San Diego Bonsai Club Blog

Summer scorches San Diego

2006-07-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

Do you have tips for summer care of bonsai? We are all pretty warm right now. Do you put something around your pots? Do you cover the soil, or use shadecloth where you ordinarily don't?

Post your tips here.

I'm keeping my trees close together, most under 50% shadecloth, and keeping the bark chips underneath nice and damp. The trees are getting along pretty well. Keeping the pot cool is a major point... a hot pot can cook your roots, or at the least can damage your roots.

Joanie

Hello Everyone!

2006-07-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

San Diego Bonsai Club Blog

A new day, a new subject! Just testing to see how it works, posting a new subject. If this comes through, I will then post something with substance. If you are reading this blog, speak up and we'll see who is here!

Joanie

San Diego Bonsai Club Presents the 41st Annual Spring Bonsai & Sui-Seki Exhibition

2006-03-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

April 29th & 30th, 2006

Casa del Prado, Room 101 Balboa Park, San Diego

10am to 5pm each day
Casa del Prado Room 101 Balboa Park
Free admission and free parking
Bonsai demonstrations daily at 11am and 2pm
Bonsai trees, pots, and supplies for sale

Come and join the San Diego Bonsai Club in a celebration of the ancient art of bonsai. Beautiful miniaturized trees, viewing stones and accent plants are displays of this living art. Our club memebers spend countless hours in training and styling the bonsai, to evoke peaceful and contemplative emotions in the viewer.

For more information, visit our wesite at sandiegobonsaiclub.com or call 760-431-1014

Best Trees for San Diego Climate

2005-12-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Today I received an email from someone who just moved to San Diego from St Louis. Sharing an interest in bonsai, he wondered what trees are best for our climate here in San Diego.

I think we are particularly lucky here in San Diego. It seems that most trees do quite well in this climate. Technically, most of San Diego would be considered to be somewhere between Zone 21-24 (see the image below, from Digitalseed). Coastal areas of San Diego will rarely reach temperatures at freezing or below. However, more inland areas of San Diego can reach colder freezing temperatures more often.

As I mentioned, most trees seem to be quite happy in San Diego. Juniper, elm, bougainvillea, black pine, oak, willow, bald cypress, olive, and azalea are all trees that usually do quite well in San Diego. Trees that require a good frost in winter may not fruit or blossom as expected in this area. Also, certain trees that do well at higher altitudes may not be as happy near the coast. Another issue that some of us face is the high content of salt in the air, depending on how near the coast you are.

There is also a related post on this site regarding winter tree care in San Diego. Please feel free to continue the discussion by posting comments to this entry or the entry on winter tree care!

Black Pines

2005-11-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

I know that during the Fall and Winter months a lot should be done to black pines if you want to develop a good bonsai.

Needle pulling is one of the items that I have heard is important if you want to develop a good black pine bonsai. How many years of needles do you leave on the tree? Is there a better month than others in which to perform the needle pulling? I hear that winter is also the time to wire, is this true?

Junipers

2005-11-21T20:03:00.000-08:00

My junipers are turning sort of a grayish brown. It that normal for the winter months?

Blog Help

2005-11-08T19:01:00.000-08:00

For those who need a little assistance with using the blog, I've put together a few notes that may help. Please feel free to make any comments or suggestions. Or post your own question about blog-related topics and maybe someone can answer your question.

To begin with, I think we need to talk about what a blog is. In general, a blog is a web site containing a series of entries, or topics. Sometimes a blog is someone's online journal. Sometimes a blog provides reviews of different musicians or artists. This blog is a place for people from the San Diego Bonsai Club to talk about bonsai-related things (of course, those who are not members of the club are also welcome here). To find out more about what a blog is, take a look at the definition from Blogger and the definition on Wikipedia.

As noted above, a blog consist of a series of "entries." This entry, for example, is titled "Blog Help." There are a few ways to post an entry to a blog. One way is to login to blogger and then click on the icon to post to the blog. See the blogger help page on posting to a blog for more information on this method. It turns out that there is also an add-in you can download and install so you can post to a blog from Microsoft Word.

In order to "post" an entry on this blog, you have to be a member. If you are interested in becoming a member of this blog, please let us know. Once you let us know that you want to post to this blog, we will send you an invitation. You will need to accept the invitation and sign up for a free Blogger account. Then, you will be able to login to your blogger account and post to this blog and any other blogs you are a member of.

Each entry in a blog can have many comments which are associated with it. A comment is like a response or a reply. You do not have to sign up for an account with Blogger in order to post a comment. To see the comments for an entry, look towards the bottom of the entry. You should see information about who posted the entry and when it was posted. You will also see a link that says something like "3 comments." If you click on that link, you will be able to see all the comments that have been entered and you will also be able to post your own comment, if you wish. Have a question about blogs in general? Or about this blog? Post a comment to this entry now!

Of course, this little tutorial cannot cover all the topics involved with blogging. For more information on blogs and how to use this blog, please refer to the Blogger help site. Enjoy!

Crabapple trees as bonsai in San Diego

2005-11-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Someone in an earlier email to our web master or post to the blog asked about crabapple trees in San Diego as bonsai. I do not know the answer to this but would like to know. I was up at the GSBF Convention 2005 in Anaheim this past weekend and there was 1 crabapple tree being used as an accent plat to a large non-fruiting pomegranate. The crabapple had about 8 1 inch red crabapples and it was beautiful.

So the question is: does anyone know how crabapples do in San Diego, on the coast as well as inland?

Winter Tree Care in San Diego

2005-10-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, someone contacted me through the web site and asked about how to care for certain temperate trees in San Diego. As you may know, some trees need to "feel" the winter in order to flower or produce fruit. As a result, if the temperature doesn't drop below freezing, then you may not see the desired results.

In my response to this inquiry, I started off by pointing out that San Diego winters are fairly mild. Coastal areas in particular will usually never drop below freezing. Inland areas do sometimes drop below freezing, but not too much below.

I don't personally do anything special for my trees in the winter. I've read that you can try a refrigeration method, if you want to try and produce a colder winter artificially. However, this method seems a bit risky to me. Does anyone use a refrigeration method and have any tips or ideas? Any other comments on how to handle temperate trees in the San Diego area?

General SDBC blog stuff

2005-10-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

I think this is a great idea.

I will announce it at the next meeting and get a notice in the Bonsai Wire newsletter. Those who have computers should have some fun with this. This may also encourage non-computer users to get invovled because it is a great way to participate in the learning of and the sharing of the art of bonsai.

Graham, you may want to publish a little help guide to get beginners started. I had to fumble around a little to get here. I was expecting to be able to respond to the blog you started, but here I had to create a new title. How do I keep the same title and respond to it?

Welcome to the San Diego Bonsai Club blog!

2005-10-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

My name is Graham Hellewell and I am the webmaster for the San Diego Bonsai Club web site. I usually receive quite a few email messages via the web site from people asking general questions about bonsai. Usually I can answer any questions on my own. However, there are times when I seek out other club members for assistance and expertise. It occurred to me today that a blog would be the perfect way to communicate with people who might have questions or who just want to talk about bonsai.

In addition, I think this blog will provide a useful tool for club members who want to share some piece of news with the group. Of course, people will need to visit this blog web site in order to read these news items. Hopefully, at least some club members will find this a useful tool for communication with other members of the club. Are you interested in posting to this blog? Just let me know! After doing so, I will send you an invitation with further directions about how to participate in this blog.

This blog could turn out to be quite fun. Imagine someone posting something about the most amazing tree that they saw the other day. Please feel free to contact me if you have any comments or questions about this site or the San Diego Bonsai Club. Thanks!