I have the bad news. Since the weather was very strange in March and April, a lot of large satsuki trees which have flowers earlier began to have several flowers much earlier and a lot of flowers had been great damages by the heavy rain before they were in full bloom. Therefore, I couldn’t take photos of them though I could take a lot of photos of young trees. But I may be able to take photos of satsuki trees which have flowers late. I will introduce them in the next web site though I cannot show you a lot of good photos of large satsuki bonsai because I had sold a considerable number of large bonsai last year and I repotted several large trees last March after removing all flower buds.
But since a lot of trees in the nursery are very strong, they have a lot of larger flowers though I cut a lot of branches and shoots drastically last March. You cannot see the large empty spaces on these photos but you can see a lot of rose trees in the nursery. It means that I sold a lot of trees last year. I planted them there which I had dug out from the places where I am growing vegetables.
Removal of the rotten parts of Sangosai
If we have grown a lot of satsuki trees in the pots, gardens and nurseries for half a century, we have a lot of experience about them. And sometimes we make an error which we cannot tell other persons. I think it is a good experience if we had remembered the cause and result when we grow them because we don’t do so again. It is a good example of what not to do. Therefore, I can continue to renew this web site, that is, to introduce my errors and success.
Section 1. Three memorial satsuki trees
I have three memorial satsuki trees which I introduced in the second web site whose date is 15th January 2011. Immediately after the marriage in 1972, I drug them out from the lane by the tea field which my grandfather had planted in about 1920. Since they were cut with the weeds every year, they were very short. Therefore, I thought their roots were not large, but, since the roots of Osakazuki were large and wide, I broke the roots ball into some parts with the pickaxe. After I had drug out Sangosai and Kasugano very carefully, I was very happy to see their large roots. Since they had a lot of trunks which were united with trunks and roots, I could not choose the orthodox style of bonsai.
It is obvious that they are older than I am because I was born much later after he had died. And it has past 49 years since I drug them out. Therefore, they have been my memorial trees which have seen the changes of the world with me and pleased me with the flowers and figures through a year, especially when I was not healthy. Or rather I should say that they are my life companions.
Though these trees have the single colour of flowers, they are beautiful. You can see the flowers of Sangosai on the left photo which was taken on 26th May 2011. Next are the flowers of Kasugano on the middle photo which was taken on 2nd June 2017. Osakazuki has the flowers on the right photo which was taken on 28th May 2012.
Section 2. Sangosai
The left photo is the whole figure on 13th July 2011 when it passed about 40 days since pruning after blooming. Since it is strong and healthy, it has a lot of good young leaves. And the right one is the whole figure after repotting on 4th April 2012. And you cannot see any weak branches there.
But suddenly this tree began to have a few dead branches. Since I will be 80 years old in three days and have had a large underlying disease in both lungs since the age of 29, I feel that the mind and body have got weaker year by year and, at the same time, that I am very happy to work in the garden now. Since it had a lot of scars, too, I had been very happy to see the healthy figure of this tree for about 40 years.
Though I had worked in the garden within 33 degrees C in my life, when the maximum temperature was more than 35 degrees C, I could not work there in the daytime. It was 38 degrees C in Ise last summer though it was 43 in some districts. Since I felt that it began to get hotter and hotter in summer, I asked my brother and his wife to help me to build a shading structure with iron pipes and black nets in August 2009, which he uses over the green tea trees for about 2 weeks before cutting the very young shoots and which can reduce the sunshine by 75 %. I thought it was the best for the health of my satsuki bonsai that I closed the black nets at 8:00 and open at 16:00 in summer, and do so at 10:00 and at 14:00 in middle of September, and stop doing so at the end of the month. This change of circumstances may have been one of reasons why this tree got weaker.
The left photo is the shading structure after folding the black nets in the evening. The second one is it after spreading them. Though you can see the flowers of the large Yama-no-hikari in the garden, it has much less flowers on the front side than on the back side because it does not have much less sunlight on the front side. The third one is the flowers of Shintaiyo which I dug it out from the garden after we had bought an old house in Ise in 1977. Though it had the large rotten parts in the trunk, I am surprised to see it stay alive. And the lowers are very large and beautiful. The right one is the flowers of Sangosai C which was a piece of above Sangosai which I dug out from my grandfather’s land. Though it had had only a few thin roots, it grew large. Therefore, it does not have very good nebari. I transplanted it from a terracotta pot to the nursery in 1993. And I planted it in the very large wooden pot after digging it up from there on 8th March 2019. Please see the repotting in the web site whose date is 20th April 2019.
And sometimes I told you that two of the memorial trees were weak. I introduced the healthy Kasugano and the miserable figure of Sangosai in the web site whose date is 7th December 2019. Since the latter had a lot of rotten parts in the trunk and two dead trunks, when repotting it on 4th April 2016, I cut it into two parts after removing the rotten parts and the soil.
The left photo is the front side of this Sangosai before pruning. Since it was weak, it did not have a lot of long shoots. The second one is the back side. You can see the weak parts. The third one is the left side of this tree which has a dead trunk. The right one is the back side after I removed the rotten parts. The root ball was separated into two parts completely.
The left photo is the left side of Sangosai A after I removed the rotten parts of the roots and trunks. You can see the miserable figure of the front side on the second one because it stands in the very good and very large bonsai pot. The third one is the back side and the right one is the left side after I removed a part of the root ball. Seeing a lot of rotten parts, I wondered how they would continue to live if I took good care of them.
But when I took the left photo of the roots after washing them, since they were much better than I had though, I was sure that this tree would continue to live. And I planted it in the same terracotta pot whose pot size number is 15. The second photo is the front side and the third one is the back side. Since it was not strong, I pruned it drastically. Therefore, you can see the trunks and branches clearly on the right photo.
After planting this tree in the very large terracotta pot, I always continue to water it to wash out a lot of fine dusts of Kanuma soil till the water is clean. This is an important working. After doing so, I spread the sphagnum on the soil to defend the soil from watering and evaporation of water. The left photo is the front side of Sangosai A and the second one is the back side. The third one is the front side of two-trunked Sangosai B and the right one is the back side. Since I removed a lot of rotten parts from both trunks, it has a strange figure.
Fortunately, all of them had a lot of good flowers in 2017. The left photo is the front side of Sangosai A and the second one is the back side. The third one is the front side of Sangosai B and the right one is the back side.
They had a lot of good flowers in 2019, too. But, though the variety of them is Sangosai, they have only a few flowers of tassel on these photos. When it had passed several years since I had dug this tree, it had a lot of flowers of tassels. I don’t know the reason why it doesn’t have a lot of flowers of tassels now. And I can say the same about Kinsai which increases the number of formal flowers. I have Kinka (Kin-no-hana) which was Kinsai about 40 years ago. And Togenkyo has the same problem, too, which is the bud sport of Kinsai.
The left photo is Sangosai A immediately after I repotted it on 26th March 2020. Since this tree was not strong, I pruned it drastically. But since Sangosai B on the second photo was strong, I kept one fifth of flower buds. And it has a lot of flowers on the third and right ones though it looks weak because these trunks are poor.
I cut two dead thick branches from the trunks of Sangosai A in December. And I saw two dead trunks at the end of autumn in 2021. Therefore, I decided to cut them and remove the rotten parts in February in 2022. But since I had been very busy in February and March, I began to remove the rotten parts after cutting the dead trunks on 7th April. Since the large parts of the trunks and roots were rotten, it took me a lot of time to remove them. First, I tried to remove almost all rotten parts of them with some chisels and several electric knives. But I couldn’t remove all rotten parts of the roots in the soil. When I saw the living parts after removing the rotten parts I pasted the medicine on them. After it had dried, I began to do so again.
The left photo is the whole figure of Sangosai A before I begin to remove the rotten parts. Since it doesn’t have a lot of long shoots, it is obvious that it is weak though some dead branches cannot be seen. And you can see two kinds of rotten branches on the top on the second photo. Two of them don’t have any dead leaves and other two have the brown leaves. It means that the former died in summer or before and the latter died in autumn. Therefore, I thought that if I had some operations of removing the rotten parts it might continue to live. The third and right photos are the miserable aspects of the trunks and roots after I removed a lot of the rotten parts.
The left, second and third photos are the trunks after I removed the rotten parts cleanly. After doing so, I pasted the medicine on them. And I repeated it several times after it had dried. You still can see the rotten part on the back trunk on the right photo. Therefore, it took me a long time to finish it.
Since I thought that I would remove the rotten parts of the roots in the soil after removing the soil, I pruned this tree drastically. The left photo is the front side of this tree and the second one is the back side. Pruning it, I wondered how it would be able to continue to live though I would have very good cares about it. But the roots aren’t bad on the third and right photos though the aerial parts of this tree are weak.
After washing the roots, I removed the rotten parts of the roots and planted this tree in the same large terracotta pot. The left photo is the front side of this tree and the second photo is the back side. But since Sangosai B is strong, I didn’t repot it. And it has a lot of flowers on the third and right photos. Seeing the strong Sangosai B though it had weak trunks, you can realise that it doesn’t have any tassel flowers.
The archives
The archaives are the back nukmbers of my web site. If you are interested in them, please read them. I am sure that it is very useful for you to grow satsuki trees and to make them into good bonsai.
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