Kusamura Bonsai Club
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Adapted from Golden Statements articles by Mitsuo Umehara (Translated by Hideko Metaxas) |
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Early Month1. At the beginning of the year, inspect all of your trees carefully and plan your own work schedule of seed-planting, making cuttings, and grafting. Decide which trees need wiring, transplanting, air layering, bud nipping, etc. 2. Select exhibition trees for this year's show and make a well-planned work schedule for them. 3. It is not too late to catch up with the work that should have been done last year. In particular,
4. Make organic fertilizer cakes, enough for the entire year. Use a mixture of 7 parts cottonseed meal and 1 to 3 parts bone meal, depending on what the cakes will be used on. Add Malathion, diluted 1000 times with water, and knead it well into the mixture. BE SURE TO WEAR RUBBER GLOVES. Knead until the mixture becomes somewhat sticky and doughy, about the consistency of an ear-lobe. Put the dough in a container and cover it. Let it stand until the surface is covered with white mildew. Then flatten it out to half an inch thick on a flat board and dry it in the shade. When it is semi-hard, notch one-inch squares into the surface and let it dry completely. Then break the cakes up and store them for future use. 5. Make sure that you have enough supplies of soil, pots, wire and screen. All tools should be sharpened and in good shape.
Late-Month6. Watch for the early budders such as some maples, akebia, and karin (Chinese Quince)[elms, too]. When the buds start to "glow" (change color and become shiny), they will soon start to grow. Just as they start growing is the best time to transplant. 7. Some fruit and berry-bearing trees need pollination--trees like akebia and bittersweet especially. Watch the spring growth of the male trees and adjust the female trees' environment so that both trees will bloom at the same time for better pollination. 8. Later part of January to the early part of March is the best season for grafting in the Bay Area. Conifers: Graft Japanese shimpaku to collected junipers, five needle pines to black pine root stock. The very best time to graft these trees is the first part of February. Be sure to cover the graft with a plastic bag and/or protect in a greenhouse. Fruit/berry-bearing trees: Take the scion wood from the mother tree while it's still in the dormant stage. Wrap grafts with moist paper towels and seal them in plastic bags. Store them in the vegetable compartment in your refrigerator until the root stock tree shows signs of bud movement or growth. Protect grafts with a plastic cover. You will be rewarded with an almost 100% success rate. Flowering trees: The cuttings must be of the leaf buds, not the flower buds. This is very important, especially for plum grafting.
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January Work
Schedule
