from the Greater Clearwater and surrounding areas

澄んだ水盆栽会

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai

August, 2013

2013, Issue 8 Page 2

The Mullet Wrapper by Terry Davis 3-5

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai News

6

Contacts & General Information 8

Inside this issue:

It’s free! Stay in touch

with Bonsai activities!

Join the Meet-up Website for

the Sundamizu Bonsai Kai.

Go to http://www.meetup.com/

WestCentralFloridaBonsai/

It’s easy and only takes a min-

ute .

Also, all issues of the

Sundamizu journal are

archived on the meet-up

site. Go to the “more”

tab and then click on

“files”

Regional Happenings Buttonwood Bonsai—Inverness: Key Train-

ing, 130 Heights St., Inverness, Fl; Meets 2nd

Saturday of every month.

President: Bob Eskeitz

352-556-4999

bonsaibobs@tampabay.rr.com

Contact: Al Harnage

352-527-3263

harnage@embarqmail.com

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai—Clearwater: Meets

2nd Saturday of every month. Moccasin Lake

Nature Park, 2750 Park Trail Lane, Clearwa-

ter.

Clif Pottberg: 352-424-6000

Lois Powell 727-742-3301 or

Sundamizu@aol.com

Hukyu Bonsai—Tampa: Meets 3rd Saturday

of every month at USF Botanical Gardens.

Pres. Palmer Ogden 813-486-9374

Lakeland Bonsai Club: meets 3rd Thurs-

day of every month; 7:00pm; First United

Methodist Church, 72 Lake Morton Drive,

Room D-3, Lakeland.

Pres. Paul Cacioppo; 863-860-1173

Suncoast Bonsai Club—St. Petersburg:

Meets 4th Saturday of every month.

Pres. Linda Gibbons; jgibb7@hotmail.com

All club meetings are open to the public and

visitors are welcome.

Sept 28: Sundamizu Bonsai Kai

Display at Aging Well Center,

Long Center, 1501 N. Belcher

Rd, Clearwater. Volunteers

needed. For more information,

contact Clif Pottberg: 353-424-

6000

Oct 5: Bonsai Bash; Moccasin

Lake Nature Park. Contact

Marty Rosen for more informa-

tion: 941-383-6656

Regional Events

2013, Issue 8 Page 3

And in the

Beginning… Thought I’d share with you how I got

started with this bonsai perversion.

Many of you have heard me tell of read-

ing Ted Sturgeon’s Nebula Award-

winning short story “Slow Sculp-

ture” (the title tells it all), where he talks

about the cooperation between bonsai

and grower. What a cool story! That

story is true, but I haven’t told you the

embarrassing part. My first plant was a

mail order yew, and it was grown on a

windowsill of our apartment in a

wooden salad bowl. In cased you missed

it, we were in Florida, and yews aren’t

viable there. But my love for bonsai

survived, and it’s still growing. The

yew, of course, is not.

In a new vein for the Journal, we offer almost a whole issue as a guest issue, as a reprint of the latest Mullet Wrapper, an occasional writ-

ing by Terry Davis, who has written articles here before.

This, we thought, was a particularly well written issue. It was also cogent since it deals in part with foliar feeding in an ancillary fashion at

our latest meeting, on irrigation and watering systems.

A small part of Terry’s issue is about two trees we cannot grow here, the Bristlecone pine, Pinus aristata, (not at all) and the Japanese ma-

ple, Acer palmatum, (at least not easily.)

However, in discussing this with him afterwards, he pointed out “As far as whether or no the aristata and Japanese maples are for your area

or not, I assume folks like to hear about trees in other places.”

We hope you do too, as a change from our normal routine and standard format.

The most important part of his issue is, perhaps, regarding foliar feeding, about which there is some unnecessary controversy.

Terry nailed it, however, and I hope you will take his words to heart.

I have added a few words about another aspect of foliar feeding which he doesn’t mention, but are not too important for the standard use of

feeding (as well as another useful adjunct practice to the rooting of cuttings). He too added some words and we include them as an adden-

dum to his article.

Here is the whole of Terry’s latest issue of The Mullet Wrapper.

He delves into many other aspects of bonsai here, too, and he enlarges on his well known expertise on azalea growing, especially the sat-

suki and their flower color patterns. As an aside, Terry was one of the teachers at our azalea conference, which we held a couple of years

The Mullet Wrapper July 2013 by Terry Davis

A Lesson in Due Diligence for Satsuki The plant in the photo is Gekkeikan (both

K’s are pronounced). Note the “red” flower

among all the striped flowers (I wish I had

taken the photo last week, when they were

in better shape). This is a case of “Akaten”,

meaning the growing top of the plant is red

(or even mostly red). If left on the plant,

the red color will take over the whole plant,

so after the photo was taken, that branch

went into the trash. Now, when you know

what the color distribution is, not next

month when you only think you remember.

I used to have a way of tagging branches to

reflect the colors, using various colors of

bell wire, but this is way too organized for

me to practice consistently. It’s an unnatu-

ral act. In my azalea course, I go into detail

as to why this color management step is

necessary. The same fate befell a Kaho

azalea a few minutes later. When growing

shibori azaleas, you have to remember you

are planning for the future.

Kaho

Gekkeikan

Preface by Clif Pottberg

2013, Issue 8 Page 4

I have often wondered if foliar feeding

really works. I hear lots of testimonials, but

the thing that bothers me is a lot of the

folks who claim success with it do so with

fish emulsion. (S’matter? It doesn’t smell

bad enough if you water with it? Ya gotta

aerosol it? I guess you are serious about

wanting that divorce!) I am reasonably

certain that the complex nitrogen in fish

emulsion isn’t taken up. As a scientist, it

makes no sense. I have never seen any fig-

ures on just what form the nitrogen is in

with this stuff, but I suspect it isn’t inor-

ganic.

Now how about inorganic nitrogen (nitrate

and ammonia)? I recently saw a study re-

ported in Callahan’s satsuki azalea book

where they used radioactive isotopes to

measure uptake, and it turns out that not

only is the nutrient efficiently taken up

(90% absorption vs. 10% for root feeding),

but it is taken up very rapidly. It is also a

good way to supply minor elements, if you

use liquid Kelp. But: this again may be

largely complex nitrogen, so maybe it

would be better to use inorganic fertilizer

like Miracle Grow for the macronutrients,

and some soluble minor elements such as

Watch Us Grow for the minor elements.

Miracle Grow claims to have a full comple-

ment of minor elements, but I am seeing

trace element deficiencies in some of the

plants I use it on. I am told there is a prod-

uct called Aqua Sol, which is intended for

spray application, but it is apparently only

available in Australia.

If you search foliar feeding on line, you

will find a number of studies of the actual

effectiveness. In short, these studies in field

crops (corn and soybeans) found the

method to be ineffective compared to root

feeding. The reason they cite is that so little

is applied (just enough to wet the leaves),

so even if it is over 9x as effective at deliv-

ery, the total quantity delivered is insuffi-

cient. Let’s quit talking theory here and get

down to nuts and bolts: Say, you give a cup

of fertilizer solution to a plant if you water

it in, and 10% of that is taken up by the

plant, and you give a plant 2ml when you

spray it (I’m being heavy-handed with the

spray here). Since there are 237 ml in a

cup, and about 24 are absorbed, you are

still delivering <1/12th the amount by the

foliar route. (What they are not counting on

is that we are aforesaid nuts, and would be

out with a sprayer every night).

To me, also, if the roots are iffy, foliar

might be the only way to deliver the calo-

ries.

blades on those big stones wears them un-

evenly (they are soft). I got them from a

local woodworkers’ supply, Rockler Tools,

but they are available from Amazon. The

three-pack is sufficient.

For tools like the concave cutter, where the

blades meet each other, a good test for

proper sharpening is to cut into a piece of

writing paper with them. If it doesn’t cut,

the tool is dull (duhh!), and if the cut has

gaps in it, then the edges need to be evened

Van Jensen suggested using a set of three

small diamond hones, “Eze Lap” brand L-

Pak for sharpening tools. I tried it, and they

are fast and very effective. My test for a

sharp tool is if they will cut Kleenex, and

they passed after maybe 5 minutes’ work (I

am not awfully patient, so this is a good

thing). I have a set of water stones I use for

my knives, and they work great, but they

are not nearly as portable as these little

hones, which are the size of tongue depres-

sors (say Ahhh!). And sharpening small

out. If you coat a piece of index card with

black crayon and bite down on it lightly

with the tool, it should leave black wax on

the high spots. Sort of like the dentist does

to check your bite.

These tools are stopped by a steel peg on

the handle. If the blades have been sharp-

ened a bunch, you may need to file down

the side of the peg a little so the blades can

meet.

Look Sharp!

Foliar Feeding: Hit or Mist?

section D, Stripes and Sectors, and it is

properly “Hanzome”, not Hanzone”. But

hey, I try to get it right. There are some

errors in parsing some of the names: the

plant featured on the cover, “Byakuren” is

listed in the book as “Bya Kuren”. It is

always tough to figure out how to do the

Japanese in English, but “Byaku” comes

from the character for “white”, and the

word shouldn’t be broken in half. May

sound petty, but if you let mistakes creep in

you end up with messes like Chinzan (often

listed as Chinzai, Chinsoi, Chinzen, and

whatever degraded cracker that all leads

to). That’s part of the problem Fred Galle

and I were trying to straighten out with his

book. And number 9, “Tsuma Beni”,

should be part of category C, “Dabs and

Daubs”. I don’t know how the mixup oc-

curred, but I suspect it was a brain-fart on

my part.

If you are serious about satsuki azaleas,

better snap this one up while it is still

around. Stone Lantern has it on sale. It is

the work of a thorough scholar, and there is

a lot of good information in it. I did the

original translation of the flower patterns

that he borrowed from Galle’s “The Azalea

Book 2nd ed”, and it has been bothering me

that there were mistakes in the material. I

think I finally figured out what it was: pat-

tern 23, “Hanzone”, should be listed under

Speaking of Callahan’s Book

2013, Issue 8 Page 5

Bloody Bonsai! No, I am not talking about my kaffir lime, thorny as it is (I cut them

off). There is a book by Peter Abresh in which someone at a weekend

retreat featuring a bonsai workshop is murdered with a bonsai tree.

Overdosed on jin. It’s a fun read, and still available from Amazon.

Have you noticed a new bonsai on tv? There is one on John Stamos’

desk in “Necessary Roughness”. It’s a pitiful little thing: just a rooted

boxwood cutting in an over-large pot. And indoors. They won’t have

that forever. Why not get something decent, John? Don’t they pay you

enough?

Most of the bonsai you see on tv are pretty awful… I seem to remember

one Maura Isles has in “Rizzoli and Isles”. I think one of the clubs out

there keeps a list of bonsai in the media. Roy Nagatoshi tells me he had

to create six identical juniper bonsai for the first “Karate Kid”. Now

those were pretty decent. And six identical ones… what a feat!

In notes to me afterwards, Terry adds:

“BTW, you can't get around the dose with foliar feeding by upping the

concentration: past a certain point, osmotic pressure will resist absorp-

tion (concentrated solutions don't want to get more concentrated)”

Both the use of foliar feed, and its concentrative limits, has been known

by most, if they study the issue (which so many do not).

The most important use, in our practice, is for unrooted cuttings. It

speeds up the rooting nicely - and increases the take. Obviously, the

only way to apply food to an unrooted cutting is through the foliage -

and it works for us.

Btw, Jack's or Peter's general all purpose soluble fertilizer has minors in

apparently sufficient quantity. At least I've been using it/them on my

cuttings with no apparent deficiencies showing up.

One more point about taking cuttings: there is also a lot of controversy

about the value of Superthrive for growing plants and roots and keeping

them healthy.

Recently there has been a growing consensus that the most important

(or perhaps the only) value of Superthrive is for root initiation, and, for

bonsai, in repotting (when the roots have been damaged and cut back).

Thus, in our practice of rooting cuttings (of which we do a lot), we

foliar feed from the start, but carefully. There is plenty of evidence in

the literature that heavy fertilizer will actually reduce root initiation, so

we feed lightly, and carefully, so as not to fill the soil with as little fer-

tilizer as possible, and not feeding anything but the leaves, to the degree

possible.

Later, when the cuttings have begun to develop callus (from which root

initiation springs) at their base, we start applying Superthrive for a

while, and with the advent of actual rooting we start a more normal

practice of fertilization (but still lightly for a while).

I am into my second year after styling two small Pinus aristata

“Sherwood’s Compact”. These are cute little devils with nee-

dles <1” long, bluish gray. These things have responded to

pruning by popping buds everywhere, even on the trunks!

Since they have no resin blebs on the foliage, I think they are

aristata, not longaeva… these are the ones growing in Colo-

rado. These things are like Japanese white pine Zuisho, maybe

better! The non-dwarf longaeva don’t seem to break back as

well. I am told they are not consistently hardy in the ground up

here among God’s Frozen People. Heck, some of the rocks

aren’t hardy here! Of course now that I have found something I

like, the local nursery quit carrying them.

My experiments with Pinus mugho“Jacobsen’s Dwarf “ con-

tinue to frustrate me: the branches die off for no apparent rea-

son. A lot. I questioned Iseli about it, but they didn’t answer.

This is a shame, as these things are (dare I say it?) pretty much

instant pine bonsai.

Dwarf Bristlecones

Leaves That Don’t Wanna Leave I notice that a number of dwarf Japanese maples (yatsubusa)

tend to hang onto the dead leaves in the winter. Looks messy,

and I think it is a source of disease (namely, Black Twig (deep

bass thrumming, sounds of impending doom)). This Spring I

used a jet nozzle on the hose to blow these leaves off. It got

most of them, so I could pick the few hangers-on. Next Fall, I

will do that before they go into the greenhouse. This last year

has been a banner year for black twig, as everything was

crowded together in the greenhouse in humid conditions for so

long after they leaved out (our Spring was long, cold, and

wet). I should have been busy with the copper spray. This is

bacterial, so fungicides don’t work. I am sure some antibiotic

works, but the plant industry isn’t about to address that. I can

tell you streptomycin (AgriStrep) doesn’t help. I am trying

Neem Oil, which is a good antibiotic (and antifugal, anti-

insect.) It seems to work on juniper blight. There are two new

sprays for the two juniper blights, but I can’t find them.

Wire Storage

I recently bought a wire reel for my aluminum made of

PVC. Big, awkward, and doesn’t work all that well.

And the plywood ones I see around are sorta chunky,

too, so I had this idea: Stone Lantern’s copper wire

comes in 6-7” rolls, so I made a box for them with ver-

tical dividers spaced 2” apart from cardboard. A 10”

box 8” wide holds eight rolls, dropped vertically into

the slots. I like the more compact rolls, and the box

keeps the wire neatly sorted and not getting banged

around in the bottom of my tool kit. Now if I could just

find someone with a radial arm saw so I could make a

plywood version.

2013, Issue 8 Page 6

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai News

Thanks, Marty and Dave for a great discussion about watering

and sprinkling systems! It was a

lively discussion with may questions

and lots of supporting help from

many.

Photos courtesy of

Todd Rosenthal

Aug 10 Meeting

Tokanoma—a tradi-

tional method of dis-

play usually containing

1 suiseki plus 1-2 other

objects, chosen with

great care to great the

desired atmosphere.

Several members will

bring in items and

share their approach to

these displays.

We’ll go to lunch fol-

lowing the meeting at

Johnny’s Italian.

Everybody is welcome!

Thanks to all who continue to bring in donations for our monthly raffle!

Keep up the good work! All that sharing is helping many of our newer mem-

bers build up a collection and the rest of us are getiing some good stuff too!

澄んだ水盆栽会

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai

the Greater Clearwater and surrounding areas

2013, Issue 8 Page 7

Sundamizu Bonsai Kai means Clear Water Bonsai Club

(Pronounced soon”da mi’ zu) Clif Pottberg: 352-424-6000

clifton@pottberg.com

Lois Powell 727-742-3301

sundamizu@aol.com

Meets 2nd Saturday of each Month

Moccasin Lake Nature Park

2750 Park Trail Lane, Clearwater

Directions to Moccasin Lake Nature Park

From Southbound US 19 or McMullen Booth Rd (CR 611):

turn west on SR 590 for 0.8 mi

turn left on Calamondin Ln for 0.3 mi

turn right on Edenwood St for 364 ft

turn left onto Beachwood Ave for 0.2 mi

turn right at Park Trail Lane

From Northbound US 19:

turn east on Drew St for 407 ft

turn left on Fairwood Ave/Park Place Blvd for 0.6mi

turn left at Park Trail Lane

Proceed to the back of the parking lot. This is closest to the

classroom. If you have large material/plants you are bringing,

we will open the gate for dropoff and then you can return to lot

to park.

Annual Membership is $24 per individual or $36 per family

and includes:

● Monthly meetings

● New friends

● Lots of fun