New Mugo Project

[Paradox]

Thanks for posting this progression Vance.

It re-emphasizes the need for patience and the realization that bonsai takes time.

 

[Paulpash]

This planter is 12' X 12" by 9"deep. It is what I call my 3 gallon planter.

Would a really big pond basket do as well? It has great drainage.

 

[M. Frary]

I like what you did with that slingshot trunk. Gives me ideas for a shimpaku I purchased this year. As for anybody that says you are a fraud send them my way. I can be very persuasive.
When I see you next you need to take me to the nurseries where you find these. All I ever see up here are mass produced Monrovia grown pine puff balls.

 

[Vance Wood]

Would a really big pond basket do as well? It has great drainage.

A large pond basket will work if you can find one. It took me a couple of years to develop this size planter. It is small enough that I have to do an initial reduction of the soil mass on a 3 gallon nursery tree but not so much as to seriously threaten the tree. It is large enough to give the tree room to develop once the root mass is freed up. Pond baskets kind of work the same way but they tend to break down due to exposure to UV rays, it turns them to crumbly dust eventually. It's not really the drainage that is so effective in the development of bonsai it is the process of air pruning that stimulates fine feeder roots.

 

[Vance Wood]

I like what you did with that slingshot trunk. Gives me ideas for a shimpaku I purchased this year. As for anybody that says you are a fraud send them my way. I can be very persuasive.
When I see you next you need to take me to the nurseries where you find these. All I ever see up here are mass produced Monrovia grown pine puff balls.

Unfortunately Mike, most of the Mugos I find still tend to be Pine puff balls. You have to learn how to look for Mugos. I have some pictures around here that show close to a dozen Mugos I found at the nursery to develop into bonsai. They're out there you just have to know how to find them. I'll show you the next time you come down. We'll go feel up a bunch of Mugos----that's exactly what you have to do.

 

[M. Frary]

As long as they don't mind. The feeling up that is.

 

[DhD47]

That is exactly what it was like when I was looking at the mug is I picked up. I walked out of the garden center dirtier then the employees do and a mess on the ground from spilling dirt from pulling out every mugo they had.

It was fun.

 

[Vance Wood]

Sometimes I wonder about my bonsai brothers as to whether they have the resolve to do the things necessary to find good material or they are simply locked into a check book mentality. That's OK I don't have a problem with people who are willing to spend their resources for obtaining material for bonsai. Problem is; most sources for pre-bonsai do not carry Mugo Pines and Mugo Pines cannot be harvested from Yamadori sources in North America.

I have told people maybe a hundred times what they need to do to find good Mugo Pines in nurseries. I keep hearing the same things in return: "We don't have any Mugo Pines like the ones you find", refering to the trees I find. Most Mugos don't have single trunks, ---- the ones I find don't either, I employ a cut and grow technique to get single trunks on my trees.

The important thing is you have to be willing to get on your hands and knees and dig around in the pots under the branches to feel what the trunks are like. It is a messy proposition and does not always yield results. But good Mugos are out there, I located several within an hour at a nursery in Colorado this summer. I had to look they didn't just jump out at me but I found them.

 

[DhD47]

I'm going to make my 3 trip to look at the mugo pines left at the store I just purchased 5 trees from. I think there may still be a few there and I need to be sure I really get a good look at them before they are gone. They also had larger sizes that I didn't really look at but I'm ready to check them out as well.
I have as much fun with my hand in the pot check out the plant as I do working on training it to be a bonsai tree. After all this is just the first step of it becoming a bonsai tree.

Dave

 

[jeanluc83]

Do mugos naturally grow in the puffball, mushroom, upside-down spider, whatever-you-call-it form or is this due to the way they are grown in the nursery trade?

The collected mugos you see in Europe don't look much like what you can get here. Of course they do have 100+ years on anything you get in the states.

 

[M. Frary]

I know where I might be able to dig one or three in a yard. Should I collect in the spring or summer? How well do they take this treatment?

 

[M. Frary]

Sometimes I wonder about my bonsai brothers as to whether they have the resolve to do the things necessary to find good material or they are simply locked into a check book mentality. That's OK I don't have a problem with people who are willing to spend their resources for obtaining material for bonsai. Problem is; most sources for pre-bonsai do not carry Mugo Pines and Mugo Pines cannot be harvested from Yamadori sources in North America.

I have told people maybe a hundred times what they need to do to find good Mugo Pines in nurseries. I keep hearing the same things in return: "We don't have any Mugo Pines like the ones you find", refering to the trees I find. Most Mugos don't have single trunks, ---- the ones I find don't either, I employ a cut and grow technique to get single trunks on my trees.

The important thing is you have to be willing to get on your hands and knees and dig around in the pots under the branches to feel what the trunks are like. It is a messy proposition and does not always yield results. But good Mugos are out there, I located several within an hour at a nursery in Colorado this summer. I had to look they didn't just jump out at me but I found them.

It's just that I may be lazy. But watching you make branch selections last summer I know what to do now. I haven't been to a nursery in a few months but it's time. I'll feel some up on my own and see what I come up with.

 

[Vance Wood]

I'm going to make my 3 trip to look at the mugo pines left at the store I just purchased 5 trees from. I think there may still be a few there and I need to be sure I really get a good look at them before they are gone. They also had larger sizes that I didn't really look at but I'm ready to check them out as well.
I have as much fun with my hand in the pot check out the plant as I do working on training it to be a bonsai tree. After all this is just the first step of it becoming a bonsai tree.

Dave

Odds are that you will find more dramatic trunk formations with the larger trees. Make sure you feel around as low on the tree as you can get, under the branches. You can remove old needles and lose dirt without pissing off the nursery owner but don't be taking the trees out of the containers. You are feeling for a really wide base or a really large trunk or both. If you make a mess you clean it up!

 

[Vance Wood]

Do mugos naturally grow in the puffball, mushroom, upside-down spider, whatever-you-call-it form or is this due to the way they are grown in the nursery trade?

The collected mugos you see in Europe don't look much like what you can get here. Of course they do have 100+ years on anything you get in the states.

Yes and no. The Mugo is a Mountain adapted tree programed by nature to conform to its environment. It is also capable of handling environments much less strenuous down in the valleys and in our yards. This is why it is such a good landscape tree.

In nature the ttree is likely to hide between boulders and hunker down under the snow for survival. The Mugo back buds and grows whorls and throws out growth where there seems to be an opportunity. In short it will form a krumholz, a low compact mushroom upsidedown spider thing without much prompting.

Because of this trait it responds really well to shearing and becomes really easy for the nursery trade to do to them what they do. You may have noticed that you do not see a Scots Pine or Black Pine configured like these guys they just do not naturally have to grow this way to survive. You almost never see a Mugo growing tall and straight on a single stem like your normal everyday Pine tree.

As far as bonsai is concerned I think it is the ideal tree. When you figure out what to do with it as far as keeping it alive it has a vast number of traits that are very bonsai friendly. It back buds profusely, it will develop a really dramatic turnk in the hands of someone who is not intimidated by the way the tree grows. It has a really nice bark, maybe not as nice as JBP but few trees do. I normally has very small and short needles that grow in tufts like the JWP but does not have the color of the JWP and few trees do. But it is inexpensive and available if you are willing to go looking.

 

[Vance Wood]

It's just that I may be lazy. But watching you make branch selections last summer I know what to do now. I haven't been to a nursery in a few months but it's time. I'll feel some up on my own and see what I come up with.

Like I said when you come down next year we will try to go nursery hopping, there are a coupld of places I know where we might find some nice trees.

 

[Vance Wood]

I know where I might be able to dig one or three in a yard. Should I collect in the spring or summer? How well do they take this treatment?

I dug one out of a nursery bed in August when the temperature was 104* Fahrenheit. It did real well untill two years latter I used it as demonstration tree for a spring program, late April, and killed it. I did not remove any roots and only distrubed the soil enough to loosen it up but that was enough to go into a bonsai pot.

 

[M. Frary]

I dug one out of a nursery bed in August when the temperature was 104* Fahrenheit. It did real well untill two years latter I used it as demonstration tree for a spring program, late April, and killed it. I did not remove any roots and only distrubed the soil enough to loosen it up but that was enough to go into a bonsai pot.

That tells me to dig in summer. Cool. What about Scots pine? Spring or summer collecting? When I worked for a nursery we dug those in the spring but had casualties. Not all but probably a good quarter of them died. As for the jack pines I plan to collect I'm going to dig in the spring and summer to see. I don't imagine many people collect those.

 

[Vance Wood]

That tells me to dig in summer. Cool. What about Scots pine? Spring or summer collecting? When I worked for a nursery we dug those in the spring but had casualties. Not all but probably a good quarter of them died. As for the jack pines I plan to collect I'm going to dig in the spring and summer to see. I don't imagine many people collect those.

I have repotted Scots Pines in the middle of summer but never dug one up. As the jack Pines I have had nothing to do with them thus far so I can only speculate. A friend of mine tried in the spring and lost them all.

 

[M. Frary]

Got access to both jack and Scots pines. Loads. I'll dig up some of both in the spring and summer and see what happens. I can get jack pine seedlings from the D.N.R. also They plant them by the thousands in my county.

 

[Vance Wood]

Got access to both jack and Scots pines. Loads. I'll dig up some of both in the spring and summer and see what happens. I can get jack pine seedlings from the D.N.R. also They plant them by the thousands in my county.

That could be a really good deal. Jack Pine are a shelter for the Curtland Warbler I think is the pesky little bird. If you can get a bunch of them maybe we can experiment with cultivating the. I have grown a lot of Scots Pines from liners so I have a pretty good idea what to do with them.