From Semi to Full Cascade with a Cork Bark Japanese Black Pine

This is the other side of the Ondae. The foliage looks better, I think, from this angle. Some of the cork is better, too. I like this view because of the all-or-nothing rush over the edge of the cliff. There are a couple different types of corking: river water cork and obi sash cork.

ondae cascade left 6-16-16.jpg
 
Yes, I did, Don. 2009. It was 8 or 9 years old when I got it. The graft is virtually invisible.
Dave is a great horticulturalist, a genuine person, and a hard worker. He has developed some great stock over the years. Its truly a shame that the bonsai community/hobby could not/would not support a source like that.
 
Dave is a great horticulturalist, a genuine person, and a hard worker. He has developed some great stock over the years. Its truly a shame that the bonsai community/hobby could not/would not support a source like that.
I agree. I have another Ondae that Dave grafted. Just perfect work. Those who complain about grafts on cork bark black pines should see what he does.
 
The summer has gone by. The Ondae's needles have grown out some, but the most amazing thing has happened to the cork. It now has a rust color. Dave deWire mentions this in his descriptions of Ondae. The trunk and the cascading branches also seem to have thickened up a bit.

ondae cascade 9-8-16 IMG_4095.jpg

There are other parts of the bark that have become very dark. You an see those on the underside of the cascade.
 
I will be honest about this and hope it does not bring offense.
Man where in heck did you pull that one outta your a$$? To
begin with I opened the message and started to move on. [But
it is Fred he tends to come up with some good solutions to, well
less than stupendous stock, lets see.] So I scroll on down and
bam right between the eyes. Good save man. And I am surprised
to see how you found that tree outta THAT stock. Always good
to learn some more. Thanks again Fred; you never disappoint.
 
Man where in heck did you pull that one outta your a$$?

Questions like this are hard to answer. One part of the answer is I refuse to give up. Maintaining this attitude is difficult in itself, but as someone said at my father-in-law's funeral: Often wrong, but never in doubt.

Another part of the answer is I frequently ask advice of others that I know have more experience than I do. People who helped me with this tree include Brian Van Fleet, Matt Ouwinga, and Jerry Meislik. I didn't always follow their advice, but every one of them had alternatives to my predicament with the tree at the time.

Finally, I don't rush things. I'm patient. I don't really care if the tree is finished today or never finished. I take hundreds of photographs of the tree, and note each small change. I rearrange the tree in Photoshop, to see if a better way can be found. I collect photographs other people have taken of other trees. Often a similar tree can be found. In the case of the Ondae, there really wasn't anything similar, but I saw a cork bark JBP cascade in Japan, at Omiya. That tree went straight down after the trunk went past the pot edge. It didn't look manipulated. It just rocketed straight down. I liked that plunge. I looked at my Ondae, and saw the possibilities.

TBT, Jerry Meislik and Matt Ouwinga had both told me that I might have to take the top off, but that I would then have a fairly interesting cascade. About 4 years later, that's just what I did.
 
It's about 28" from the tip of the roots to the leading edge of the canopy. I'll take a size reference picture in the next few days, thanks!
 
Here's the pic. The yardstick isn't in quite the right place--it's about half an inch too far to the left, and the stick slants down. However, even given those inaccuracies, it's clear I was wrong. The tree is about 3 feet from the tip of the roots to the edge of the canopy.

ondae cascade ruler super mini pano.jpg
 
Things have been moving along. I noticed that a small cork wing was actually resting on the pot lip. Some people don't like this, but I've seen trees in the Kokofu books that rest directly on the pot. What really concerned me was that the little wing would break off. You can see it in the previous picture. At the same time, I've been using this pot for over 7 years, and I was ready for a change. I had another pot that was slightly larger, so I decided to slip pot it.

The new pot was actually one I had been using for my Mi Nishiki. It was seriously cracked during a terrible wind storm we had last May. I repaired the pot using an epoxy used in building jet fighter aircraft, and then went over the cracks and chips with gold leaf paint.

Getting the Ondae out of the old pot was a tremendous struggle. It took about an hour. I cut around the edges of the pot with a knife, and used various flat thin objects to try to loosen soil around the edges. Finally, I was able to easily lift the Ondae out of its old container and drop it into the new. I did no root work at all, but I did make the angle of the cascade a little more severe. Here is how it looks today.

ondae cascade super mini pano 9-13-17.jpg
 
Getting the Ondae out of the old pot was a tremendous struggle. It took about an hour. I cut around the edges of the pot with a knife, and used various flat thin objects to try to loosen soil around the edges. Finally, I was able to easily lift
I've had some similar troubles and recently found that whacking the sides of the pot with a rubber mallet to releases the root 'ball'.
 
>>All/most branches go up. Nothing to side or downward so looks like single pad or foliage like single branch.--Potawatomi13

I bought this tree when it was 8 or 9 years old. A lot of the cork was already there, so adjusting branch structure was limited to pruning and wiring. I've done some wiring, but most adjustment was done by pruning. Here is the structure as it is now:

View attachment 88403

This is not classic cascade branch structure. It's definitely not a single branch structure either, though from the side it might be construed as such.

The back of the tree is to the right in the picture. I removed one small branch. I removed a much larger branch on the left. When I started working on this tree, I relied a lot on the advice of more experienced enthusiasts. I removed a lot of branches that came in 3s that would have resulted in lumps and bumps.

Since with a cascade bonsai, the viewer is usually looking at the tree in profile, I didn't think all the foliage going up would be a problem, because whatever I did to the tree, it would look like a large single pad of foliage. Another reason it didn't bother me was that the point of this tree is not the foliage, but the cork. Foliage going up meant more visible cork.

You'll notice there are some shorter needles and then some pretty long ones. The long needles resulted from shoots after the tree was decandled, and no new buds appeared until very late. Next summer, the needles will be shorter.

Judy said >>Fred, this is looking strong. I don't know what it is about what you did specifically, but the image is far more striking now to me.

I think it is much clearer now where I am going with the tree. Until I made the planting angle change, and the cascading branch dropped straight down, it wasn't clear what I was about.

Take all your pictures like this please! so much better to see the detail then the blurry side shots
 
That's interesting, @Osoyoung. I have a rubber mallet, but never thought of using it in that way. Next time...
 
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