Shade Cloth Part II: What Color? Most shade cloth is black. But there is also green. Red. Grey. White. Silver. And we might wonder, there a difference, other than looks? A few experiments have shown that shade cloth color can influence plant growth. One experiment showed an increase in internode length and leaf width in blueberries grown under black shadecloth. The […]
https://crataegus.com/2024/05/....28/shade-cloth-part-

Shade Cloth Part 1: A Sliding Scale Years ago in the bonsai garden I put up what I thought was the best guess for shade cloth: 30%, meaning, 70% of the light passed through. After several years it was apparent that was not enough, and we switched it with 40%. Since then, in another area, we have put up 50%.  This led […]
https://crataegus.com/2024/05/....21/one-last-thing-ab

Old Study Suggests Plastic Wrap Closes Wounds Passing on here a study of wound closure from the 1970’s by one of the great arboriculturists, Alex Shigo. I wish to thank local arborist Rick Till for bringing it to my attention.  Alex Shigo Shigo applied both clear and black plastic wraps—with no wraps as the control—around wounds. He concluded that black plastic wrap […]
https://crataegus.com/2024/05/....14/old-study-suggest

Whist-eria Guest post by Carmen Leskoviansky  My second visit to Crataegus Bonsai was in the spring of 2018 for the spring Seasonal. It was a glorious day in late May, and after some tea and rousing conversation around the dining table, I headed outside with my compatriots to get to work.  Sitting in the studio, perfectly […]
https://crataegus.com/2024/04/30/whist-eria/

Do We Seal Both Conifer and Deciduous Cuts? My bonsai garden is a long-term experiment with tree technique. Often this is a conscious thing, sometimes it isn’t. For the most part over the last two decades I’ve sealed cuts on both conifer and deciduous. Occasionally I didn’t seal, due to curiosity or forgetfulness or some other reason. Here are a few observations. The overall […]
https://crataegus.com/2024/04/....23/do-we-seal-conife