March 2024 Bonsai Newsletter

DOWNLOAD HERE

The weather is warming up and things are starting to bud out and bloom. During the month of March, most species of trees can be safely re-potted (see Barrett’s Bonsai Tips on page 3 for more details). This is also a great time to be propagating from cuttings. March 19th marks the official start of the spring season!

Our March meeting will be a workshop, so bring your trees! Also, we will be bringing back our five-minute bonsai topic discussions at the beginning of our meetings. This month the talk will be “How to View Trees” led by Ken Martin.

On Saturday, March 9, we held a repot-ting workshop at California Bonsai Studio. It was led by club advisor Ken Fuentes. We had perfect weather and a great turnout. The workshop covered most of the fundamentals of repotting, including making staples to at-tach screens, tie-down wires, rootwork, and chopsticking techniques. Ken discussed repot-ting strategies, soil mixes, and aftercare in detail, including his technique of bagging trees to prevent moisture loss after repot-ting.

It was a great learning experience and we got a lot of trees into nice new pots. I’d like to thank California Bonsai Studio owner Travis Goldstein for letting us use the space at his nursery for the club workshop. I’d also like to thank Collin Percell, who manages the nursery, and his partner Chiharu Namba for hosting the workshop. And I especially want to thank Ken Fuentes for leading the workshop!

Roy Nagatoshi did a tree critique for our February meeting. Roy is a wellspring of bonsai knowledge and as always gave a lot of great advice on everyone’s trees. Get all the details in the feature article by David White-side and Ken Martin starting on page 4. David Williams provided over 20 photos to illustrate the story.

See you at the meeting on March 21st!