Things are moving early this year, so repotting started in earnest today. Here are a couple…the Kinsai wasn’t on the docket until a sudden wind storm knocked it off the bench and broke the nice large Bunzan pot.
The pot was my first Koyo, production grade porcelain bought on eBay maybe 15 years ago, but a nice glaze and shape.
The hawthorn is really leafing out, and last year, I didn’t do a full repot, just a heavy ‘soji’, removing about half the soil, and replacing it, but not actually repotting the tree. The result was good drainage last year, but remarkable root growth.
Lots of roots lapping the bottomCombed out and heavily reducedCleaned out and pruned back againSituated and secured into the potNew soil worked in
The pot is a Shuho, a good fit for the composition.
I have been studying bonsai since 1994, in an ever-increasing obsessive fashion. In our last 5 years prior to moving from Iowa to Alabama pursuing a career in the foodservice industry, my bonsai collection was limited to a few varieties that could survive brutal winters outside, or winters under dim light in the dank basement of our humble duplex...my wife puts up with a lot. Including the trailer hitch I put on our brown 1983 Chrysler New Yorker to pull a U-Haul full of trees to Nashville for a 3-month stop along the career path that led us to Alabama. 12 years later, we no longer have the New Yorker; and not a single one of those trees remain on my bench, having given the last holdout to a new club member this summer. I prefer collecting native trees and buying the classical species used in Japan, feeding organic, and reading everything I can get my hands on.
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Nice! always love to see the hawthorn,