Bonsai is an unusual Japanese art of growing miniature trees that exactly copy their fellow giants growing in the wild. The most beautiful is a spruce bonsai. However, this species requires more attention and patience.
Art features
Bonsai has many directions, styles. All of them have similar general rules regarding crown formation.
- The coniferous tree should have branches with magnificent and small needles.
- Trees must have a cone-shaped crown or it is tiered.
Bonsai-spruce is most often grown from the Canadian variety, blue and ordinary. To cope with this is not as simple as it seems at first glance, and not every beginner manages to create a beautiful mini-tree, especially if you grow a plant, starting with sowing seeds.
Sowing seeds
To make spruce bonsai, it is necessary to soak the seeds for 24 hours in a solution of potassium permanganate, and then place them in water for another 24 hours. Sowing is carried out in containers with sand. Seeds are sown with a depth of 1-2 cm. Then the container with crops is placed in a cold place for two months. Sowing can be put on the balcony or left in the garage.
With the onset of spring, the container is transferred to the house and placed in a bright place, watered. Three weeks later, small Christmas trees appear. As soon as they reach 10 cm, they begin to form a bonsai-fir.
For three years, the Christmas tree is watered once a week. In the spring, fertilizers are applied and only after three years the tree is transplanted into the bonsai. Be sure to carry out the formation of spruce bonsai, pinching her crown, cutting.
Bonsai sizes
Bonsai sizes vary. The smallest species barely reach ten centimeters, and if the trees are of impressive size, then you can count on beautiful compositions about one and a half meters. Moreover, small and large species can be of different ages: small ones grow more than one year, and large ones can grow in just a couple of years.
Bonsai sizes are determined at the very beginning of the tree formation. Most often, skeletal branches, their beginnings, are already on the plant and determine in what style the bonsai will be executed.
Typically, the size of a bonsai is determined by the size of the leaves. Mini-compositions of any size are formed from trees with small leaves. Bonsai with long needles should be proportioned so that the finished tree looks harmonious. For example, some species of conifers grow up to a meter and above. Spruce usually forms a bonsai up to 30 cm high.
Trunk formation
How to grow bonsai spruce, what is needed for this? A wire is used to form the trunk and branches. It allows you to change the direction of growth, their shape. To make, as in the photo a bonsai-fir, apply tension and a wire.
The overlay method is considered the most labor-intensive bonsai technique, especially when forming conifers. Here it is necessary to fix each branch, without exception - to the very top of the shoot. Deciduous species are simpler, since the formation takes place with the help of pruned branches, and the wire is used extremely rarely.
The wire is applied in spring or winter, during this period, pruning of trees is carried out. With the beginning of sap flow, young twigs quickly become thick, so the wire is laid weakly. During the growth of a tree, its tension is regularly checked to prevent it from growing into the bark. As a rule, after three months, the desired shape is saved and the wire is removed. They carefully bite it off with pliers, without unwinding, as this can lead to breaking off branches.
Fixing branches requires some skill, as branches often break during this process. To prevent this from happening, you should practice on other trees, branches, for example, in the garden.
Wire selection
For the manufacture of bonsai, apply aluminum wire with a copper coating, a thickness of 0.7 to 7 mm. To determine the desired thickness, use the formula: the wire should be 1/3 of the thickness of the fixed branch. Thus, with a branch thickness of one centimeter, it is necessary to use a wire 3 mm thick.
The material used in floristry is not suitable for the formation of bonsai, as it does not have the necessary flexibility, it rusts.
At the first formation of a bonsai, a wire is applied to the entire plant, giving it the desired shape. In this case, it is necessary to ensure that the branches do not cross each other. During the formation of the trunk, wire is wrapped around the tree to its very crown, including thick and thin parts.
Change in direction of growth
In bonsai, leading into several trunks, using brackets, you can fix and adjust the direction of growth, the shape of individual trunks. To perform this work, it is necessary to make a lot of effort, regularly check whether the wire has grown into the bark, and rearrange the brackets in a timely manner.
In order not to damage the bark with staples, pieces of skin are placed under them. Changing the direction of growth with the help of brackets is appropriate in those places where the wire cannot be laid.
Growth down
Sometimes, as conceived by the author, a bonsai should direct the branches down. To realize this, a guy is made of wire. This is not a time-consuming process, like laying wire, but it has its drawbacks. This method allows you to change the direction of growth of branches in only one direction.
The guying method is used mainly where it is necessary to direct the branches down.
To learn how to shape bonsai using wire, certain skills are needed. For exercise, it is recommended to lay wire on trees more often, giving them a different shape. Regular training will improve skill and form the most unusual types of bonsai.
Tree aging
When growing from white spruce bonsai, or from another type of coniferous tree, you can carry out the procedure of artificial aging. This is done by different methods, among which the simplest and most popular is the removal of bark from the trunk and branches with a sharp knife. Such work is complex and requires special skill. To realize this, you need to train, have practical experience.
With artificial aging of the tree, it is impossible to completely remove the whole bark from those branches that are planned to be left alive. They should have a strip going from the bottom to the top of the head. Nutrients throughout the branch will flow through the cortex.
Those parts that need to be killed are subjected to complete removal of the bark. Bare wood is treated with a knife designed for woodcarving. Removing the bark from the trunk and branches is not particularly difficult.
Forming a bonsai from a Canadian spruce or from another type of tree, you can apply a variety of techniques. For example, there is a subwoofer technique that involves splitting the trunk. Outwardly, the miniature looks like a tree, into which lightning hit and split the trunk into two parts. For splitting, nippers and wedges are used. This type of technique allows bonsai to become more powerful and strong.
Needle growth
Bonsai technique involves maintaining a certain size of needles in conifers. To do this, break the tops of young shoots. The spruces are allowed to grow a little, and then they are shortened by half or two-thirds. Such manipulation awakens new buds, which next year turn into twigs. Since the end of September, old, three-year-old needles have been removed. If this is not done, then they will become long and spoil the look of the bonsai.