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The Bonsai News of Houston A Monthly Newsletter of the Houston Bonsai Society Inc. Volume 49 Number 12 December 2018 IN THIS ISSUE Upcoming Events HBS Annual Pot Luck Christmas dinner & Gift Exchange Showcase of the Month Near a Shinto temple, ripe persimmons laugh and dance with the icy winter wind (Photo: Pinterest) Persimmons The next meeting of the Houston Bonsai Society will be our last meeting at the Cherie Flores Garden Pavilion in Hermann Park, 1500 Hermann Park Drive, Houston, TX 77004. Dinner starts at 7:15 PM. December Bonsai Care Wednesday, December 5 HBS Annual Christmas Pot Luck Dinner & John Miller Chinese Gift. The club will furnish a turkey, a ham, drinks, plates and utensils. Please bring your family and your favorite salads, vegetables and desserts to share. To participate in the gift exchange, bring a bonsai or non-bonsai related gift, around $20-25 in value. If you bring one present President’s Letter for the gift exchange, you will take one home. If your family brings 3 presents, you’ll take 3 presents home. Please make a note that this meeting will be HBS last meeting at this Houston Bonsai Society & location. Starting January 2019, the meeting venue will be The Trini Houston Chinese Bonsai Society Mendenhall Community Center, 1414 Wirt Road, Houston, TX 77055, on Fall Joint Show the first Saturday of the month. Board of directors meeting starts at 9AM, at Memorial City Mall refreshments at 10AM and the monthly program at 10:15 till 12 Noon. Photos Upcoming Events More in Calendar of Events Saturday, December 1, HBS Saturday Study Group, 9 AM - 12 PM at Maas Nursery, 5511 Todville Road, Seabrook, Texas 77586. Free, refreshments Persimmon provided. Good As Bonsai? Saturday, December 8, Bonsai Basics #2 - Styling and wiring (but no repotting) - Timeless Trees, 8AM - 1 PM, $60 including a tree (Ficus, boxwood, juniper, or Podocarpus), wire cutters, hand-out and wire. Everyone goes home with a styled tree. December Bonsai Care The LSBF state convention in Houston, from April 11 to 14, 2019, will be a joint convention with the American Bonsai Society. In addition to the 14 workshops, there are 12 seminars at no extra cost to you. These very different seminars and great learning experiences are staggered, so you can attend all of them. Hope you will find some good material at the vendors’ booths to add to your collection. It is hard to find such decent material in a landscape nursery. Persimmons If your club has a club dig scheduled, be a part of it. There are many places where you can find one or two specimen to dig, in town as well as in the country. The problem is finding a place with enough material to take the whole club. If you know of a possible location or have a friend with some land (it doesn’t have to be very close), tell one of the officers about it. This comes under the heading of ‘be an active member’. The rest of the group, especially your program chairman, will appreciate it. The big thing this month is to protect the bonsai roots from freezing and to make sure that the plants don’t dry out. Do not leave them up on the benches. Know which species can be left outdoors. Both evergreen types and deciduous should not have the root ball subjected to alternate freezing and thawing. This process tends to cause irreversible damage the roots. To minimize this problem, trees in pots may be set directly on the ground, preferably not in the ground. Add a dense mulch to the pot rim and then add a looser mulch on top. Deciduous trees should not be placed where they receive winter sun. After they go dormant, they don’t need sunlight. However, after a short period of dormancy, solar heat may cause them to break dormancy prematurely. If that happens, you would need to keep them above freezing the rest of the winter or in the greenhouse. While the trees are dormant, examine the twigs, branches, and trunks carefully for scale insects. These are sucking insects that usually cover themselves with a hard impervious shell that is very resistant to insecticides. Some are pretty small and look like specks. You might want to search online for ‘bonsai scale insects’ for photos. Horticultural oils available at garden stores work well by filling their pores and smothering them. Oils can be applied now for thorough coverage while the trees are dormant. Another way is to use a systemic insecticide (make sure it is labeled for scale) during the growing season. Since the trees are not using as much water during dormancy, it is easy to forget to check on them. The low humidity in winter tends to leave the soil dry, yet the winter sun can still heat up the pots, if it shines directly on them. Winter also brings frequent cold winds which would hasten the drying process as well. Therefore, however you protect your trees, check for dryness often, especially those that usually need more water in the summer. I have lost more trees during the winter due to insufficient watering than from the cold or freeze. be careful, since standing in water, your plants may develop soil problems, such as root rot or fungal Keep an eye on the plants that will need repotting next diseases. I basically use the same control in the spring. The circling roots that fill up their pots no greenhouse as the ones outside all year. longer have soil to hold water, while those in soil mix with decomposed organic matter may remain soggy. Take advantage of the winter slowdown by getting Organic matter broken down during the summer into your pots ready for spring repotting, clean and fine texture may clog the drainage holes, causing sharpen your tools, study your trees to see what water log and root rot. changes you would like to make, so on and so forth. Make notes of what needs to be done and place a Plants have different degrees of top growth and root colored stake or ribbon on the trees, to jog your hardiness. The ground is a large reservoir of heat that memory in the spring on what needs to be done. I use keeps the soil in pots warm. In the coldest winters, red for repotting using the same pots, purple for a new Texas soil seldom freezes more than an inch or two pot, yellow for serious major pruning, orange for down. Therefore, plants in pots like pomegranate and restyling, etc. These decisions can be made early crepe myrtle (which are at the northern extent of their during the year, while doing your general routine work. range outside) will remain hardy up to 32 degrees. Any plant, whose hardiness you are unsure of, should John Miller be protected from freezing. This can be a problem John Miller, who writes a monthly column for the Bonsai because if they are not kept cool after they go Society of Dallas and Fort Worth Bonsai Society, has agreed dormant, they will break dormancy and start to grow to share his column with us. We need to make adjustments as soon as the weather warms up. Uncontrolled for our warmer and damper climate, with earlier springs, spindly growth in insufficient light weakens the trees. longer summers, late fall and erratic winters. My best solution is to keep the bonsai on a long platform on wheels. I keep those hardy plants outside all the times but bring them in the garage only on nights when freezing was forecast. President’s The cold weather will keep most insect problems Letter under control outside, however do use a dormant oil spray to kill over-wintering insets and eggs. Diluted With the holiday season upon us once again, lime-sulfur can be sprayed on deciduous trees with no it’s time to check the weather forecast every green foliage left to control fungal spores. Liquid lime day to make sure the environment our tender sulfur is the caustic agent we use to bleach jin and plants are in is appropriate to what’s coming. shari, so use it with extreme caution. Dilute it per Watering also becomes less frequent, but directions on the bottle. If used as a dormant spray, every bit as important, so monitor your plants only apply it to fully dormant deciduous trees with tight regularly. winter buds, but avoid spraying on warm windy days. Watch out for damage caused by rodents such as Don’t forget that our January meeting will be rabbits, squirrels, possums and rats. They can held on January 5th at 10:00 AM at the Trini seriously strip your fruits, branches and tree bark in Mendenhall Community Center. The center in short order or remove soil from your pots, leaving the located at 1414 Wirt Road which is about a bonsai roots to die. mile north of I-10 and about ½ mile outside the 610 loop. For information on the center, Bonsai in greenhouses or indoor bonsai will need to see their website at be watched for the normal indoor problems, such as http://www.pct3.com/Community- low humidity, spider mites and scales. To keep the Centers/Mendenhall-Community-Center humidity high, place the trees on a humidity trays but Any change like the change in meeting time and the move to the community center venue will impact different members of HBS differently. For some, this new time will make is easier to attend meetings and the longer meeting time will make it possible to broaden our slate of programs.
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