For those of you who haven’t heard from me or Kiwe or another club member, we moved! That’s right; we are now residents of Austin Texas.
To prepare our bonsai trees for the move we did several things. Firstly we asked other club members for their suggestions and input regarding how to move trees. Overwhelmingly the concerns centered on temperature and moisture. Without a doubt we knew we could keep the trees moist by making frequent stops and checking moisture levels. We were a bit concerned that if it got too hot in the trailer that we may ‘boil’ the trees!
Firstly we purchased an enclosed trailer made by Pace America which had a adjustable vent in the roof and a locking rear door. We then went to HomeDepot and purchased a 2 part thermometer which allowed us to place the temperature sensor in the enclosed trailer and the temperature display unit in the cab of the car. This way we could monitor the air temperature in the trailer as we rolled down the highway!
Fortunately we have an Isuzu Rodeo (SUV) which could accommodate two single shelves from one of those standard utility shelves you can get from HomeDepot. I think the total surface area was 36” X 36”. We had already planed to purchase a trailer to move our most essential items because our moving company would arrive at the destination nearly 8 days from our departure date.
We lashed the trees we were most concerned with to the shelves using twine and copper wire. We then slid the shelves into the back of the Isuzu. These trees were Elm’s, Maple’s, Pomegranates, so on.
The rest of the trees, consisting of mostly evergreens, were placed onto another shelf in the covered trailer. We had some concerns with trees tipping over because of the high center of gravity of some of our cascade styled trees. But fortunately due to some fancy. and very thoughtful, packing of boxes we were able to prevent any tree tipping.
Once on the road we took care to avoid speed bumps, cross winds, and quick starts. Quick stops were easy to avoid because there was no such thing as a quick stop. The trailer greatly increased our stopping distance so we made sure to leave ourselves a nice long stretch of road to stop on.
During our road trip the temperature in the trailer never went over 100 degrees with the exception of the first morning in Phoenix AZ where it reached 110 degrees before 9 am. Once we were on the road the wind cooled the trailer down to around 95 degrees. Overall the temperature hovered around the mid 90’s.
So, now we have the trees outside and on a maintenance schedule so that we don’t shock them anymore. One of our concerns are that maybe since there isn’t much organic material in the pots that the scoria and decomposed granite may have caused some abrasion on the feeder roots. Also, that the constant rattling of the trunks and posts may have compacted and pulverized some of the soil material forming some ultra hard clay-like powder material.
At any rate we’ll keep an eye on them for a few weeks and hopefully we won’t loose any of our bonsai.
-Tom and Kiwe
