Hello all

I did say that coming soon would be my first rant, and here it is. I’m the kind of person who says exactly what i think. This is something that has bugged me for a long time, and something that i want to share with you.

So, whats the problem?

Firstly id like to show you this picture.

This is the business end of a Pinus Thunbergii “Suchiro Yatsabusa”, a dwarf cultivar of Japanese black pine and one that is well suited to bonsai cultivation. Like most cultivars of Japanese pine, they are rarer than rocking horse droppings in the UK. This one for example isn’t listed by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) plant finder as available anywhere in Britain.

No, i don’t want to gripe about the lack of availability of cultivars. I know that they can only be reproduced by grafting, meaning there is a limit to the amount of them and this is something that i understand. You need root stock, good quality scions, and time, and even then you are not guaranteed success. All of these factors, tied together with the fact that there is less than a handful of people in the UK who graft pine cultivars makes for a limited availability of plants, and that is fine. However what really makes me mad is the next picture.

This is the other end of the same plant. The graft is 7cm from the soil line. Bear in mind that this is a Yatsabusa variety, this is practically useless for a future bonsai. I have also dug down in the soil, and there is another 3 cms of trunk below the soil line, meaning that there as 10cms between the roots and the graft. Shoddy. This is one of 10 different cultivars i obtained from the same source, and the grafts were all equally as poor.

Ok ok, not all plants are grafted for use in bonsai. You go to garden centers and you will find a whole host of plants with similar poor grafts. Yet this plant was purchased from a bonsai man, who runs a bonsai place. I wont mention names as that isn’t cricket, however find it astonishing that someone who knows what is required in order to grow good quality Pine Bonsai turns out plants such as this.

As i have already said there are very few of these in the UK, and for reasons we have already discussed. Surely the focus should be placed on the quality of the few plants that are successfully cultivated, especially if there intention is to be used for Bonsai.

Brent Walston is a man i have great respect for. He runs a place near Kelseyville, CA, called Evergreen Gardenworks. They propagate and grow rare and unusual plants for bonsai and landscape use. His articles have taught many in the online bonsai community much, and i owe a lot to him for the lessons i have learned from his words.

http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/pinus.htm

The above link is to Evergreens Gardenworks, and in particular a list of there pine cultivars that they have available. Most of the cultivars has a picture next to it. Look at the quality of the grafts. Outstanding. Brents grafting talents are well known, and there are waiting lists for many of the cultivars he deals in, as is the demand and respect for the final product. I would strongly recommend anyone to read through the articles on his site.

So, what is it that enables Brent to create such good quality grafts? Simple answer is that he can be arsed to. He knows what is required to grow larger cultivar Pines. He knows that if the grafts are no good, the bonsai that result from them will be no good either. But so do growers from the UK. Yet we are still happy enough to turn out these poor qualiy grafts.

This will have a knock on effect for the quality of bonsai we produce in the future. Our future bonsai are only as good as the material we use, and at the moment we have to source from overseas and pay import charges in order to have good quality Pine cultivars.

I have already realised that in order for me to grow the pines i want to i will have to start from scratch. I have sourced 20 cultivars of Japanese black and white pines, including many cork barked varieties, which are being grown on as stock plants for scion wood. I have a thousand J black pine seeds to grow rootstock for future grafts. I have a field to allow me to grow them on. More importantly i have the time, and the attitude to do the job properly.

If anyone reads this and thinks, hang on a minute, i think hes talking about me! Ask yourself this, is the quality of your plants as good as they could be? If the answer is no then i am indeed talking about you, and you should be ashamed. More to the point, you should be asking yourself why.

Regards

David Fairbanks