Spring Time

Grow Baby Grow!

The rotation of the Earth around the Sun has made Spring Time here in Taiwan possible once again.  It is March 31st and the weather fluctuates between 20 and 30 degrees celsius.

Spring is the beginning of the growing season.  The weather is a welcome relief from cold winter days.  Because I have mostly developing bonsai I am looking forward to some more growth.

The growing season will continue on through until Autumn.  The temperature range for growth is about 5 degrees to 40 degrees, depending on the species.  Growth rate actually ceases when temperatures become too hot.  At 30 degrees, for most tree species, growth rate will slow down.  During the early Autumn, growth rate will actually spike a little before settling back for the late Autumn and Winter periods where the trees will become dormant.

I have been watching my trees grow new buds, leaves, and now new shoots.  It is the best time of the bonsai calendar.  It is a busy time (depending on how many trees you have) but it is gratifying seeing your trees wake up from the Winter period and show real signs of life.

I am yet on another holiday and I plan to buy some more trees this week.  I am in the process of setting up some tables to display my bonsai.  A mate Dave and I, will put these together and then I will take some photos.  Coming soon.

In the meantime I have been doing some pruning, repotting and wiring.  This afternoon I spied a little ficus that was given to me in December.  I decided to rewire this mini bonsai.

You can see that he is only a small guy but he has some character.  Hand build bonsai pot made by the author.

I wasn't that happy with the angle of the apex.  I wanted to take the wire off and reshape it a little different.

I also wanted to bend the base of this tree over a touch more, adding to the illusion of age.

I carefully removed the wire.  You can see that it has held the shape.  It's that S shape from the middle to the top that I want to change.  I will try and add a few slight bends into the trunk to give it more movement.  I also want to redirect that small shoot growing off to the right.  

The old wire was just beginning to bite into the trunk.

I have added some wire and rearranged the basic shape of this ficus.  I used thicker wire from the base up until the branch on the right.  I then used a smaller piece and wired the branch and apex using the one piece.
For the thicker piece of wire I poked it up through the drainage hole and hooked the end of it to the base of the pot.  I prefer doing this as opposed to sticking it in the soil. 

I then placed him back on a wet tray of gravel.  The gravel supplies these tiny guys with a nice level of humidity, which is essential for smaller bonsai.  

Hopefully in the future, this ficus grows some more foliage and shoots that will make this tree look more adult like.