Hartinez
Masterpiece
Thought I’d start a thread for this Bougie, just for documentation purposes. It’s been posted in plenty of other threads because it mostly speaks for itself. It blooms and the colors are beautiful. The tree however has quite a few flaws that if I had the original tree now, I would have chopped very much different.
I obtained the tree as nursery stock in 2013 and chopped it hard in spring of that year. I wish I had a photo of that chop. I left way to much length on the initial branches and did not address the roots properly. I was fairly new to Bonsai and was just happy to have the tree.
That following year at re-pot I shoved a rock under a section of the roots because, I guess I thought it needed it.
This last year I Did away with the rock and decided to embrace the spaghetti roots and raised them higher out of the pot than they had been. As more surface roots thicken I will expose more and more. I also guy wired most of the outside branches to encourage an up and out growth pattern.
This winter a house guest slipped and knocked this tree breaking off 1 key branch and snapping another. I tried to keep my cool and just show concern for her, but inside I wanted to scream for falling on one of my trees. The damage wasn’t awful and with wire I brought a near by branch over to fill the void left by the missing branch.
Other than guy wires, I have only wired the one replacement branch. This tree has been mostly clip and grow.
It’s been overall low maintenance. Most springs I need to give a heavy dose of iron for the leaves to green up, but when mid summer hits, the tree just explodes with new leaves and beautiful bracts/flowers.
I like the current pot its in and I will leave it in this pot for a few years without repot to see how it responds. Typically I’ve re-potted every year. You can see from the last photos that the canopy is a tad thin on the far right side where the branch that was broken once was. I think once the foliage and canopy extended outward a bit more it’ll just improve.
anyways. Here it is.
2017
2018
2019
2020
I obtained the tree as nursery stock in 2013 and chopped it hard in spring of that year. I wish I had a photo of that chop. I left way to much length on the initial branches and did not address the roots properly. I was fairly new to Bonsai and was just happy to have the tree.
That following year at re-pot I shoved a rock under a section of the roots because, I guess I thought it needed it.
This last year I Did away with the rock and decided to embrace the spaghetti roots and raised them higher out of the pot than they had been. As more surface roots thicken I will expose more and more. I also guy wired most of the outside branches to encourage an up and out growth pattern.
This winter a house guest slipped and knocked this tree breaking off 1 key branch and snapping another. I tried to keep my cool and just show concern for her, but inside I wanted to scream for falling on one of my trees. The damage wasn’t awful and with wire I brought a near by branch over to fill the void left by the missing branch.
Other than guy wires, I have only wired the one replacement branch. This tree has been mostly clip and grow.
It’s been overall low maintenance. Most springs I need to give a heavy dose of iron for the leaves to green up, but when mid summer hits, the tree just explodes with new leaves and beautiful bracts/flowers.
I like the current pot its in and I will leave it in this pot for a few years without repot to see how it responds. Typically I’ve re-potted every year. You can see from the last photos that the canopy is a tad thin on the far right side where the branch that was broken once was. I think once the foliage and canopy extended outward a bit more it’ll just improve.
anyways. Here it is.
2017
2018
2019
2020
