Watering: You may cut back on water depending of the temperature, but do not let them dry out completely.

Fertilizing: Half normal feeding. No nitrogen.

Trimming & Pruning: Long shoots on new bonsai should not be cut off completely, but slightly trimmed and only after shoot has matured. Some trees will go through a last spurt of growth before going dormant. Remove any wire that is cutting in to bark.

Winter Care: A cold frame is recommended for winter storage of bonsai that need a dormant period. An alternative method of winter care is planting the tree directly in the ground after gently removing it from its bonsai pot. A cold frame should be built on the north side of a building.

Repotting: None.

Watering: Protect from gully-washer thundershowers, but don’t be fooled by a thin layer of damp surface soil. Water every day, twice toward the end of the month. Spray foliage–light misting often. No water late in the evening.

Fertilizing: Light mixtures. Cut back nitrogen and raise phosphorus.

Spraying: Keep bugs under control.

Trimming & Pruning: Be careful about any drastic pruning, especially on flowering trees. Check wires again. Remove any tight wires.

Repotting: DO NOT attempt any transplanting or repotting this late in the year.

Watering: Water well in the morning until it runs out of the bottom of the pot. Cut off any roots growing out of drainage holes. The deciduous trees will probably need more water in the early afternoon. Check pines and junipers for moisture. It is not advisable to water in the late evening because leaves are subject to mildew if they don’t dry off by nightfall. Remember to water the area around the trees.

Fertilizing: Continue normal light feeding.

Spraying: Only as necessary.

Trimming & Pruning: New shoots on older deciduous trees can be cut back now. Start pinching back cypress and junipers with fingers or tweezers. Cutting with shears turns the ends brown. Young pines and vigorously growing older pines should be de-candled. Start with the lower part of the tree first. Leave the top until later. Check all trees for wire cutting into the bark. If it is, remove immediately and rewire.

The effort that it took for John and George to style and then transport this eight hand planting was rewarded by the number of people who stopped to ask about it, took pictures of it and often asked others to take of pictures of them standing next to it.

It was a perfect introduction to the Show.

Thank you to all who visited the Show, voted for a tree and talked to us about them. It is a very labor intensive job to set up this Show, staff it and then take it down, return the trees to their permanent homes and store all our supplies and equipment for the next year.

We appreciate all who participate.

Thanks to all who gave us their opinion and on Sunday, 5/9/10 we will see if it prevails again.

We are extremely excited for this years Mother’s Day show. John Egert is this years chair and his life long experience is likely to make this our best show ever.

The meeting will be a show preparation so bring your trees, stands you can share, entry forms, work schedules and let’s get ready to do this! See you there!

“I first became aware of bonsai when I saw a display at the Pasadena Art Museum when I was a kid taking art classes there,” explains John Egert. That accidental exposure to bonsai turned into a lifelong avocation for the chair of this years ABC bonsai show May 8-9 at the Botanic Garden.

John began by teaching himself about the trees and visiting the California Bonsai Society’s shows at the California Museum of Science and Industry. “I tried different plants, but couldn’t get the look I wanted until I began making artificial trees from clay, wire, and some woodcarvings.” He continued to work with the trees while in high school and college.

“I became obsessed with this goofy art,” John continues. In the 1960s there were few bonsai nurseries in the Los Angeles area, notably San Gabriel, Yamaguchi, Shig Nagatoshi’s, and the closest one to his home, Komai Bonsai Nursery in Temple City. Almost every day, while also attending graduate school, John found himself at Khan Komai’s. “I pestered poor Khan mercilessly, finally pleading with him to give me a job, which, with great reluctance, he did.”

It was also at this time, 1972, John began to take classes from Komai. “I was living the bonsai apprentice life, and I loved it,” John exclaims. Not only was he learning from Komai, but he was exposed to all the teachers who used Khan’s classroom, like Jim Barrett, Melba Tucker, Masakuni Kawasumi, Tom Yamamoto, Yuji Yoshimura, and many others who pioneered bonsai in the United States.

He also got to know Khan’s father-in-law Frank Nagata, the dean of American bonsai teachers. “We sat for hours working on trees and listening to the LA Dodgers, with whom ‘Dad” had a passionate love/hate relationship. I called him dad and he called me Johnny, which no one else ever did,” John recalls.

“I was making peanuts, of course, but whenever I had a tree worthy of showing, a beautiful pot would magically appear anonymously, which was Dad’s way of eliminating the Japanese gift ritual,” John says. “Whenever I had the dough, I would get him a bottle of Sho Chiku Bia Sake, which I would give him anonymously.”

The relationship between John and Khan continued until his passing. He is still in close relations with Kay Komai, his wife. “When my son was born in 1988, his middle name became Komai, on the theory that if I croaked or went crazy, he would have a place to start looking for his other family.” Kay and Khan became godparents to John’s son, and Kay “still rules his life with an iron hand.”

Another friend John made during this time is Harry Hirao, who remains a close friend. He would come twice a month to Khan’s nursery, and they would go to the Mojave to dig California Junipers. “I loved going to his house in Huntington Beach, and wandering through his collection.”

“I also got to spend a good amount of time with John Naka, and would periodically take him a load of decomposed granite from the mountains above my house in exchange for some teaching,” John says.

John became a member of Khan’s Baikoen Kenkyukia, Santa Anita Bonsai Society, the California Bonsai Society, and a charter member of Hirao’s Kofu Kai.

His apprenticeship cumulated into a year spend in Japan, working at Kyuka-en, a famous bonsai garden and nursery. John says while there, he got a “worm’s eye view of the work of Japanese bonsai and a large dose of Zen from the rituals in the nursery.”

Due to frequent moves, work demands, and other factors, there have been many times in John’s life when it has not been possible to keep bonsai and as a result John says he is always starting over, which is the part he likes best. “I probably enjoy having trees in the ground or in boxes, developing away, more than ‘finished’ trees in pots.”

“The Albuquerque Bonsai Club came as a surprise blessing,” John notes. “There is nothing better than spending a fine desert Saturday living bonsai with this gang of bizzarros and raving individualists.”

Fertilizing: No fertilizer at all for any trees just repotted. Wait four weeks before feeding them. Apply some bone meal to fruit and berry bonsai. Continue a regular program for the remainder of the trees, increasing nitrogen content. Change fertilizers periodically to pick up different trace elements.

Spraying: Keep checking for aphids, grasshoppers, spider mites, and white flies. Sometimes a small pinch of systemic insecticide should be added to pellet-type fertilizers.

Trimming & Pruning: Cut back long sprouts, leaving 2 or 3 buds. On older deciduous trees, shoots should be left on until they harden and stop growing. Remove these shoots the following dormant season. Start wiring again, not too tight. Don’t try to wire tiny new growth. The new candles on older pines should be pinched back, but leave the candles on young trees for another month. Do the jin now.

Repotting: Repot junipers and pines. When transplanting a pine, save a small amount of soil which has some white fungus. Mix it with new soil and place in bottom of pot. Pine and this fungus have a joint living relationship.