How Many Pots?

Trident Maple, Kims Bonsai, Phelan Ca.

2002

This was a replacement tree from a tree I bought at the 2001 convention from Benny. The tree died, essentially a cutting and they were not supposed to be sold. They were taken to the convention and he replaced the dead tree with my choice. I chose this Trident maple. My first trident larger than 1/2 inch. It was growing in a large plastic bonsai pot.

2004

This was the first ceramic pot for the tree. Some of the branches were elongating and making progress. The pot had a small bamboo trim around the middle of the pot. Unglazed and a rather cheap pot. What I was amazed to see was this picture of this stand. I purchased the stand in an antique store in Santa Cruz. It was full of asian antiques and I picked up this stand for about 100.00 dollars . I know it wasn’t more than that because that’s about what my budget was for this sort of stuff then.

2004

My son made this pot in Ceramics class at Central High School. The dimensions of this pot was about 16  x 12 x 1.5 inches tall.

2007

Same pot , but branches really getting better. Roots are really in bad shape and need work.

2008

In the winter of 2008 I took the bad roots off. Above on the right side of the trunk at ground level one can see a root growing straight down as well as some knots of roots growing on the soil surface. I took all these off. Just cut them off with a saw. The big scar on the lower front is from the big ball of roots I took off. The tree is now planted about two inches higher in the pot.  The pot, By Jim Barrett, was purchased at a Shohin Seminar in 2008. It was during this time that I started using the pot as plywood and tied in the tree with no soil under and just planted on the bottom of the pot. This gave me a flatter root ball and forced the roots upward and began the flare process. Like tree in Japan with enough age, maybe 30 or 40 years the root ball will fuse into a large plate of roots. It’s already starting to do that. Make a note of the flare on the tree as it enters the soil, there is none. Lets check in a few years.

2008

2011

2015

2015

2017

I purchased this pot from Robert Pressler at Kimura Bonsai in 2017 going down for the Bonsai a Thon. Its a Chinese blue bag pot. The dimensions of this pot are 18 x 15 x 2. This was a deeper pot and the tree was staring to need the larger reserve of soil due to the size of the canopy. Take a look at the flare the tree grew in just a couple years tied into the bottom of the pot.

2018

2018

2020

The tree is now in this large Kakuzan pot from Garrett Ryan. The pot measures 19 x 15 x 4 inches. The glaze is Oribi and small cream crystals run throughout the glaze. The scar still visible on the front of the tree is now four inches above the soil. The canopy is, soil to apex 24 x 24 inches.