u/VMey

I was wandering woods on a lot my dad was considering buying and came upon this American Chestnut in what I would think would be the heart of blight country, but maybe the elevation makes it otherwise?

This is the largest American Chestnut I’ve ever seen personally in the wild. It was on a ridge line around 4400’ and it wasn’t the only one there, though the other one was much smaller. That being said, even the small one did not appear to be a sucker off of a rotten trunk like is seen so often in the appalachians. The small one had some cracks, but those cracks didn’t seem to be swelling.

Other than the last photo which is of the leaves of the smaller one (since I could photograph them more easily), I didn’t get pics of its trunk as I didn’t consider it to be large enough to be notable.

What do you guys think of this? Worth reporting?

Personally, my favorite part of bonsai is cutting stuff off. So I love a tree that gives me a lot of pruning opportunities.

This particular crapemyrtle I have pruned back to a single pair of leaves probably 6+ times this season. I don’t document every time, but I did happen to snag something after the last time. When I pulled it from the greenhouse yesterday during a reorg, I was shocked to find how much it had pushed, because the last pruning I did was unusually strong.

Pic 3 is what it looks like after I pruned it back yesterday. Really starting to have some nice structure.

Btw, crapemyrtle flowers on new growth so you don’t have to worry about losing a year of flowering if you are pruning early.

A few months ago, I saw a Hinoki listed at a North Carolina nursery called Superba Compacta. I’d heard of Compacta before, a very old cultivar, but never this one, and I couldn’t really find it listed anywhere else, nor could I find a photo of it.

I soon learned that they were the only specimens of their kind, and I bought their stock of 3 plants.

I’ve since pieced together the nearly the whole story. A legendary NC nurseryman named Rick Crowder of Hawksridge bought a one-of-a-kind specimen from a source he doesn’t recall, and after some time, he sold it to a nurseryman I know named Brian Stubbs of Wind River Growers. Brian propagated the tree and he gave it the name Compacta Superba, but he didn’t get any traction on it, so he ended up selling all his liner stock to Panther Creek, which is where I acquired it.

So I seem to have the only commercially available specimens of this plant. Unfortunately the name Compacta Superba doesn’t fit modern cultivar naming guidelines of the RHS as they’re not supposed to be in Latin anymore, and the name is confusing against normal Compacta. So I plan to file to register this name, as I have so much of the backstory.

Some notes on the cultivar:
- Its growth habit is pretty globular and dense.
- it has minimal apical dominance. Barely puts out runners at all.
- I haven’t had it long but given that it is very healthy AND has only put on maybe 2” of growth this year, I think we can call it “slow growing” even for a Hinoki.
- Despite its density, it seems to tolerate internal foliage much better than most hinokis, which are known for their interior dieback.
- it doesn’t tend to form stacked pads very much, and the fans are less perfect arcs than some other cultivars.

I haven’t Well’s Special, Kosteri and Nana Gracilis on hand for comparison.

Comparing with each:
- Wells is very columnar, it has the longest runners of all my Hinoki, extending as far as 1 foot this year, and it is moderately susceptible to interior dieback.
- Kosteri is like a bad hair cut sticking out all over the place, but vigorous and fast growing. Very little internal dieback but that’s largely because there’s a lot of space all the way to the trunk, whereas Bijou is dense all the way around and you have to hunt for the trunk.
- Nana Gracilis forms cute little stacked pads and is pretty dense. The fans are very rounded as if manicured. But slow growing and probably the worst of the bunch at dieback.

Anyway, I hope you find this interesting. I’ve begun propagation, we will see how they do in the spring. I also hope to file with the Royal Horticultural Society soon; we will see how that goes.

“Long-Term Progression” is a stretch but it is amazing how much this tree has become defined in 1 year.

Image 2 is 1 month before the trunk chop.
Image 4 I gave it a bit of wire
Image 5 was putting it in a pot for our club’s show, but I hadn’t really “found” the tree’s design still.
Image 6 was today at a club meeting, I started to experiment with an angle change. When I did that, I realized the right most branch would eventually be a problem.
Image 7 I made a sketch with that branch
Image 8 I digitally removed that lower branch and really liked the trunk line more

I put more movement than necessary in my sacrifice branch so that when I eventually cut it and make a cutting out of it, it will have a lot more interest at the start.

Second to last photo is earlier in the year so you can get a good idea of the legginess pre-chop. Last photo is from the Internet, just so you can see the flower character better.

This is probably my favorite plant in the garden. Can’t wait to see it develop. I think this is one of my “forever” trees if I can keep it alive (I’m a little worried about repotting because I know azaleas can be a bit weird and I don’t know them yet)… but I will eventually make the cuttings available. I just potted them up last night… seemed to be 100% strike rate.

I didn’t take the extra steps of creating a pad and leveling it. Hypothetically I’m wishing that I did because I could really use some drainage. And now that I know that this hoop house is actually decent if you build it properly, I might do it with my second one. But I really don’t think I’d have the energy to haul 20-40 loads of crushed stone all the way back there from the front of the house while I also blocking the driveway.

Before I get into my numbered annotations, let me explain what I’m trying to accomplish.

I have several different areas that need irrigation, and I want to begin doing fertigation, where you fertilize a tiny bit with every watering.

In addition to the main zones of irrigation, I also want new hose bibs, and I want many of them to NOT be subject to fertigation. Fr example, it would be bad to refill the pool with water containing fertilizer! However, I also want to have a hose bib WITH fertigation so I can have some plants that I hand water while fertilizing.

I also need the ability to have misting for propagation, and that works off of a different type of controller.

Here’s all the components, and then I’ll explain how they go together:

0. (Not pictured) RPZ Backflow preventer

1. Pressure gauge before the filter

2. Disc filter

3. Pressure gauge after the filter

4. Fertigation line shutoff valve

5. Non-fertilizer hose bib stub

6. Fertilizer injector (Dosatron D128R)

7. Clean-line shutoff valve

8. Second Fertigation shutoff valve

9. Misting branch stub

10. Fertilizer-injected hose stub

11. Post-Dosatron pressure gauge

12. Master valve

13. 11-Zone Valve Manifold

14. Hunter controller

15. (Not pictured) DIG 710AP Misting Controller

Pressure and water flow are king in an irrigation system. You can’t really even begin designing your zones and choosing different types of sprinkler heads without knowing your pressure and your water flow. Unfortunately, everything that you add to the system reduces your available pressure (PSI) and water flow (GPM). So you need to design check points along the system.

Also, if you’re tapping into city water, you are adding risk into the system, because you’ve now taking a tightly controlled system and added a wildcard. You’ve introduced the potential for contaminants to get into everyone else’s water. Therefore, you MUST have an RPZ Backflow. This is expensive, but it is part of being a good person. This prevents anything from getting back into the everyone’s water from your irrigation setup, such as stray fertilizer. A check valve is NOT enough because they can fail. RPZ backflows are super check valves with redundancy. They’re the gold standard.

So, back to the numbered list:

1. Here I’m checking the pressure as it has come out of the backflow and travelled about 100 feet from the front of my property. I used a larger pipe diameter to keep my pressure loss minimal. But I did drop from about 70 PSI static pressure to about 60 between the effect of the backflow and the run of pipe.
2. This filters out any particle contaminants that could be in the line. In reality, this won’t be doing much since it is coming from city water, but at the beginning the construction process itself has a lot of contaminants that need to get caught (dirt, pipe shavings, etc)
3. If your filter is full, you’ll know it by a change in pressure, so this valve tells me before and after.

4, 7, and 8. I want the option to be able to run the system with and without fertilizer. These valves allow me to isolate the fertigation side. I would close 7 and open 4 and 8 to be on fertigation, and I would open 7 and close 4 and 8 to be on all clean water. 4, 7 and 8 should never be open at once because that would dilute the fertilizer unpredictably.

5. I want to move all of my normal backyard hose needs to this system, and almost none of those would require fertilizer. Pressure washing, spraying the kids in the face, etc. This stub allows me to extend for that.

6. Dosatron is the gold standard for injecting into a water line. These can be super pricey, however, I was able to determine that my water flow at the water main (before any components in the system reduce it) is like 7 gallons per minute. It will never be above that (not without great difficulty and a holding tank, anyway). So I don’t need a Dosatron that can go up to 11 GPM. This one caps out at 7 GPM, and is the least expensive option at that performance level.

7. My misting branch will drive my propagation, and I plan to also tie it in to #5, controlled with additional shutoff valves. This way I will have the option to do misting with or without fertilizer. But it has to be before the valve manifold because it is not its own zone… misters operate on a schedule that’s like 7 seconds of running every 5-10 minutes, so I have a special controller just for that (DIG 710AP)

8. This will allow me to set up one or more hose bibs in the future that are strategically positioned to allow hand watering with fertilizer. I want to move to a system that has more hose bibs on shorter hoses, because dragging long hoses around is a huge pain.

9. This is my final pressure check before my zones happen. It will have been reduced further by the Dosatron. I will need to run a new dynamic pressure test here to determine how many gallons per minute I have available at this stage so I can finalize my zone design. I’m hoping my worst case scenarios are not realized and I still have a ton, because the lower my pressure and flow are at this stage, the more zones I have to have, which may mean I can cover less.

10. My controller is a 12-zone system, and I’m spending one of those zones on a master control valve that shuts off everything. This is important because it’s always possible for something to fail. If a valve gets stuck open. I could have a zone running endlessly. A master valve helps prevent that. It must be open for any of the other zones to work.

11. These will allow be hooked up and pipe will be run all around my nursery.

12. I overspent on my controller because I wanted fancy WiFi features and app control 😂

As I build out the rest of the system, I’ll make follow up posts. There’s still a ton of work ahead of me.

That’s the best I can find with a photo of a TV screen and iNaturalist using the general area of Beaufort Delta as the location. Maybe someone here actually know?

(US Only)
Greetings all!

Thank you all for the strong reception with JBPs last week. Over 100 trees shipped out to you all yesterday. (By the way, we still have availability on JBPs and Hinokis).

Ume (prunus mume) is Japanese flowering apricot and it can create gorgeous bonsai because it flowers in winter time, and as it tolerates deadwood well for a deciduous, you can really establish a convincing appearance of age.

However, the species is extremely hard to come by ungrafted in the US. Even seedlings are hard to find. So I’m very excited to be able to offer ungrafted specimens of the Kobai cultivar. Also, these flowered this year, so you won’t have to wait for them to mature!

I have ume in two sizes: 2G and 5G. Pics #3 and #4 represent the 2G size and pic #5 shows a chopped 5G. Their calipers correspond roughly to about 3/4” to 1”.

Pricing:
- 2 gallon - $45
- 5 gallon - $80

As ususal, you can DM me here, or drop me an email at fieldcraftbonsai@gmail.com. If you’d like references, feel free to ask.

Thanks for looking!

I couldn’t help myself; the thing I loved about this juniper was that long snaking branch, and as soon as I saw it I knew that one day that was gonna be the entire tree.

I’ve gotten it started on its journey that direction. Just positioning branches. My ADHD got to me last night and I couldn’t be bothered to finish wiring, plus, I felt like I’d done enough for the season.

I’m also torn right now on which side will be the front. The opposite side. Which I didn’t take a picture of for this post, has a big jin I need to work before I can seriously I consider it as a front, and that’s work I don’t feel like taking on right now. But because of that, it felt like a waste of time to commit to detail wiring at this stage. The branches where they are now positioned can work with either side that becomes my front.

I am experimenting with keeping a pad of foliage on the left as you can see, but see the second image and you’ll see where I’m considering taking this, simplifying down to an undulating curve.

If you want a laugh, check out the third image which I put on my Instagram before noticing something that, uh, stands out… I had AI “censor” the main pic for this post because I don’t have time to handle it right now 😂

(US Only)
Hello all! I’ve been grateful to the Reddit community for all their support this year with these vendor posts. For once, I’m here with something that’s NOT hinokis 😂

I come to you all today bearing a strong supply of JBP seedlings from my yet-to-be-wired pool. These have great caliper for their age, and I’ll fulfill them from my heftiest on down. So the first folks to reach out will get any chonkers available.

Here’s the pricing:
- Single - $13 unwired, $18 wired
- 4-pack - $45 unwired, $60 wired
- 9-pack - $95 unwired, $130 wired

You can reach me via DM or by email at fieldcraftbonsai@gmail.com

Ended up having to take the moss off because there was a rule I didn’t know about, but I like the pic I took with it.

I was out grabbing some cuttings off one of my trees this evening, so I couldn’t see very well. It wasn’t till I got back to my work table and started processing all the branches that I found this thing. Gave me a start even then! Glad it seems to have been abandoned!

Wiring up a big crop of JBP. I almost said “it’s tedious work, but it pays off,” but it is actually fairly zen… it’s just time consuming. Utilizing a number of techniques I learned from John Eads this winter when I volunteered at Left Coast Bonsai for 10 days.

Sergio Cuan came to Triangle Bonsai Society today and I joined the Bring Your Own Tree workshop.

We decided my leaning bald cypress was more of a falling over bald cypress. Then we eliminated a contrived portion of the apex, lowered and reduced the upper right portion which was competing with the primary apex, removed some lower branches and positioned a few for some better silhouette in the future.

Thought you guys might find this interesting. Kotohime appears to respond unusually well to fertilizer.

In the two grid shots, I tried to zoom the photos so that the pots were about the same size so it is easier to compare apples to apples.

I bought a few dozen of these cuttings from Mark Nelms to develop further, and by some accident of running out of fertilizer, a portion of the batch got Osmocote and a portion got nothing, but they’ve been side by side in identical conditions. So we can pretty well say that fertilizer is the determining factor.

Eyeballing it, I’d say the trunk is 2-3x thicker and the lengths are 3-4x longer.

This is really fascinating to me because I have several seed grown JMs also sitting next to these that did get fertilizer and they’re arguably responding rather “ho-hum”.

What’s been your experience with varying JM response to fertilizer?

I have a healthy-ish obsession with Hinoki Cypress, and I think it is a damn shame that, at least in the US, 90% of the Hinoki cypress material we have to work with is grown for landscapes, which means by the time we want to work on them, we are faced with lots of compromises.

So, many of us start cuttings, and then we discover that hinoki cuttings can easily take a year to root.

I found a local landscape grower who decided hinokis take too long to grow, so he sold me his entire cutting stock. Over the next 10 years, I’ll be developing hundreds of pre-bonsai Hinoki that are built for bonsai from the ground up, but even at those numbers, I STILL have more cuttings than I can possibly shape on my own.

These are all Kosteri cultivar and were rooted in the winter of 2024.

I’m offering them with free shipping, with discounts by quantity:
1 - $17 shipped
5 - $50 shipped
50 (a full tray) - $325 shipped

Apparently Shishigashira is hard to root, but I finally have my cuttings game on point and I just potted up 21 of these bad boys, and I have another 50 or so that just need to cook a little longer.

A local guy I know is a master of JM cuttings but he tells me Shishi won’t take. So, does this mean the student has become the master?