The Bonsai Blog of Peter Chan

Here is a short blog of what I have been busy doing these past two weeks.

Spring is just round the corner despite the cold nights we are having. For the past ten days we have had bright sun shine during the day, when the temperature goes up to 9 or 10C, but at night it plummets to minus 3C. But despite this fluctuation in temperatures, my Trident maples in the cool greenhouse (which goes down to Zero at night), have started to show signs of new growth. The buds are swelling fast.

I have been developing some large 10-15 inch diameter trunk Trident maples which we imported from Japan in 1990. They came in as severely chopped or truncated stumps and I have spent the past 17 years developing the leader and branches. You may have seen some of them in my recent books.

These pictures taken at our nursery last week, show us repotting the monsters. They should give you some idea of what they are like after seventeen years of development.

They have nice branches and excellent taper, but require at least two strong guys to lift.

We use large Huyuga soil 15-17mm size as a drainage layer, and then put a layer of 10mm Akadama on top of that. The main potting soil is the Double Line Akadama mixd with some sharp sand 3-5mm grain size. This seems to work best for us in our UK climate.

Will keep you posted as the Tridents begin to leaf.