Hello and Thanks for checking out my blog. This month ( January) we had our first of two live oak class. The trees were grown from seed. They were 8-10 years old in 15 gallon plastic pots. They had 1-1.5 inch trunks with 3-5 root spread, and were great material to start a variety that doesn’t get as much attention as I believe it should.
Live oaks don’t get nearly the praise I think they should get because of a few problems past artists have noticed. I will go over the ones I have heard and give you the ways I have overcome the problems completely for some and to some extent for others.
Here are pics of the trees before they were worked. they were cut down 4 years ago and grown out and re-cut to build taper since so there were a lot of branches to choose from.
As you can see they had plenty of branches. I repeatedly trimmed them during the last 3 years after they grew out over a foot of new growth, that way when I trimmed they had a lot of vigor to redistribute into close, new buds for new branching.
The first problem I have heard is they don’t like to be collected from nature and they tend to die back. I have found that this is in fact the case in our area. The way I counteract that issue is collect in January to beginning of Feb, and keep a larger root ball than I typically would , since Live oaks send out a massive tap root that has to be overcome. I try to leave some of the tap root on at the initial collection and take it off in 3 stages each time I re-pot, so long as the feeder roots are abundant and tree is healthy. These live oaks in the class were grown from seed, and each time I re-potted them I trimmed back tap root , so they went right from 15 gallon pots to bonsai pots with little root removal compared to a collected tree. Lots of good feeders were present! The other way you can work around the tap root problem in collected material is cut 1/4 of root ball and pack with good , fertile organic soil or sphagnum moss to encourage feeder roots close to trunk. In four years you have plenty of close roots for better collection.
Have are trees after we got rid of branches not necessary to final design.
This is Carl cleaning the cuts with a very sharp blade so the cambium rolls over the wound good, another problem of die-back on cuts is easily fixed with conscientious cleaning and sealing of cuts we make on tree.
Here is another tree that will make a great broom live oak style. Since they grow in the broom style naturally , we wanted to mimic how they grew in nature. All trees styled in class had broom in mind eventually, although you can style these in many styles. Just remember they are very apically dominant and you will have to keep the top in check to keep the strength in lower limbs.
The next thing many people had told me about is the suckers from roots. I can tell you, this absolutely happens, and if let grow they do take the strength away from the main tree. Take them off, if they come back, cut them again and again. The sooner the better. After about 3 years they stop sprouting , but will start again after the next re-pot. Just something about the maintenance of this tree we have to contend with. Just DONT spray round up in your pot thinking it with kill the suckers. It will, but “Round up”(Glyphosate) as a systemic herbicide trans-located through the foliage to kill the entire plant systemically. duhhh.
Here is a pic of them wired up . I used copper main wire and aluminium on the smaller sizes to show a better color contrast as I was also going over detail wiring in the class. It was a two-for deal ! As you can see, the wiring of a few of the students greatly improved throughout the day. Some masters say without wiring correctly you cannot achieve great bonsai, And although clip and grow has its place , I think there is no reason not to be good at a tool as great as wiring for bonsai. These were not yet shaped in photo, just wired.
The next issue I hear is the leaves are too big. This is one I disagree with . Placed in the correct pot , fertilized with organics, and trimmed correctly will yield very small, a little bigger than quarter sized leaves. I also selectively take off any larger, older leaves as well. I have been very pleased with the amount of ramification is achieved. Just make sure you have it in full sun, and don’t re-pot yearly , instead letting it get up to 80% pot bound before re-potting.
Live oak is also said to have brittle branching , but this is again incorrect as you can see from the photos. Once they get thick however, they are set well and tend to be hard to bend. If its in the wrong place and way too thick , cut it off and regrow a new branch. Or they do respond to letting them get dryish and using raffia to bend large branches.
The last thing I hear about is poor rootage and not enough feeder roots at re-potting. These are understandable concerns and do warrant attention. The root-age is something that may take time. the variety tends to be one sided and not have excellent root structure, but with turning the base 1/2 a turn to get light all around the root ball and selectively pruning overly long tap roots , you can get a lot of fresh roots to grow close to trunk , which basically takes care of both not having feeder roots close to trunk and as the feeders thicken and are placed in time they become excellent nebari as well.
This is a great piece of material that as a native should really be more utilized. I have over 50 at the shop I have been working on for 8 years with many more coming up. Here are the trees in pots . They will develop a live oak appearance with time as they develop and grow out . We set the skeletal framework at class, with attention to future development discussed in detail.
With only a few years , these will develop a wonderful , aged appearance and a rounded canopy . Its just such a treat to make a live oak into a live oak style instead of some other variety getting the glory to look like a grand southern live oak in miniture. If you are interested in taking the next live oak class , send me an Email. We are going to do it on April 24th. From 10-4 and there are 5 spaces left. Its only 150.00 which includes the tree, pot , soil and wire so sign up now to get a tree just like these.
Thanks for checkin in,
Jason
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