Alaska Home and Gardens

Production of a laptop is made possible in part from Conoco from the DuPont company. Hi I'm Nancy McRae. Welcome to Alaska home and you know that old saying that good things come in small packages. That's certainly true in the case of bonsai. These ancient art form is currently being practiced right here in Anchorage with a great deal of skill and it has been my random pageant the owner designs fantasy floral. Now we know we can't teach you the art of bonsai in half an hour but we do think that by the end of the program we will have certainly piqued your interest Bonzai is a blend between art and nature. I became involved in bonsai as a hobbyist because of the unique combination of creative thought and horticulture the word born side pronounced means a planning and a container. The origin of the inside is in China and then went through to Japan around the 15th century. Inside was actually created to move the plants around the temples

to make it more convenient for the Western civilization actually got bone size in the early 1900s when. I was introduced at the London World's Fair as the tree grows. We shape it. We have a particular shape. There's about eight or ten of them. There's 29 of variations off of those shapes that we're able to use and those styles that we use in one side are what we create to make the art form what it is today. There's three main groups of trees that we use and one side there's thousands of trees that we can use. But the three main groups are deciduous tree which means a leaf dropping and a deciduous tree is like your birches maples Oaks Warren beans. These are trees that every year at all they have to drop their leaves. Otherwise they won't live. A second group of trees is called

conifers or cone bearing trees conifers. Are you an evergreen. They do not require to drop their leaves but they will turn a deep blue rich green color as they get into a dormant stage. Now both sets of trees will sap will go down and the tree will go dormant each year and their biological make up is if they don't do that they will probably die. The third classification of trees a subtropical now subtropical zer trees that come from places like Hawaii where winter is 60 degrees. So these trees do well for indoor cultivation and in Anchorage Alaska we deal mostly with indoor trees. There are a lot of people who enjoy bonsai as an outdoor hobby. But most of those people live in the lower 48 or in areas of the world where we get a lot of sunshine. Up here our winters are cold and long so indoor cultivating of gardens and trees become more of the norm.

Now there's the different styles and as I mentioned earlier range from the formal upright which has this gentle person POC who shows is basically a tree that comes straight out of the ground and the first third of the tree is bare of limits. And then you end up with your first set of limbs and then going up through. This enables the right proportion to the tree perfect dimensions and one size one inch of base 2 6 inches in height which this tree does pretty well on. Up here we have another tree called a style or informal upright. This is also a juniper shim Pappu. The style will wander back and forth and around the tree but then we'll turn around and end up over the apex of the the tree itself. Now behind me on this side we have a Chinese sweet plum. This is done any unique style. This is called a mother and daughter or

scholar and teacher where you have two trees coming out of the same root ball one a little bit smaller than the other one. This is a very healthy tree. This has been indoors for quite some time it has a very nice foliage and I think that you can notice that it's really good shape. This tree needs a little prodding. You have to get that. No other style that we have that's very unique is called River Rock. And this particular trait is very unique because it is just coming out of dormancy. This is a very gated chinese elm and it is just waking up from its winter. Now this has a very beautiful white leaf that comes out on it to give it the variegation as it continues to foliate out it will produce a beautiful tree. The way that we shape these trees is by using wire. Years

ago before wire was invented people used to tie downs where they would actually tie a limb to the pot or put a stake in the ground and tied to that or they would use a weight and this held the limb down because when you look at a young tree the limbs grow up to the light as they grow up to the light they form there. Foliage older trees however because of the weight of years have pulled those limbs down the limbs have a tendency to flow and come down on the tree. So when we duplicate that and we have to use a technique to bring those limbs down. Now it used to be that when the weights were taken off the limb would come up a little bit more because it wasn't held down quite as well. Now when they came in and invented the wire they originally started with an annealed copper wire.

It's a very nice wire but it's shiny and it's a little bit hard to work with. This changed in the advent of aluminum when aluminum came along. They came out with a very nice wire. It's very easy to work with. And this particular wire is a brown coated So it hides well when you're putting on a tree and this land already has wire on it you can hardly see it. But we have wired that one up and threw them into work on the days a generation pocket because everybody likes to relate to that will just use that one to start with. Now this isn't a one gallon nursery pot and this is the way you'll see a lot of stock trees now this is called Time materials on site. What makes it a size what we're going to do to a person or it is take it right out of here and take a look at our route this. This is a very healthy rule based as you can tell. The route that we're looking for are why we want good white routines that shows that the tree is in good shape that the root base is in good shape and it's doing well. Black Rudy Rudy too would

signify root rot or damage to the tree itself. Now this is of great soil mix it we're using this comes right out of the drawer and you can tell this is a very good combination of ingredients that include perlite forest humus leaf mall which is leaf small bark mulch a lot of promise and we've even got some little granules in there that are a time release type fertilizer and we're going to. Take some of the soil base off of the top of the roof else we can see what we've got to work with here we got some nice roots here that we're going to try to accentuate and this is a good candidate for a cascade style. It's already leaning down that way and I think that we would be foolish not to go ahead and use it. I've selected for the pot as white casket. It's about the right size for this root ball but we're going to take a little bit of the root ball off and we have a rule of thumb in doing

that when we take some of the root ball off we have to take some of the foliage off on top. If we don't do that the existing root ball will not be able to satisfy the water needs of all that foliage so we're going to take a little bit of that off also. But first thing I want to use or to do is to use my bamboo stick here to comb out the root ball little bit. And this is this is be almost what you call root bound. And so we're going to we're going to take away a little bit of this root mass to make it fit into our pot. So we're going to comb these roots right out so we can see what we have. This is the fun part where you get to get your hands dirty and that's a good chance to see what you have. And I like to do this every year to be able to see what kind of roots my tree is developing now. Now we've got a

big gap in here and I think what we're going to do is just to take that right off. Now the tools that we're using today were quite a few different tools and Bonsai and they're specialized. This is a a little shears that I'm going to use to just take away most of this root ball it's kind of hanging down here you know says no big roots in here these are all what we call feeder roots. They're a little root that will regenerate quite quickly. Now if you take this piece a root ball that we've taken away and just cut up a little bit of it there's a lot of hormones that are in that that will help our new growth get started so we're going to take a little bit of that and we're going to mix it right with our soil mass. Now fun part were we going to have to wait for hands off. Now what I've done is I've pretty cut a piece of screen now this crane is

made out of fiberglass. The reason I use it is because it doesn't rust and it will work real well. I'm not going to tie this in because of the fact that it's going to fit all the way across there. And then a year or two when I take it out I'll be able to look at that needs replacing I'll replace at that time and I don't know that I will for the rest. I like to use a fairly coarse gravel. And the reason that I use gravel at all is to provide a drainage for my tree. The main thing in lawn size you don't want to have the tree to get in the roof. Nominal throw a little bit of the soil that's right in the bottom there with those roots that are cut up and that's going to help provide some good hormones for this tree to get started on. Now we're going to comb this out just a little bit more see were. Take off a little bit more of this.

Just about now we could type history in here but we're not going to do that because we're kind of limited on time today. Normally I would do that so that the tree does not move around and I want to place a tree into my pot. Getting all the roots down in there I'm going to bring it right back oil over my base here and what I'm going to do is a mini is this them. This was a gift given to me by Mr. been OK very good Once I master out of L.A. that we had up here last year and he sent me this. I just love it it's perfect for doing this and what we're doing right now is to make sure that we don't have any air pockets in our soil base. If we have air pockets those roots around that will die because they're not going to get water around and they're

just going to be out there. Now colonel a rule of thumb that we have potting a tree up not part of up in the middle of pot. You don't want to be directly in the middle. Everything should be a little bit off center so that the dimension in the. Look at the tree is not going to be perfect because trees are not supposed to be perfect. They're supposed to be a little bit different. Now. We've managed to get the tree in a pot pretty good and. I think we're real secure now and we're a little bit off center and a little bit to the back. Now what I've done that for is to give it a little bit of depth of field when you're looking at a tree the Oise have a front view and you should be looking at it from eye level. We should be able to see the base of your trunk. So you want to plant it just a little bit higher than

the tree itself. Now get rid of clean up my mess a little bit here that I'd over there out of our way. Now we're ready to start working on this tree. Very lovely tree whose kind of wonderful because in our situation here this is what we call a cross over trees the conifer is a tree Normally I wouldn't want to use indoors but because of the fact that this particular tree does well indoors. We have special instructions for it because it is a conifer but it is one of the few growing trees that we can deal with indoors. And the way that we do that is by letting it stay outside during the summer when it's real nice out put it out in the deck there where you got a nice secure place not too much wind and let the tree

get good growth during the summer. Bring it in when you want to entertain or enjoy it but leave it out there so that it gets good growth. Then as. Winter turns to fall in Alaska August and September get kind of cool nights so we can depend on this tree going dormant during all those months and we'll bring it inside the end of September before the weather gets really cold so that we don't have any problems with our tree getting frostbite and put it under lights. It should be under grow lights during our winters because we have such reduced hours of lighting and a good humid area and this tree will do quite well. Now when we start our designs the tree first thing I'm going to do is delineate some of the growth here right at the base of the tree. Now this is another little shares. This is a very wonderful tool isn't masa Kone one of the best tools it's made for bone size has a

lifetime guarantee on these tools and they won't even let SAP stick to long. Now I'm going to go ahead and take away a few of these limbs here that I really don't want. And. Take away a little bit of my foliage because remember we've taken away some of the root ball so now we want to take away some of this foliage. Now when I make my cuts there's a way to make a cut so it doesn't show. And if you take your scissor and make the cut from the back like that that cuts going to schol from the front of your tree and this is the front of our tree so we don't want to do that we want to make a cut so it doesn't show. So we're going to cut from the front side back so that that cut won't show it off and we're only going to use the shears to cut larger limbs and then to get rid of some of this growth so we can see what we're doing.

And as we. People ask me how can you cut a tree out. You know it's so easy to do that because nature in itself provides many examples of self pruning and it's not bad for a tree what it does is it concentrates growth into areas that you wanting it in and not just in all areas of the tree. So that what we're going to do is to design our tree. We're going to make sure that we have good foliage but not too much because there's three things that your animals have introduced in bonsai. The first thing is no I pull branches now. I pull branches or branches that come directly out at you so that when you do look at the front of a tray you very seldom will ever see a branch coming directly at you. That's that's against the rules. Secondly they like to see the trees in a triangular form and all the trees seem to produce this form very

well given right. Wiring. So what we're going to do now is do a little bit of wiring on this tree to show what we've got we're going to take away a couple more limbs. I'm going to use one more tool that we have for that which is called a concave cutter and this tool has a special edge on it that is concave. And the reason for that is so that when we make a cut and we get in and ride in next to the trunk of the tree itself we're going to take away a little bit of the meat of that tree so that now we have an area that will heal up very nicely. The bark will come around and form a real nice knot hole there and that's what we want and the conifers will not grow from cuttings so we're just going to get rid of that and we're going to take this one off. Once we start moving some of it removing some of the limbs we see what will

makes it a little bit easier. I'm going to take away some more of these smaller limbs so we can look into the tree itself. This makes the tree look much more mature. Now I'm going to leave when we have limbs we don't want corresponding limbs right across from each other so we're going to take this limb here because it really doesn't do anything for me. So I want to reach in with my concave cutter take that right off of there. Now we're getting to where we can see our tree and I think what we're going to do now is take a little bit of the foliage off of the bottom underneath cuttings so that we can see where we're at and it also gives us more of an age look as old trees don't have all this growth in the underside of their limbs. So we're going to just take a lot of that away

real quickly. I'm going to take some of this wire and our rule of thumb on wiring here is when you put a piece of wire on a should be about one size one third the size of the branch that you're wiring. Now we're going to use another tool called a wire cutter. And I'm going to cut a piece of wire here that's big enough for not one but two branches. OK. And I'm going to take this home and start it around this branch right here. And then I'm going to wrap it around here till I come back to the second branch now. I can easily work these branches down and if I work very gently I'm not going to take away any foliage and the forwards there should not be underneath the wire. I'm going to bend the end of it just slightly so that that

doesn't poke anybody. I'm going to go back to my other one and I'm going to complete and very quickly wire this branch trying to keep the foliage away and I'm going to bend that over. Cut off that little bit of access. Now I'm going to take that and I'm going to bend it down a little bit. That's the direction I want that want to go and I cut a little bit of that off as I don't need all that growth and a little bit of the other one now and again a little running. This is where you get to be creative. You can go inside the tree.

Here take a look at it. See what you might want to keep. Might want to not keep. And again I try to take away limbs that are opposite of each other and new growth because I don't want all that new growth I want some of those larger limbs to be there but I don't want all of that. And I got to have some area there where you can see into the tree itself. And again we're going to take away the leaves underneath my pet now. Real quickly I'm going to take another piece of wire. And again I want to cut it big enough to wire to branches. I'm going to come back down. I come around real quickly and wire this branch here and then

I'm going to come around and I'm going to wire the second branch over here. We're kind of limited for time today so we're moving right along here. Normally you wouldn't be working quite this quickly but we want to give as much done here as we know. Now with the juniper You can also just take a hold of that and you can break off those little girls. Now we're going to move that around there. Now to finish this I think what we're going to do. We have all this sticking up here and do we really want. I don't want. I'm going to take it completely off the air. Again I'm going to go back to my concave cutter. I'm going to pick a branch

that I want from the top of my tree or the end of my tree. I'm going to take the rest of this right away. Just like that. And a little bit more wire. And I'm just going to secure this end of the wire here. And again one of the things we don't want to do is to have the wire on top of the ship itself because it could cause damage to the wind itself. Now we won't use a cut paste on this little cut because it's not really big enough. And I wire the end of this out so that that's the new end of my tree and I want to drop it down just a little bit like that. I'm going to take up here take away some of this foliage.

Now we've got the beginning of a very nice ball inside. That will in time be a finished bonsai. Right now it's got some growing to do. Now the wiring Wallie going to keep on there for one growing season. About three to five months if we keep it on there any longer than that it could damage the tree because as the tree grows the wire is going to tighten up. OK that concludes my demonstration with this particular tree. Again we use the gentle person Pappu but we use a lot of different types of trees. Now this particular tree we would like to. Let people know that it's a little bit more difficult to deal with indoors but it's real wonderful.

Over here we have a serous sofa Tita. This is a flower bearing tree and beautiful little white flowers because it's nicknamed tree of a thousand stars. And this is a subtropical tree that we can do just exactly what we did with this on all of the trees are very wonderful to work with but they have special qualifications. They have to have a small leaf. They have to have a good Woody bark but that just about wraps it up. And we're getting real close to the end of this. So I'm going to say good bye for now and I hope you have a very nice day. Production of a Latin woman dies is made possible in my great Conoco subsidiary of the DuPont company.