This weekend, @creationofcare and I took a trip to Nuccio's Nursery in Alta Dena. They are famous for their Camellias and Azaleas. i wanted to see about pick up a couple of Azaleas to train as bonsai. Nuccio's was supposed to have a selection of Satsuki Azaleas among their hundreds of other Azalea varieties; including a few that where exclusive to their nursery. You can read about our trip in @creationofcare's post here. I am going to post about what I found, and what i discovered when i got them home...
I picked out 2 specimens. One, a Gunrei Satsuki in the 5 gallon size. It appeared to have a nice trunk, but it was dificult to tell, as it was filling every inch of the 5 gallon container.
The first order of business to was get a look at the base. First I cut the top off the pot so I could see straight in.
I trimmed up most of the lowest and downward growing branches, and cleared away all of the loose leaf litter, and was finally able to see what was there:
The Gunrei did, in fact, have a fairly impressive trunk! I was really happy to see this. growing a wide trunk is one of the most difficult and time consuming parts of growing bonsai, and I was really looking for material I could at least start 'training' this season. Next was to give the 'bush' a good initial pruning. Gunrei (and Satsuki's in general) like to grow full and compact. This is a good trait for bonsai, but left to their own devices, they pretty much just grow into little mounds. To get this azalea to look like a tree, it is going to need some guidance :)
This initial pruning basically serves two purposes... It lets me see the trees existing structure so I can work on an overall design; and it lets light into the interior of the tree. With light hitting the trunk and main branches, the tree will 'back bud' and sprout new branches closer to the trunk. This initial back budding will help further refine the design, and allow me to prune the longer branches, bringing the foliage closer to the trunk and get the proportions more in check (the tree's branches are currently much too long for its trunk size). The trunk did turn out to be pretty nice:
I removed all of the dead/dying flowers (we are near the end of the flowering season), but left all I could for the last bloom. Here is one that opened up the next morning. The flowers are frilly white with pink margins and specs:
The second specimen I picked up was one of Nuccio's special "Dragon" Azaleas. This one is called "Spider Dance".
This plant was in a smaller, one gallon pot. it needs some more growth before any serious 'training' starts. The first order of business here, get it into a larger pot. This starts with some root pruning:
This might seem drastic, but this azalea has a ton of small roots that will easily sustain it after transplant. I am going to put it in a much larger pot, but it will be much shallower... this is the start of training the roots.
It took a while to get all the old potting soil out, and untangle all the roots:
In addition to giving the tree room to grow, the repotting is also removing all the old potting soil and replacing it with soil more conducive to Bonsai. Standard potting soil can not support the tree living constantly in a shallow pot. This soil, made with small pumice rocks, some 'grow stones', and fired clay pellets (non clumping kitty litter) holds moisture better and promotes good aeration and root growth.
i use a chopstick to tamp the soil, and work it into the root ball. It is important that the roots are in contact with the soil, and there are no air pockets (the roots would dry out)
I make sure the tree and the top of the soil are even with the top of the pot. This gives the best view of the tree and its trunk.
The tree is potted, and looks much better already:
Now its time for a basic pruning. The main purpose of this pruning is similar to what I did on the Gunrei. It is also necessary to remove some of the foliage to 'balance' with the root pruning. "as above, so below". if this tree was already in balance, removing a significant portion of the roots would leave the tree unable to support all of its current foliage. This would result in 'die back' as the tree sacrifices some branches and saves others. We dont want that, because the tree almost always chooses branches you wanted to keep ;)
This pruning also does the same thing as with the Gunrei, and promotes back budding. once again allowing me to 'compact' the tree; although I will probably allow this one to grow wild this season and try and thicken the trunk. It does have a little 'flare' at the base though... It might make a nice "Mame" bonsai (small tree, usually 5-8" tall).
We will have to see how these two trees develop.
