Icy larches from my back yard this morning (May 11). 25 degree Fahrenheit (-4 celsius) last night here in the lovely, underpopulated (now you know why) Northeast Kingdom, Vermont. I left a mist on all night to protect these newly dug and newly sprouted larches. It worked, the ice has melted (it’s sunny and around 50 now) and all is well. Photos by Amy Palmer.

An ugly little Eastern white cedar (Cham thyoides) made beautiful by icing. Eastern white cedars (not to be confused with Northern white cedars ‘Thuja occidentalis’ which are abundant around here) don’t do very well here, it’s too cold. I’ve had three or four that I’ve been trying to grow for years, but all they do is struggle and barely stay alive.

I don’t know what this is. I dug it along side the road where the town keeps cutting stuff down, just to see if it has any possibilities. I doubt if it will ever be a bonsai, but it might fit in as a landscape plant.

Inspiration for your bonsai. This photo is from Bonsaimania. It’s on facebook in a gallery called “Inspirations to your Bonsai: (translated from Spanish). If anyone has any clues, I’d like to know where this photo was taken.

Bonsaimania gallery (in English)
Here’s what Bonsaimania has to say about their gallery in English: “These trees are real and they can be found in nature. They are on this album because they are models that should inspire us to create our bonsai. If you want to propose a tree in nature that will inspire us, send me a message through my Facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/suiseki”

Y en Espanol
“Estos árboles son de verdad y se encuentran en la naturaleza. Están en este álbum porque son modelos que deberían inspirarnos para crear nuestros bonsáis.Si quieres proponer algún árbol en la naturaleza que nos sirva de inspiración, envíame un mensaje a través de mi perfil en Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/suiseki”

Speaking of Larch
Larch Master Nick Lenz’s Bonsai from the Wild has an extensive section on collecting and growing larch. Nick know larches like know one knows larch. Check it out, it’s on special.

Here’s another one from the same gallery. Buttonwood?

Have you tried field growing? You don’t need a lot of space to experiment with a small number of plants and the results will easily exceed expectations that have been conditioned by container growing.

One of the reasons the Japanese have so many well developed bonsai is field growing. In the west, we tend to grow bonsai stock in containers. In Japan, most stock is field grown; you’ve no doubt noticed the strikingly powerful Japanese Black Pines in the two photos above (from Morten Albek’s Shohin Bonsai). Though I don’t know how old those massive trunks are, my best guess is they are around fifteen or so, even though they look much, much older.

I used to grow all my stock in containers, now I grow almost all in the field, or more accurately, in my yard. I just incorporate them into my landscaping (some will no doubt just stay there), which tends to be Japanese influenced with a certain rocky Vermont feel. Lots of junipers and dwarf and miniature conifers cultivars, as well as collected larch, spruce, cedars, maples, balsam fir, hemlocks and others. Right now, I have about a hundred potential bonsai in the ground and hundreds more planned (eight acres helps).

So far, the larch (Larix laricina) are the most responsive, with rapidly expanding trunks and plentiful branching (the Larch above is from the cover of Nick Lenz’s Bonsai from the Wild; it was originally collected in the wild, so you could say it was field grown by Mother Nature). Larch love water and no doubt respond to my compulsive watering disorder. The soil here is very sandy, and the land is almost floating on water with several springs, a natural pond and a very generous drilled well. When Al’s big drought comes, we’ll be the last to know it.

One disadvantage to plentiful watering is leaching nutrients out of the soil. My solution is to top dress with partially broken down cedar mulch and to add plenty of local organic fertilizer. Fresh wood chips rob the soil of nitrogen (which they give back later when they break down) so it’s best to wait until they’ve aged a couple years before you use any.

I plan to feature field growing fairly regularly, so stay tuned. I’d like to show you some pictures, but right now everything is hidden under an impressively thick white blanket. In about three months the action starts and I’ll post some photos then.

Meanwhile, it’s not too early to start planning for the spring.