Olive Tree Gets a Virtual Makeover

About a month ago I discussed the possibility of changing the front of my olive tree.

The few comments I received at Reddit came from people who felt that I should stick with my original front. Thankfully that's not a decision I have to rush into making, because a month later I'm still feeling really confused.

A long and well thought out response from richprettyboy really got me thinking though. You can read his suggestions in the comments on my Reddit post. With his permission, I'm sharing his virtual edit of my photo here.

Virtual edit by richprettyboy from one of my photos

While I probably won't follow this plan exactly I have to admit that it's a big improvement on the way the tree looks right now.

What immediately stands out is that he has removed a few excess branches which were making the top of the tree look really cluttered. With this in mind I brought the tree back inside to get some photos with a few of the branches covered up.

Starting with the current front:

Current front - March 2018

I covered up two branches that really bother me:

March 2018 - two undesirable branches covered up

I think that's an improvement, though the top two branches are on the same level. How to deal with that?

In Photoshop I tried removing one branch and repositioning the other.

Extra branch removed and second left branch raised

No, that isn't going to work.The tree looks too naked now. Pulling the branch on the right down (in the first "pruned" picture) probably won't work either. Maybe wait for a new bud to appear slightly lower on the right side.

Moving on to my alternate front:

Potential front - March 2018

I tried covering up the same branches.

Potential front - two undesirable branches covered up

Once more I have a problem with handlebars.

Looking at the tree from different angles also made me realise that the taller jin is rather straight with a bit of reverse taper. Removing some branches might help with the reverse taper, but not the straightness. It also seems a bit too tall and there's a slight temptation to shorten it, though I'd hate to lose the carving that has been done at the top and really don't know who'd redo if for me now.

Still, I tried it out in Photoshop to see how it looks:

Potential front pruned in Photoshop

The branches don't look right, but I prefer the trunk that height. If only pruning a tree was that easy!

Whichever front I opt for in the end, I need to get rid of a few branches and grow a few new ones in better positions. However with material of this quality I lack the self confidence to make any major changes on my own, so I'll probably be taking it to our club meeting in May for some expert opinion. In the meanwhile I'll allow some of the new buds that are forming to grow if their position seems like it might be useful. It will be easier to remove unwanted branches once I know that suitable replacements are waiting to fill the gaps.

New Ideas for an Old Olive Tree

When Rob Kempinski did the initial styling on one of my olive trees in late 2013 his plan for its future was to create a tree with short, tight pads of foliage. It never even crossed my mind to question his design at the time. But as the tree developed I've always felt something wasn't quite right.

It was only after I wrote my first post about it, however, that I started to see a different way forward. It all started with an illustration I received from one of my Reddit readers, -music_maker-:

Sketch ©-music_maker-

He envisaged a much fuller tree, an idea which really excited me. There was only one problem - two dimensional photos tend to misrepresent trees and as a result he'd put a branch on top of a small jin. I figured his design would need a little tweaking but I was up for the challenge.

With my new plan in mind I allowed the branches to grow, doing only minimal pruning to get rid of misdirected growth, shortening the bottom branch once it had fattened up, and getting rid of the new buds that continue to sprout all over the trunk. But the top remained unchanged.

The next breakthrough came in July 2017 when Kathy Steyn did a demonstration on a much bigger olive at our club. I took my tree along to that meeting for a critique and Kathy also felt that the tree needed a live apex. At the time she suggested I allow a bud coming off one of the back branches to grow and I kept that one for a while. Fortunately the tree produced a better bud coming straight off the trunk, enabling me to remove the poorly positioned one.

My new leader is now growing strongly and I'm really looking forward to the day that I can shorten it and start developing a proper apex. This photo was taken a few days ago:

March 2018

I'm still not too happy with the cluster of branches high up on the main trunk though. They seem rather cluttered and poorly arranged to me and perhaps in time one or two will have to go. Photos from all four sides may give a clearer idea of the true situation:

View from all four sides

And while rotating the tree to get these photos, I started to wonder whether I've been working with the right front. The current one was chosen by a senior member of my bonsai club and is slightly different from Rob Kempinski's original front.

I find myself drawn to this option:

Potential new front

Some will argue that it has less movement than the current front and that the base appears narrower from that side, but I'm not too happy with the appearance of the wide gap between the main trunk and the big jin when viewed from the current front. I find my attention pulled in two opposing directions with no real focal point.

Of course a change of front would mean that the branches will need some tweaking, but I can live with that. I'd rather spend a bit more time regrowing branches if it means developing a better tree.

More photos (and future updates) can be found here.

Carving a Big Olive Tree

The topic of our club's last meeting was carving trees. The demonstrator was Kathy Steyn of Bonsai Magic. Although Kathy isn't a member of our club I've often seen her and her trees at the meetings where members of the various clubs in my area get together and she always has the top trees in several categories.

Here are two which she brought to our meeting.

First an olive tree:

Kathy Steyn's olive tree

I'd love to have one like this in my collection but it would have to be a lot smaller than Kathy's tree as I only buy trees I can manage on my own. Maybe one day...

Her second tree was this Buddleja Salinga:

Kathy Steyn's Buddleja Salinga

Dave Wilson, a long time member of our club (Eastern Bonsai Society), brought this large, untrained olive tree for Kathy to work on.

The first step was to get rid of the excess branches.

Kathy and Dave removing unwanted branches

If this was Kathy's own tree she'd have removed all the thin branches as olives bud back well after pruning. However she respected Dave's wishes and left the best options, though it's possible that some of those will be removed later if better options present themselves.

The next step was removing a thicker branch that looked out of place.

With an electric saw that didn't take too long.

Then it was time for some serious carving:

Creating a natural look with some areas hollowed out:

Here the tree is starting to take shape. What remains of the sawed off branch now looks like natural damage rather than the result of pruning.

The side view of that branch shows a hollow:

An old cut has been turned into a jin.

Dave's tree proved to require more work than could be done in the allotted time, so Kathy took it home to finish the work. Dave has promised to bring it to another meeting so we can see the finished job. When he does I'll get some more photos so that I can write an update.

Meanwhile you can see more of Kathy's work on her Facebook Page.

If you're in Gauteng (South Africa), Kathy offers carving lessons. You can find the details on her website.

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I took my own olive tree along to the meeting and Kathy gave me some advice on how to proceed. As I don't do my own carving I took it to a workshop last week and was really pleased with the work that was done there. But I'll save that for another post.

When the Weeds Take Over

This little olive tree is one of the rare trees I've bought as bonsai stock, meaning that it required a lot less work than most of my other trees do. Here it is as purchased at our club show in October 2010.

Olive tree - October 2010

I was quite happy with the way it looked in the spring of 2015 and was planning to move it to a bonsai pot but for some reason I never got around it it.

Instead it got lost among my bigger trees and I failed to notice the little Melaleuca seedling which planted itself at the side of the bag. By the time I discovered it, it was too deeply rooted to simply pull it out and move it to a pot of its own, so I left it there and waited for a suitable time to move it. And, as is my wont, I forgot all about it.

Now it had become so tall that it was totally dwarfing my poor little olive tree.

Olive tree and Melaleuca 'weedling'

Something had to be done about it. Unfortunately it's mid-summer in South Africa - not the right time for repotting trees, so that will have to wait. (It's on my brand new list of things to do in Spring though, so hopefully it will finally get done this year.)

For now I decided to cut it down to a more suitable height so that it doesn't interfere with the olive tree more than necessary.

Olive tree and Melaleuca 'weedling' after chop - January 2017

It's a shame I had to do that because the Melaleuca was growing so vigorously that I'd have loved to see how much it would fatten up with another couple of years of unrestrained growth. I'll have to content myself with trying that out with one of its younger 'brothers' - another weed which I rescued before it was established in the pot in which it took root.

Melaleuca seedling - January 2017

Sadly fattening this one up is going to take much longer. The one positive is that I was able to wire the trunk to add a little movement while it's still young and flexible.

Melaleuca seedling after wiring - January 2017

While I was at it, I tidied up the olive tree.

Olive tree, after trim - January 2017. The Melaleuca is hidden behind a piece of white paper

While doing so I discovered that it had suffered a little die-back. Fortunately I caught it now. It could have been a whole lot worse.

Three Weeks After the Show

I can't believe it's already three weeks since our club show. Time is really flying and as we move from spring into summer some of my trees are growing like crazy. I decided it was time to see what progress my show trees had made in that short time.

I was amazed to see the change in my Stinkwood tree. This is what it looked like at the show:

Stinkwood as it appeared at the show

Since then the branch structure had largely disappeared behind a mass of big new leaves. (Sorry about the bad camera angle hiding the base.)

Stinkwood with three weeks of growth since show

I might have left it like that for a little longer, but this tree has a crazy idea of seasons, waking up in late winter and going dormant long before my other trees. As I'm hoping to get some better ramification going I need to maximise its growing season so I did something approaching a Walter Pall hedge prune - nothing too dramatic, just reducing the volume of foliage to allow light to get to the inner branches which need it most. I'll do more selective pruning while it's dormant, and by then I hope to have more options to choose from.

I was much gentler on my other show trees.

Schotia - 30 October 2016

My Schotia had hardly put out any new growth since the show. The only useful bud of any substance was this one, though I spotted a couple of other buds which are just starting to swell.

Aside from that it had pushed out this unwanted bud on the trunk:

Removing that was the only work possible on this tree. As it grows slowly, I'm not sure how much more I'll be able to do this summer. Ramification may take a while on this one.

My olive tree is starting to look a bit messy, with lots of little buds pushing out all over the trunk:

Some of those buds will need to go before I lose track of which branches I really want, but I'll leave working on this tree for another day. There's been a change of plan for its future design since I originally discussed it back in April, so it really needs a post of its own.

As for my little ficus, it's starting to look a little untidy too, but I decided to hold back on the next trim for a little longer. I'll probably trim the top growth soon, but I'll let the lower branches grow for a while so that they can thicken up a bit more.

With top branches wired

Meanwhile I noticed that the wire on the upper branches was starting to bite, so I removed that.

After removing the wire

The branches held their position reasonably well so I didn't bother to rewire them for now. There's plenty of time to do that later if required.

Trees in training for less than five years

It's showtime at my bonsai club this weekend.

In bonsai terms that should be one of the highlights of my year, but unforeseen circumstances have prevented me from dedicating much time to my trees over the past month and this week I found myself totally unprepared for the show. When I looked at my small collection of trees which are actually in bonsai pots, only one looked vaguely show-worthy but not really the way I'd have wanted it to look for putting on show.

Fortunately the club has introduced a section for trees which have been in training for less than five years, and those can be displayed in training pots. So I looked around to see which trees I could display in that section and cut my options down to four on which I did some preparation today.

These are my options:

1. Schotia Brachypetala

Schotia - before tidying up for show

This tree has been growing quite vigorously since its early spring pruning. Initially I planned to do no more than rewire it, but in the end I went a little further and ended up with my tree looking like this:

Schotia - ready for show

Though it appears that I did some drastic work, only one branch was pruned. The rest was merely reducing the volume of the large compound leaves so that the branch structure became a bit more visible. Though I'm not convinced the tree is looking its best right now, removing that foliage actually helped me to notice a few branches that had been wired in the wrong direction. That should benefit the tree in the long term.

2. Celtis Africana

Celtis Africana

This is one of my bigger trees and has quite a nice trunk, with a few secrets which I'll keep for a future post. Unfortunately I haven't put much time or effort into ramification yet, so the top isn't looking that good.

3. Olea europaea subsp africana (Olive)

Olive

This tree has had a bit more carving done since I last wrote about it in April. Since then it had put out lots of new growth all over the trunk, but I tidied that up for show purposes. I'm not totally happy with the style though and plan to let the branches grow out further for the rest of the summer.

4. Ficus Natalensis

Ficus Natalensis

The smallest of the four but one of my favourite trees. This one was propagated from a root cutting and has been grown with very little input from the members of my club, so this more than any of the others feels like 'my' tree. Although the scars may bother some people, I like them and feel they almost make the trunk look like a little person.

Unless I have a last minute change of heart I'll be taking all four trees along to the show set-up on Friday. Hopefully all will be regarded as good enough.

Reinventing a Tree with Bad Nebari

Shortly after I joined my bonsai club I bought an olive tree from a local nursery. It was tall and straight with no low branches but I always planned to cut it really low down.

April 2008 - as purchased

I let it sit untouched through the first winter and in August 2008 I finally decided to move it to a pot and make the first chop. And that's when I encountered my first problem. The nursery had tied it to a large stick and try as I might I couldn't get that stick to budge.

August 2008 - the stick that caused all the trouble

Under the circumstances I was forced to take it to a workshop where a strong man was able to remove it. He also cut the roots back a lot harder than I'd dared to.

August 2008 - after root pruning

After cutting the trunk further he put it back in its nursery pot. I had no inkling then that the stick would come back to haunt me years later.

August 2008

The tree quickly recovered from its ordeal and put out plenty of new growth. Everything was looking good.

October 2008

It was only two years later when I put it into a bonsai pot for the first time that I saw the first signs that all was not as it should be. The root structure wasn't looking too good. Once more the potting was done at a workshop and my teacher used wire in an attempt to lower one problem root. He also tried to plant moss around the roots, hence the bandages in this photo:

October 2010

Sadly this didn't prove to be very effective as, once the wired was removed, the root refused to stay in place. As time passed it just got worse and worse.

November 2013 - Problem nebari

By late 2013 I was getting really frustrated. Attempts to plant the tree lower in the pot were unsuccessful and in a last ditch attempt to hide the problem, a member of my club planted moss around the roots.

November 2013 - with moss

Although I wasn't too happy with the structure of the tree I might have left it at that, but unfortunately the moss didn't stay there for very long. One morning I discovered that some visiting birds had ripped it to shreds and I was back to square one.

In late 2014 I took it to another workshop where I was persuaded to shorten the tree. The highest root was also removed.

December 2014

This might have improved the tree somewhat had I kept an eye on it over the next few months, but unfortunately I neglected it and while I got a lot of new growth, the tree suffered some serious die-back lower down. A year later it bore no resemblance to the (bad) bonsai it once was.

December 2015

It was time for drastic measures. My second trunk chop was even lower than the first. All that remained was the branch that's visible in this photo and another hidden at the back.

December 2015 - second chop

I was advised to wire the visible branch upwards but always felt that was the wrong move given the fact that the rather quirky nebari were on that side. I felt the tree needed to slant in the opposite direction and waited in hope for a new leader which, thankfully, soon arrived.

June 2016 - growing strongly

By June 2016 that leader was nice and strong and it was time to remove the left branch.

This is what it looked like in July 2016 after I'd removed that branch. I didn't touch the leader but I zoomed in for this shot to show the root that's caused all the trouble.

July 2016

What was once a really bad formal upright is now on track to becoming another quirky tree.