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The Bonsai News of H ouston A Monthly Newsletter of the Houston Bonsai Society Inc.
HBS sister club, the Houston Chinese Bonsai Society celebrated their 10th birthday.
The next meeting of the Houston Bonsai Society will be at the Cherie Flores Garden Pavilion in Hermann Park, 1500 Hermann Park Drive, Houston, TX 77004. Refreshments at 7 PM, meeting starts at 7:30 PM.
Wednesday, June 1st, HBS monthly meeting: Scale Juniper Bonsai of Texas Gulf Coast with Scott Barboza. Most of beginners start with Green Mount junipers but there are so many other kinds that thrive in our climate. Come learn what they are to maximize your bonsai success. Please bring your healthiest and happiest junipers for Show & Tell.
Upcoming Events Saturday, June 4, Saturday Study Group at Maas Nursery, in Seabrook, 9AM - 12 Noon. Free, refreshments provided.
June 2 – 5: Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 1 at Timeless Trees, 9 AM – 5PM. Cost: $395 per person on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. See ad for full details.
June 9 - 12: Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 2 at Timeless Trees. See ad for info.
Saturday, June 18, Basic Bonsai # 2: Styling, pruning and wiring. 9AM – 1PM. Focus on styling and wiring a tree. $60 includes a ficus tree, wire, hand-out and a wire cutter.
Saturday June 18: Shohin Society of Texas - Critique with Kathleen Williamson & Ray Gonzalez at Persimmon Hill Bonsai nursery, near Austin. Emphasis will be on improving Shohin style and shape.
June 23: LCBS June meeting with guest bonsai artist Pauline Muth at 7 PM, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
July 7 – 10, Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 3 at Timeless Trees. See ad for info.
Saturday, July 23rd, Basic Bonsai #1 Class, Timeless Trees, 9AM – 12 Noon. $60 includes a Ficus tree, a pot, soil, wire, handbook, and a pair of scissors. Focus: Repot the tree into a ceramic pot and make initial branch selection.
Volume 45 Number 6 June 2016
IN THIS ISSUE
Upcoming Events
Scale Juniper Bonsai of Texas Gulf Coast
Showcase
of the Month
Juniper Bonsai
June Bonsai Care
John Miller
President’s Letter
Houston Chinese Bonsai Society celebrates
their 10th anniversary!
Pedro Morales
Tropical Bonsai School Year 1,
Year 2 & Year 3
Juniper Bonsai
June Bonsai Care
Get you trees prepared to take on the Texas summer. Winter and spring conditions have very little bearing on what summer will be like. Remember that the biggest stress on potted plants comes from the soil being heated, especially by the late afternoon sun, slanting in under the shade cloth and foliage. The low humidity in the afternoon does little to stop the heat. You need to provide good shade on the west side. Two waterings are sometimes needed - one about 2PM to cool the soil and provide for evaporative cooling, and another later about sundown to get the soil temp back down, enabling the plant to rest at night.
Be sure the excess water, whether from rain or your watering, drains from the pots. Roots have a habit of forming dense mats in the bottom of the pot that prevent drainage. Most trees die rather quickly if submerged in water.
Leaf pruning should not be considered a yearly task. It should be done only as needed and only on very healthy trees. Broadleaf evergreens would not get it.
If you think you need to leaf prune, you probably can still do it but be careful. The weather can turn hot in a hurry. The trees need time to replace the energy used to grow new foliage. Consider Memorial Day to be the cut-off date for defoliation, yet I have done so successfully on Shumard oaks. Again, never leaf prune the atropurpeum varieties of Japanese maples too late. They do not rebud very well.
If you let the spring candles grow on the Japanese Black pine, now is the time to remove them. In general, earlier removal will result in larger needles on the new candles. So start with the large JBP first. Do the middle size in the last two weeks of June and the Shohin the first week of July.
When night temperatures stay above 60 degrees, you can think about repotting some of the tropicals. I would wait another month though for the buttonwood.
However, some tropicals can be leaf pruned all summer. The Ficus Nerifolia especially benefits by leaf pruning and can be done more than once each summer. That will develop the heavy twiginess you see in the Ficus bonsai from the Far East.
As the summer progresses, the growth of the deciduous trees will slow down, but you still need to keep an eye out for errant shoots. Keeping a clipper with you when watering would let you take care of most of them. Just like in the spring, a shoot too elongated will thicken the twig too fast. The major pruning chore is now transferred to the tropicals.
Tip pinching on some flowering species like the crepe myrtle will result in fewer flowers but if you let it go, they get out of shape. I prefer balancing the flower/design by pinching early. This provides more growing tips to divide the energy and the resulting flowers are shorter. They are less showy but more in scale with the bonsai.
Reduce the number of fruits on fruiting bonsai. The tree’s number one goal is to provide seeds for reproduction, so it would starve itself if needed in order to do so. Again, most fruits are too large to look good on bonsai.
Some days may be relatively cool to you but the sun can still make the pot pretty hot. Not only does this dry out the soil very fast but the tree roots do not like hot soil. A temperature of 120 degrees would kill roots of most plants. I cannot give
you a precise to-do list since your backyard is different from mine, but make sure the sun does not hit the pots directly. Notice especially where the hot afternoon sun, from 2PM to sundown hits your bonsai shelves. Use a shade cloth on the west side. If you use a ground cover of any kind, be sure that the side of the pot is protected also. A loose weave cover is preferred to solid paper or foil. Chopped sphagnum moss spread on the soil surface will reduce evaporation and help keep the soil cooler.
Get to know you trees like your children. Which ones use more water and which ones stay moist between waterings. If some are difficult to keep happy, try moving them to a cooler location (but make sure they get their sunlight). Another trick is to group these together, so that you can hit them with a shot of water twice a day, and not have to spend the time going through all of your trees.
Extended damp weather (if we have it) is good for fungal diseases like black leaf spot and mildew. Treat weekly with potassium hydroxide, or sodium hydroxide (baking soda), or a 1% hydrogen peroxide solution. Watch the moss on your pots. It should be kept away from the bark on the trunk.
Also watch for signs of insect problems. The spider mites will always be near. Others to look for are scale of various forms, aphids and mealy bugs. I control them on a regular basis, using the organic foliar feed (1 Tablespoon each fish emulsion, liquid kelp, molasses and cider vinegar per gallon water) to control all these. You can use some of the other organic controls or a chemical according to label directions. Always read the label directions carefully. Never apply oil based chemicals to buttonwoods.
If ants or any other creatures are building nests in the soil, the tunnels and cavities will prevent proper watering and result in root loss. After you get rid of the ants, be sure to grab your chopsticks and work the soil down to eliminate holes or air pockets. Add a little more soil on top.
The best way to fertilize bonsai is by using organic fertilizer cakes. The cakes provide a slow constant feeding each time you water. Cakes made with a cottonseed base will provide acid pH when they break down, which most plants need due to the alkalinity of most city water system. Making your own is easy and much cheaper than buying them. I use chemical fertilizers such as Miracid or Peters a couple of times a month also. My main problem with chemicals is not knowing how many bad salts have accumulated in the soil. Also I know that each time I water, I am washing the chemical fertilizers out of the soil.
There is much to do with your bonsai now, but don’t forget to prepare for the LSBF 2016 Convention - Bonsai Living
Art, hosted by the Corpus Christi Bonsai Society at the Emerald Beach Hotel, 1102 S. Shoreline Blvd., Corpus Christi, TX 78401 from October 13 to16. For more info, go to www.corpuschristibonsaiclub.org.
John Miller
John Miller, who writes a monthly column for the Bonsai Society of Dallas and Fort Worth Bonsai Society, has agreed to share his column with us. We need to make adjustments for our warmer and damper climate, with earlier springs, longer summers, late fall and erratic winters.
A long time HBS member Ken Credeur showing off his Shohin cascade Juniper after a workshop with Jason Schley.
President’s Letter
I think summer is upon us. This week we have had some days in the low 90’s and high humidity which was stifling. It seems that we went from the 50’s to the 90’s in a short time span.
I am headed to Brussel’s Bonsai for their annual Rendez-Vous held over Memorial Day weekend each year. Besides being the largest grower of Bonsai in the US, their workshops and hospitality are outstanding. They always have a great lineup of artists from around the world. It will be attended by about 300 each year. We always have a group of 10-20 members from our Houston club. The food is great, especially “the Pig” Saturday evening, but my personal favorite is the “Ice Chest” of water, beer and soft drinks. Only in Mississippi do they use an old flat bottom boat as an ice chest. You owe it to yourself to add this event to your Bucket List.
Thanks to Ray Gonzalez and Dr. Hoe for doing a very nice program on Shohin in May. More and more people are interested and getting involved with the smaller trees. They are much easier on your back than the two or three people trees some of us have. (Yeah, I know everything is bigger in Texas. Maybe we can change Shohin to 9 inches, instead of 8.)
Scott will do a program on Junipers for the June meeting. His presentations are always exceptional and I always learn a lot. Later this year, David Nguy, a terrific artist from California, will come to do a lecture-demo on a terrific California Juniper. (Of course, the tree will be raffled off at the end of the demo.)
This month, HBS Saturday Study Group will meet at Maas Nursery, on Saturday, June 4th, at 9AM. Clyde Holt is our gracious leader for this group.
We still need to collect a few membership dues. So check with Barbara Adams at the meeting, if you have not paid your annual membership dues. These dues help pay for the cost of the refreshments, magazine subscriptions, insurance, artists and a few other things that we often take for granted.
Hope to see you at the meeting, June 1st!
Have a great day,
Hurley
Ray Gonzalez’ Shohin Procumbens Nana juniper
on Saturday, May 14th and Sunday, May 15th at the Institute of Chinese Culture at 10550 WestOffice Drive, Houston, TX 77042. In spite of the threatening thunderstorms and flash flood, the event drew a constant flow of not only Asian visitors but also many from all ethnicities and walks of life. A lot of HBS members came to celebrate with our sister club.
Just 10 years ago, 7 Chinese members of HBS founded this club for those who felt more comfortable learning the art in their own language. However today, the club has many members of most Asian cultures, even those who don’t even speak Chinese. The meeting time and venue seem to be more convenient for those who live nearby.
The most active teachers don’t seem to mind, since they are fluent in many languages including English.
In the photo of the founding members on page 1, from left to right, are Soon & Hoe, Alex Leong, Joe and Sunny Tcheng, and Mrs. Albert Chen, standing in for her husband.
Joe and Sunny Tcheng were long time members of HBS, until the day they could no longer drive at night. Unable to tend to their collection, they had to it let go, especially their waterscapes on huge marble trays. In recent years, they had to move to senior centers for daily assistance.
Greeting the visitors at the door was Soon Chuah’s collection of accent plants, Kusamono and Saikei.
With a little help from Mother Nature, this extremely creative artist can make magic combining the most mundane weeds, grasses, ground covers and even vegetables in whimsical pots and rocks to create the most marvelous works of living art.
Some fabulous pieces made with shells or broken pots are exquisite stand-alone works of art.
Soon conducted a lecture-demo on how she whipped up such cute living plants with every day finds. She generously shared collected plants, grasses and weeds with the students in her workshop. As seen in this varied and extensive collection, Soon emphasizes on portraying the natural in the design and execution. Austerity or Wabi Sabi in bonsai is not an important principle in Kusamono or Saikei.
Soon’s whimsical thrash to treasures accent pieces. These whale like containers are sun dried gourds.
Few of those Soon has developed over the years are as complex as this hollow island pictured below. Yet each piece whether rich in vegetation or simply made with just one kind of grass, is beautiful and complete, it deserves to stand alone and be admired in its full splendor. Each strongly evokes a season, a location in nature, by the seashore or up high in the mountain. Free from exaggerated proportions or pain staking
Tiny bamboo boats sailing into a tunnel under a domed island
contortions, these samples of gracious but humble ground covers and grasses can look magnificent within days or weeks of creation.
Soon simulated wild life often found in the Deep South with species likely to be found together, most likely in any backyard in Houston area. With a briefer time frame to grow and simpler aesthetic rules than bonsai, Saikei is more accessible to everyone, seasoned bonsai aficionados or amateurs alike.
The viewer's pleasure arises from the ingenuity of the designer in creating such living treasures. Every now and then, a chuckle or giggle can be heard in the showroom. Soon scattered the exhibit with fun and whimsical pieces, a Texan boot from which Creeping Jenny spills over or a duckling hugging a bouquet of wild grass.
Saikei simplicity means a display is easy to create and to appreciate. Spontaneous responses require no schooling hence they can be enjoyed by almost any observer.
Among the beautiful bonsai, a familiar smile…
…and a not so familiar surprise: Beauty and… The Beast!
After all, arts come in many media, forms and shapes, colors and scales, and so do those who appreciate them. This out-standing gentle man is (can you tell?) a tattoo artist. His distinctively different attire completes a very memorable image.
Alex Leong beamed with fun and laughter while he entertained a big crowd with a exceptional cascade juniper demo. Not only does he work with his hands, he also talks with them too. As he quickly created the image of a cascade bonsai in his mind, Alex was able to materialize it in a graceful drawing on the board and wrapped it with a few poetic words. The juniper depicts a tree clinging to the side of a mountain. Its branches have been weighed down by snow and beaten up by strong winds and falling rocks. As the tree relentlessly reaches out for air and sunlight, foliage pads form, like clouds or rather waves in a water stream. Alex’s friend (whose name I will find out) quickly wrote a short Haiku poem to accompany the completed bonsai. What an enchanting touch! This is what I’d call a 4-D masterpiece! After the demo, these two companion works of art went home with Liên.
More on this superb show in the next issues! Shawn Nguyen
Alex Leong with the completed bonsai and companion Haiku
Calendar of Events
2016
MAY 30 Memorial Day in honor of the service men and women who gave their life to protect and serve our country.
JUN 1 HBS monthly meeting: Scale Juniper Bonsai of Texas Gulf Coast with Scott Barboza
JUN 2 – 5 Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 1 at Timeless Trees. See ad below for more details. .
JUN 6 Saturday Study Group at Maas Nursery in Seabrook, 9 AM – 12 Noon. Free, refreshments provided.
JUN 9 –12 Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 2 at Timeless Trees. See ad below for more details.
JUN 18 Shohin Society of Texas - Critique with Kathleen Williamson & Ray Gonzalez at Persimmon Hill Bonsai, near Austin. Emphasis on improving Shohin style and shape.
JUN 23 LCBS June meeting with guest bonsai artist Pauline Muth at 7 PM, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
JUL 7-10 Pedro Morales Tropical School Year 3 at Timeless Trees, 9AM – 5 PM. See ad below for more details.
AUG 6-8 Robert Steven at Wigert's Nursery. It’s an ideal time of year for a weekend of workshops on tropical material: 4 workshops with plant material included, and one all day bring-your-own-tree workshop.
SEP 17 Shohin Society of Texas - Set up display in preparation for the October LSBF convention and select subjects for the 2017 exhibit.
SEP 10-11 5th US National Bonsai Exhibition at Rochester, NY. For additional information and to submit photos for entry, contact: William Valavanis, [email protected], or 585-334-2595.
Check out timeless-trees.com for weekly classes with very knowledgeable artists and masters. Stop by the nursery on Friday and Saturday to browse the largest pre-bonsai and bonsai selection, pots, tools, supplies, soils and books. Make sure you get on Timeless Trees’ mailing list.
Quality Feed & Garden and Ken stand ready to help you with bonsai selection, bonsai care, pots and supplies. He will also personally have free classes for HBS every 3-month to help you start with your first bonsai. Check the Calendar of Events for dates. Ask for 10% HBS discount.
Come stock up on bonsai soils, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers and other supplies. The plant doctor is always on duty, so bring your unhappy bonsai for a free thorough check up. Don’t forget to ask for a 10% HBS discount.
Come enjoy the most dizzying bouquet of colors and fragrances. There is so much to take home from the large selection of herbs and spices, rare tropical plants and fruit trees, exotic orchids and pond aquatic plants, and native or imported bonsai.
Visit artist Andrew Sankowski at the Mossrock Studio & Fine Art Gallery for the finest gifts and most uniquely beautiful bonsai pots in every shape, form and color. Personalized pots or gifts can be commissioned year round.
Andrew Sankowski 26002 Oak Ridge Drive Direct (281) 684-4411
The Woodlands, TX 77380 Fax (281) 363-9032
Houston Bonsai Society, Inc. P. O. Box 540727, Houston, Texas 77254-0727
www.houstonbonsai.com
HBS Board Members President Hurley Johnson [email protected]
1st Vice President Scott Barboza [email protected] in charge of Education 2nd Vice President Dean Laumen [email protected] Secretary Barbara Adams [email protected] in charge of Membership
Publicity Ken Cousino [email protected]
Treasurer Wayne Malone [email protected] Webmaster Quyen Tong [email protected]
Member at Large - O Nandita D’ Souza [email protected]
Member at Large - O Vern Maddox [email protected]
Member at Large - O Clyde Holt [email protected]
Member at Large – E Sharon Barker [email protected] Member at Large - E Ray Gonzalez [email protected] Member at Large – E Brian Gurrola [email protected]
Delegates Past President Alan Raymond [email protected]
LSBF Delegate Peter Parker [email protected]
LSBF Alternate Terry Dubois [email protected]
BCI Ambassador
TTSBE Representative Alan Raymond [email protected]
Refreshments
Website/email Gary Teeter [email protected]
Newsletter editor Shawn Nguyen [email protected]
The Bonsai News of Houston is a monthly publication of the Houston Bonsai Society, Inc. Copyright © 2011. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of the editor or a member of the Board of Directors. Exceptions exist, however, for certain not-for-profit and non-profit bonsai organizations or associated bonsai and bonsai nursery newsletters, including without limitation the American Bonsai Society. HBS participates fully with reciprocation of contents and material between other LSBF member organizations and others. Authors who submit articles for this newsletter thereby give permission to such organizations to reprint, unless they expressly state otherwise. Space for advertising in The Bonsai News of Houston can be requested by contacting the newsletter editor or a member of the HBS Board. The rates for a business-card-size ad (approximately 3 1/2" x 2") are $6 per month, $30 for 6 months and $50 per year (12 issues). A full-page ad is $25 per month. Rates are subject to change without notice. 3½" x 2" classified ads are run free of charge for one month once per 12-month period for non-commercial members. For special requests or questions related to The Bonsai News of Houston, contact the newsletter editor or a member of the HB
Tropical Bonsai School with Pedro Morales held at “Timeless Trees” in Rosenberg, TX.
First Year Class (Year of the Saw): June 2nd – 5th Second Year Class (Year of the Scissors): June 9th – 12th Third Year Class (Year of the Wire Cutter): July 7th – 10th
Classroom portion: Thursday, 9 AM – 6 PM Hands-on work: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 9 AM – 5 PM
Four days of intensive instruction, lecture, videos, and hands-on work
with the world renowned Bonsai artist Pedro Morales.
Just bring your tools and wire.
Lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday is included.
We will assist you with arrangements hotels and restaurants close by.
The best instructional value in the U.S.
$395.00 per class
Contact Hurley Johnson to sign up, 832-526-5962 or [email protected]
