Teach me about "Hardening Off"

[Smoke]

When I say "work a tree" I mean work a tree. The tree don't like me one bit for the work out. But in the end it rewards me with what I seek.

Bonsai is not done to relax, or to just putter around in the backyard. making trees the best you can requires work, Going out after a hard day at the office and pruning growing tips on a maple at 10:00 at night by lantern. Not going on the weekend to the beach cause your way behind in keeping up with your trees. If life comes first I commend you. Family, wife, work and play should always be first, but there are times when the two collide and bonsai has to take precedence. If you don't feel that way your not doing bonsai on a very high level. There are levels and each is comfortable with where they are in it. I try to make the best trees I can and am passionate about how I get them there. I will show anyone what I do, if treated with respect and asked. I'm not here to be trampled on.....


Don't judge me because I take bonsai very seriously, I make time for all the other stuff, but when my heads in the game and I'm talking bonsai with someone, yes even the forum, I take this very seriously and when I speak about something its cause I know it to be the truth. Not with rose colored glasses but by the gigs I do for clubs and the stuff I do for others in my backyard. One tonight in fact, pictures to follow tomorrow. These people don't come to my place to talk about bonsai theory, they come because what they learn here can be applied to their trees and they can see what it will do by following my technique and what my trees show.

 

[just.wing.it]

I appreciate you relighting the Bonsai fire under my ass Al.
I'm no stranger to your sort of "teaching".

You've inspired me to take some bigger steps forward with a few of my trees.

 

[Smoke]

I appreciate you relighting the Bonsai fire under my ass Al.
I'm no stranger to your sort of "teaching".

You've inspired me to take some bigger steps forward with a few of my trees.

No pain, no gain.

 

[Anthony]

Al,
impressive !!!

But don't trees get stressed out from being kept at exhibition level
all the time ?
[ catch the subtle compliment ]

Now who can be more serious than those growing from seed or
cuttings
Just teasing, Sifu.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[JoeR]

When I say "work a tree" I mean work a tree. The tree don't like me one bit for the work out. But in the end it rewards me with what I seek.

Bonsai is not done to relax, or to just putter around in the backyard. making trees the best you can requires work, Going out after a hard day at the office and pruning growing tips on a maple at 10:00 at night by lantern. Not going on the weekend to the beach cause your way behind in keeping up with your trees. If life comes first I commend you. Family, wife, work and play should always be first, but there are times when the two collide and bonsai has to take precedence. If you don't feel that way your not doing bonsai on a very high level. There are levels and each is comfortable with where they are in it. I try to make the best trees I can and am passionate about how I get them there. I will show anyone what I do, if treated with respect and asked. I'm not here to be trampled on.....
View attachment 192377View attachment 192378View attachment 192379View attachment 192380View attachment 192381View attachment 192382

Don't judge me because I take bonsai very seriously, I make time for all the other stuff, but when my heads in the game and I'm talking bonsai with someone, yes even the forum, I take this very seriously and when I speak about something its cause I know it to be the truth. Not with rose colored glasses but by the gigs I do for clubs and the stuff I do for others in my backyard. One tonight in fact, pictures to follow tomorrow. These people don't come to my place to talk about bonsai theory, they come because what they learn here can be applied to their trees and they can see what it will do by following my technique and what my trees show.

I feel inspired to work that trident tomorrow, well done my friend. Pictures to follow.

 

[Adair M]

Al,
impressive !!!

But don't trees get stressed out from being kept at exhibition level
all the time ?

No, it’s called “keeping bonsai”.

 

[Adair M]

What’s up with this pine, Al? Is it a JBP? The color looks off.

 

[bonsai-ben]

Cant hide crap from Adair! Any interest in coming to Orlando one day?

 

[Smoke]

What’s up with this pine, Al? Is it a JBP? The color looks off.

View attachment 192395

I'm surprised I have any trees left after the sprinkler timer incident in July. One month before my wife died on my birthday in mid July on a Monday I noticed a lot of trees looked grey. I ran outside and almost had a heart attack. I forgot to turn the timer back to "auto" after adjusting the watering duration. All the trees were un-watered for five days. That was during a two week record high temps at about 106 for two weeks straight. Most of my maples had no leaves for the rest of the year and most of my shohin looked dead. I babied the entire collection thru her death and after thru the fall and winter. This year I was most happy when most of my stuff actually budded. But yea, that pine might not make it. It is very sad. I've moved it to every location in my yard and it is not happy anywhere. It has no buds this year. Some formed but they never moved. All I can do is wait it out...if it lives...bully... if it dies...my own fault.

 

[Smoke]

Yikes

 

[Smoke]

This tree shouldn't even be alive. It was crispy for all the days. branches broke off and were crispy.



...but...I went ahead and repotted it in the new Koyo pot I purchased for it. Then went ahead and rebuilt many of the new branches in the last three months.

You other guys go a head and wait till your stuff hardens off while I make new branches in three months.

 

[Adair M]

You went thru some tough times, Al. Sad story.

No buds on the pine? Doesn’t sound good. To give you some hope, though, I once bought a JBP that did not bud out in the spring. I had purchased over the winter, and the seller told me it had frozen solid before he shipped it to me.

It didn’t do anything until late July, when it finally pushed candles. This was the same time all my other JBP that I had decandled pushed their second set.

Makes you wonder... I have heard that trees can “communicate” with one another by releasing chemicals in the air. You might want to set a healthy JBP next to it. Couldn’t hurt.

About the “hardening off” thing...

It depends. Upon what stage your tree is in. If the tree is in the early stage(s) is development, letting the new shoots extend puts on a bit of girth to the shoot. You can wire the new shoot while it’s still extending to put in curves between the internodes. And especially to direct that first one half to one inch of growth. Of course, when wiring and bending, extreme care is required to not snap the branch.

On Maples, as you know, the new shoots extend and send out pairs of leaves. One pair will be side by side, the next pair will be up/down. So, we can use this to our advantage. Let’s say we’ve wired the new shoot, it’s extended (and hardened off) and the wire is cutting in a little. It’s time to remove the wire and cut back. How far back? As a general rule, I try to go back to the first set of up/down buds. Yes, I will cut off some of the branch that had been wired. As I said, the important section is just that first inch.

Now, many are surprised I go back to the up/down pair, and not a side by side pair. The reason is I am building branch structure, NOT ramification. Ramifigation comes later. Structure is the difficult and slow process. Doing it this way will build taper and movement in the branches.

Back to the up/down buds... after cutback, new shoots will develop at the base of the petiole of the two leaves. Once they get going good, I remove the downward growing one. And let the upper one continue to grow. Once it gets to about 6 or 7 pairs of leaves, I wire it. Since it was an upper bud, it was growing up! And the wire is used to wire it down and out. So the branch now has a bit of up/down movement to it as it lengthens.

Full sized trees do this, too. The bottom shoot usually gets shaded out, and dies off. The upper shoot grows up and out in its search for sunlight. When it grows long, the weight of the leaves gets heavy. And the branch bends down due to the weight of the leaves. By the end of the summer, that branch that started out growing almost straight up vertical, is now almost horizontal!

So, in bonsai, we artificially simulate this process by using wire.

Full size trees do this once a year. But with bonsai, we can accelerate this process using wire and cutting back. You can get 2, 3, even 4 or 5 separate extensions a year, depending upon your climate. Every time we do this, we put a new hump on the branch. And, since the branch fattens a bit, and then gets cut back and regrow, the branch builds taper as it gets longer.

Here’s a diagram I’ve used to illustrate the process:




The upper sketch shows the effect of using the upper bud, letting it grow, wiring it down, and cutting back to an up/down set.

The lower drawing shows what it would look like if the bottom bud were used instead.

I call the upper drawing a series of hills. The lower one, a series of valleys.

Trees tend to produce more “hills” than “valleys”. They produce both, but the hills dominate.

It takes several years to build a good structure of branches, sub-branches, and tertiary branches with taper and movement.

Once that’s done, THEN you can quickly build ramification and foliage density by pinching back the new growth.

Unfortunately, few of us do the laborious structure building. We all want to go directly to ramification. Trees look good while in leaf, but in winter, that’s when the flaws appear. (Lack of taper, straight sections of branch between internodes, strictly horizontal side branching, etc.)

Anyway, that’s the protocol. Letting them grow out is a development technique. Pinching for ramification is a refinement technique.

So, it depends!

 

[Jake]

Enjoyable read.

Adair, I completely agree with your stance that the stage the tree's in is critical. I wired a new shoot two weeks into initial growth (and clipped off competing leaders) following a trunk chop to get that initial movement. I also couldn't care less about the internodes as I want girth and movement at this stage.

"Bonsai is not done to relax, or to just putter around in the backyard. making trees the best you can requires work, Going out after a hard day at the office and pruning growing tips on a maple at 10:00 at night by lantern. Not going on the weekend to the beach cause your way behind in keeping up with your trees."

The quote above is the main reason I commented though. You obviously respect people's other commitments as you showed in a following comment- but I would argue that, depending on the size of your collection, you can develop a high quality of material whilst pottering around, relaxing in the garden. In bonsai terms I'm still relatively new to the hobby and learning but certainly aim to achieve both. We shall see though

 

[Gustavo Martins]

According to the free videos on Bonsai Mirai, only when the leaves harden off, does the tree change from a energy-negative to a energy-positive stage... Whether that's true or not and whether that affects pruning decisions or not I don't know, but it comes from a reputable source, who creates respectable bonsai, Ryan Neil.

In my humble experience, I found that when to prune to induce ramifications/backbudding is species-dependent. For instance, I found that my mulberry ramifies by itself way more if not pruned. If pruned, only the bud adjacent to the cut will grow but those behind will not. My chinese elm, on the other hand, will ramify a lot more if the growing tip is removed, especially in conjunction with leaf removal on that branch. About tridents, I don't know. I have some, but they are still in the do-not-prune-let-to-thicken stage.

Also, I do respect those people that want to create the best possible bonsai for themselves or for shows/competitions. Me.... I could't care less about competitions. I am trying to grow trees that look nice to me and which I enjoy working on.

My two pence.

 

[Adair M]

Also, I do respect those people that want to create the best possible bonsai for themselves or for shows/competitions. Me.... I could't care less about competitions. I am trying to grow trees that look nice to me and which I enjoy working on.

My two pence.

Lots of people post variations of the “I only grow bonsai for me, I don’t grow bonsai to enter shows” mantra.

I think you should show your bonsai. It will make you better. You will learn to look at your trees more discerningly, more objectively. You will be motivated to do the little tasks that collectively move the tree(s) up in quality. You will pay more attention to your wiring if you know others will be looking at it to rate your skills. You will “wire every twig” because you won’t want that wayward, awkward, little branch to spoil your perfect pads. You will pay attention to your watering so you won’t have a tree with leaf curls. You will learn to pot better so the tree sits at the correct place in the pot, at the right height. You will learn to choose pots to best feature the tree’s attributes.

Showing will force you to pay more attention to all the little details. And it IS the details that matter. The details separate the average hobbiests from the Masters.

Speaking for myself, I would find it very easy to skip some of the exacting work, tedious work, that it takes to produce show quality trees, if I did not actually show my trees. It’s SO easy to see a flaw, and say to myself, “Oh, I see that! I can fix it! It just takes a piece of wire. I’ll do it next time I restyle the tree.” And a year later, it hasn’t been done! And the branch is thicker, harder to move.

Al is saying much the same thing with his statement of how he “works” his trees. He and I may differ if our techniques, but we agree that to excel in bonsai, the trees need to have the “little things” done consistently and often.

 

[Anthony]

Someone said they were serious about Bonsai,

Seeds, home made compost, self sifted inorganic, hand made pots,
watering by watering can, drawn designs, daily care 3 times a day, lots
of reading into Chinese Philosophies on Tree Penjing and Scholar stones.
Hmm

BUT PLEASE NOT - stands and decorations --------- yucck

Wonder what is serious ?

Sent with a laugh and a
Toodles
Anthony

* Darn, now where did I put that Dead Sea Scroll for the wall.

 

[Anthony]

To Excel in Bonsai -

what's that ----------- no studies in Design
No studies in Plant Biology

But lots of control and attempts at saying - my life has not been wasted
Seen it before.

Happy are those who create and in creating, know the joy of ideas.
Now true discipline ...................................
Good Day
Anthony

*Yes, folks we did exhibit back in the late 80's.
First lesson learned, folk steal your efforts.
3 Bonsai stolen.
$$$$$$$$$$$ gone

Second lesson learned.
Most had no joy in showing and chatting with folks.
Just Medals and Ribbons.

Forget friendship, sharing or just enjoying the crowds.

Third lesson learnt ----

Where do you live and how do I get there.
You must have big dogs or lights.
When are you not home.

and it goes on.

So now everything is in the backyard and - oh I dropped
out of Bonsai..................................

 

[Jake]

"Showing will force you to pay more attention to all the little details."

That could be used as an argument against showing too then for one that endulges in this hobby purely for a bit of relaxation.

Not my personal belief but I've spent too long in a waiting room this afternoon (for good reasons) and love a bit of Devil's advocate.

 

[Adair M]

"Showing will force you to pay more attention to all the little details."

That could be used as an argument against showing too then for one that endulges in this hobby purely for a bit of relaxation.

Not my personal belief but I've spent too long in a waiting room this afternoon (for good reasons) and love a bit of Devil's advocate.

Jake, I have ADHD. It’s really easy for me to overlook the details!

An odd aspect of ADHD, however, is the “hyperfocus”. If it’s something that I’m really interested in doing, fully engaged, that one task can become my universe. Nothing else matters. Outside influences are ignored. I’m “in the zone”. It’s like a drug. I don’t want to stop, not to eat, not to use the bathroom... my entire awareness is focused on whatever that task is!

I wish I could control it. Engage hyperfocus on all aspects of my life. I cannot. Some tasks I can’t concentrate on at all! I’ll do anything I can to avoid doing them! Procrastinate, substitute another task for the one I don’t want to do, ignore it, try to delegate it...

But, those things I really want to do, and can focus on: BLISS!!!

Now, armed with this knowledge of what can happen, it’s sometimes difficult to “decide” to begin a task I know can send me into a hyperfocus day project. For example, wiring (or unwiring) a tree. I know that once I get started, I’m not going to want to quit until it’s done. And some trees are complicated or big enough that it might take me all day (or more!) to do. I’ll see the tree, I “want” to wire it, but I’m reluctant to start because I know that once I do, I won’t be able to stop. Sometimes, I’m able to break it down into smaller tasks (I’ll just wire this section here, or these two branches, etc). Still, it’s difficult to control.

But, that time I get to spend doing what I love to do IS relaxation for me.

 

[just.wing.it]

Jake, I have ADHD. It’s really easy for me to overlook the details!

An odd aspect of ADHD, however, is the “hyperfocus”. If it’s something that I’m really interested in doing, fully engaged, that one task can become my universe. Nothing else matters. Outside influences are ignored. I’m “in the zone”. It’s like a drug. I don’t want to stop, not to eat, not to use the bathroom... my entire awareness is focused on whatever that task is!

I wish I could control it. Engage hyperfocus on all aspects of my life. I cannot. Some tasks I can’t concentrate on at all! I’ll do anything I can to avoid doing them! Procrastinate, substitute another task for the one I don’t want to do, ignore it, try to delegate it...

But, those things I really want to do, and can focus on: BLISS!!!

Now, armed with this knowledge of what can happen, it’s sometimes difficult to “decide” to begin a task I know can send me into a hyperfocus day project. For example, wiring (or unwiring) a tree. I know that once I get started, I’m not going to want to quit until it’s done. And some trees are complicated or big enough that it might take me all day (or more!) to do. I’ll see the tree, I “want” to wire it, but I’m reluctant to start because I know that once I do, I won’t be able to stop. Sometimes, I’m able to break it down into smaller tasks (I’ll just wire this section here, or these two branches, etc). Still, it’s difficult to control.

But, that time I get to spend doing what I love to do IS relaxation for me.

ADHD is a good thing, just needs to be tamed, naturally.