I haven’t worked on a Podocarpus ever since I displayed one at Epcot 3 years ago. Alothough I have been trying to find a replacement for that one in my collection I have had a hard time finding good material to work on. Last year I found this one at Mike Rogers’ Nursery and had to have it. Over tha past year though, I have lost a lot of upper branches and now it turns out that the entire top is dead.
Podocarpus Pre-Bonsai
But deadwood means a great carving project to address in the future of this tree. I already have an idea of what I want to do. I need to establish the branches and structure of this tree first. First things first, let’s get that tree out of the nursery pot and into some bonsai soil to give this tree a kick start.
Upclose look at the trunk and nebari
The base of this trunk is wonderful, lots of different fronts to the tree so plenty of options for development.
Prior to root pruning
The roots of this tree weren’t great, but at least I didn’t need to prune much off to get it into this bonsai pot. The soil mix was also pretty poor for drainage, too much sand. It will really flourish in my bonsai mix
Podocarpus initial potting
Well it doesn’t look much of a Bonsai at this point, but this years goals are simple. Get the tree to develop better roots, and put out new branches. I may get lucky and be able to chose a few branches, but the styling won’t occur until late this year or next year. Just need to keep it alive and happy.
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