fiance seemed to love the smaller shohin and mame bonsai, I have begun to appreciate them more as well.  Some would probably say it has a stick in a pot feel, but standing in front of it, it just gives me the impression of a middle-aged broom style tree.  Watering in the summer is probably going to be tough, but we’ll see what happens.  I hope to repot this one soon in something slightly bigger so it can have some growing room, and it needs a soil change to something I’m more used to like a Turface mix.  Azalea’s are very popular in the south and are a part of almost any Southern garden.  I hope this one stays in my bonsai collection a long time.

Ficus Microcarpa coming along

I have a couple of ficus microcarpa trees that were a part of the first pre-bonsai trees that I bought. This one in particular is my favorite. Ficus trees are really easy to take care of, grow profusely, and can survive many beginner mistakes.  They are tropical, so you have to keep them indoors in the winter.  Under a good florescent light, they will continue to grow nicely.  Here’s a progression of one tree over the past few months.

The above picture is right after it was freshly repotted in late February.  I potted it in orchid mix, which at the time was the best soil I could find that would be fast draining and help the roots to flourish.

After a lot of growth, I started having problems with fungus gnats in the soil.  So, I repotted in a mixture of 50/50 turface and pine bark mulch.  I also did an extensive branch prune due to many branches coming out of the same spot on the trunk, causing bulbous pertrusions.

Unfortunately, between nature and I, this tree has seen a break.  Birds snapped some of the branches, then proceeded to defoliate the rest of the tree.  It has really proven to be a good thing in this specific case.  The branches that are sprouting are in much better places and will provide better balance for the informal upright style that I was shooting for.  I continue to hope this will be one the best bonsai trees in my collection one day.  It’s one of the first trees that people notice when looking at the different varieties on my deck.