Waking Sleeping Trees

Picture Wayne and Garth wiggling their fingers in front of their faces, making time travel noises. We’re leaping ahead to spring, and for once I’m blogging about something that actually just happened in the last couple of days. April 10 is when I wake up my bonsais, drag them out of their snug little bed in the coldframe under the deck, and pot them up.You can see the thick foil trunkwraps that discourage voles, who like to girdle decades-old bonsais. And why? Because voles are sick little animals. Foil hurts their fillings.

First order of business is to mix up some soil. For bonsai trees, you need soil that drains well, but also retains moisture. The main problem on our windy dry ridgetop is keeping them moist in summer, and there are days when I water them twice. If you’re going to keep bonsais, you have to be around, and have someone you trust who’ll water them while you’re gone. These trees are so thirsty that it would be difficult to overwater them.

So I go to the woods and scrape up some nice humus, along with the clayey undersoil. I load as much of that as I can carry into my muck bucket, then mix it with storebought peat-based potting soil and some white builder’s sand. The peat helps retain moisture; the sand helps with drainage. I line up the pots and figure out who goes with which pot, kicking the rapidly growing smaller trees into larger pots each year. Then it’s time to trim the roots.

Ideally, a bonsai grower would trim the roots back all around the rootball by about one-quarter each spring. I can do that with most of my trees, trimming all around the rootball with a sharp shears. The idea is both to retard growth and to stimulate the production of new white “feeder roots” by trimming the old roots back.

In practice, it’s hard to do, because the roots get awfully dense and compacted, so I hack away as best I can. On this big old tree, the best I could do was lop off the bottom tier of the rootball. Nice form on this tree, if I do say so myself. It looks like a true miniature of a forest giant, doesn't it? Some trees don’t need to have their roots trimmed every year: the chamecyparis and junipers grow much more slowly than the deciduous maples.

I used to wash all the old soil out of the rootballs every spring, but I don’t do that any more, because I don’t like getting soaked and cold in early April.

Next, I chunk the trees back in their pots, with an infusion of fresh soil all around the outside where I’ve made room for it.
Now is a good time to trim any errant twigs and branches. It’s best to do these rather invasive procedures when the tree is just leafing out. Later, and you risk some bad wilting. It’s almost as if the tree has its mind so squarely on leafing out that it hardly notices the intrusion. The one caveat is: If the tree freezes after trimming, it can die. So I watch the weather very closely, and invariably I wind up dragging them all indoors a few times before it’s finally done freezing at night. Like, uh, tonight, and last night. Blaaa. I wanted to wash the foyer tile today but it was forested.

But I’m up against leaf-out, and I have to trim them before the leaves unfold, so I just sigh and schlep them around for a few weeks after I pot them up.I get the moss to top things off right out of our lawn. Moss is vital; it keeps the soil from washing away, it keeps things moist longer, and it looks really pretty and finished, as if they've been growing here for years. The tree in the blue pot is the one I told you about that the coon split in two, that should be in a much more expensive pot, if you believe in such things.

Despite what mall and grocery store bonsai labels might tell you, true (non-tropical) bonsais are outdoor plants. You can’t bring them in the house for more than a day or two without stressing them. I break the rules in spring when they’ve just leafed out, and when they’re in peak fall color, and I’ll bring them inside for parties or dinners, but when the function’s over it’s right back outside. Bonsais are at their best in early spring and late fall. There’s no better conversation starter at a party or art show than a nice tree on your table.

I miss them over the winter when they’re all tucked in their beds. I’ve known these trees longer than I’ve known my husband or kids. It’s so wonderful to dig them back out in April, to see how they’ve fared over the winter, to wash them and trim them and pot them, to arrange them just so on the bench.

Putting the Bonsais to Bed

Last fall, I took a bunch of pictures of the process of putting my bonsais to bed for the winter. I had planned to blog about it in November, but we took off for New Mexico right after I took them, and it was all geese and blue skies from then on. Having just taken the trees out of said pit and gussied them up for spring, I thought you might be interested to see how one overwinters bonsai trees in southern Ohio. (I don't know how anyone else does it; the pit and the foil-wrapped trunks are my invention). After that, I 'll show you how you get them out of bed. You don't have to yell at them multiple times; you just yank them out.

To my great cons-tarnation last November**, I found that my bonsai pit, which lies under our west-facing deck, had collapsed a bit. More than that, it was just too small for my trees, some of whom have been growing for--gasp--25 years or more. I have a special love for Japanese maples, and my favorites get a few inches taller each year. This is the best one:
She's about 2 1/2' tall now. The split trunk is courtesy of a 'coon, who knocked her off the porch railing in 1993 and split her down the middle. I was sick about it, thinking she'd probably die, but I taped her together and dripped candle wax on the wound and darned if she didn't grow into the most gorgeous twin-trunked creature, the best of all my trees. Thanks, 'coon, sorta. I don't torture my trees with wires or carving to make them beautiful; I trim them and that's it, so I'd never have done anything that drastic.

A bonsai aficionado who looked at her about five years ago scolded me for having her in a cheap pot.
"I paid $25 for that pot," I replied, a bit indignant.
"Well, that tree deserves a several hundred-dollar pot," he replied. "Where did you get it?"
"I grew it from a seedling."
"Get out."
"I did. I didn't know any better." He looked at me closely, then shook his head, smiling in disbelief.

See, most people take older nursery stock and carve it up and stick it in a successively smaller pots and "train" it as a bonsai. My trees started with me as two-leaved seedlings, cotyledons still attached. This man looked at me like I was some kind of savant, which I guess I am, because I don't know nuthin' about how you're sposed to create bonsais. I just start small and wait, because hey, I'm waiting anyway. Heh.

This is my oldest maple. The picture doesn't do him justice; he's really big around and has terrific twig structure and very small leaves. Cicadas scarred him in 1996, the year Liam was born, and voles have chewed his trunk, nearly girdling him, but he perseveres. What a wonderful tree. If you're wondering, I assign sexes randomly. Japanese maples are bisexual. Mine have yet to bloom or make seeds, something I wonder about. Perhaps I've arrested their reproductive development as well as their upward growth.I hated to put them in the pit while they were still in full fall color, but we were headed for New Mexico, and the forecast was dire. Speaking of dire forecasts, it's supposed to dip to the mid 20's tonight, which means the entire contents of my linen closet is draped across my gardens. @$%&%$*$%!!! I can only reach half of my heirloom lilac using a stepladder, but I've got two bedspreads and a tarp on it. If I have to stand there all night with a hairdryer pointed at that lilac, I am going to have blossoms this spring. Didn't get any last spring; five nights in the 20's at JUST THIS TIME IN APRIL froze it BLACK. Please forgive me another string of expletives.@#$%$#%$^%^&%/!!! Gotta go out and kiss my golden forsythia good-bye, because by tomorrow afternoon it's going to be dark brown. @#$#%$#^%$!!!

I got a couple of the trees ready to put in the pit and realized that I was going to have to enlarge the darn thing if I was going to get any trees in there at all. So I grabbed my LadyGardener shovelette and started to dig:
Then, I reset the cinder blocks.The finished pit, trees in place. I've taken them out of their pots and wrapped the trunks in thick crumpled foil to keep voles from chewing them over the winter. Then I bury them in soil and water them well.
The last step is to roof the pit, once it gets cold, with a piece of tempered glass (a shower door). You can see it behind me, waiting to be deployed. More Zick fashions for your certain derision. I got the Land's End Squall Jacket for $8, probably because it was such a fabulous color that nobody else wanted it. But that's OK. You don't have to make fun of me this time. Remember, I don't have any neighbors, so I can wear what I want.


photo by Bill Thompson III

The bonsais would sleep here all winter, protected from frost and burning winds by their glass ceiling. I water a couple of times a month, otherwise forgetting about them, until April, when I creep softly in to pull them out of their beds and start their season of leaf and growth.

They're all in the foyer tonight. Pfffft.

**what we hillbillies call bein' upset, when "het-up" don't fit