How to Shape a Black Bone Tea Bonsai? A Full Analysis of Methods and Techniques
Black bone tea, also called black bone fragrance, is a high-quality bonsai tree species that has newly emerged and become popular in recent years. Because of its high ornamental value and ease of care and management, it is deeply loved by people. Moreover, this tree species is very difficult to cultivate artificially, while wild resources are very scarce, so its price on the market is very high. In particular, old black bone tea stumps with long tree age and good shape are even more a matter of chance than of seeking. However, to let a black bone tea bonsai fully display its ornamental value, in addition to doing a good job in care and management to ensure its normal growth, we also need to create a suitable shape for it. So, how do you shape a black bone tea bonsai?
The shape design and creation of stump bonsai generally involves high technical content and is relatively time-consuming and labor-intensive, but once it becomes an excellent bonsai work, both its ornamental value and artistic charm are often very high. However, this shaping process is also quite complex. In addition to mastering certain skills, we also need enough patience and care to make it. Otherwise, if we shape it aimlessly and without any method, it often not only fails to show its beauty, but may even damage the stump bonsai, with the result that the loss outweighs the gain.
The shaping process of black bone tea includes the handling of branch training and pruning, letting it grow and be created according to our preset effect. Before shaping, it often needs to go through steps such as stump selection, stump cultivation, and branch accumulation, so that it has the most basic shaping structure, and then the shape adjustment and detail handling are carried out, ultimately making it into an excellent bonsai work. But during the shaping process, not only should the bonsai form created meet our shaping needs, it also must not affect the normal growth of the stump bonsai, otherwise it is all in vain.
After a collected black bone tea stump is transplanted and survives, we should provide it with sufficient light and strengthen water and fertilizer management to prompt the stump bonsai to sprout new roots and grow branches and leaves. Then after the Autumn Equinox, carry out support-setting treatment according to the established shaping needs, mainly by cutting off excess branches so that nutrients are transported more concentratedly to the retained branches and make them grow thicker and stronger. When the root system of the black bone tea bonsai has grown thick and strong, promptly strengthen water and fertilizer management to meet the plant's growth needs. Generally, water and fertilizer can be applied once a week. It is also advisable to apply some farmyard organic fertilizer in the pot and water promptly to promote the dissolution of the fertilizer, thereby improving the fertilizer utilization rate.
Reasonably applying additional water and fertilizer is an important aspect of promoting the final form of a black bone tea bonsai. In addition, we also need to prune it promptly. After all, when water and fertilizer are relatively sufficient, the plant often grows with luxuriant branches and leaves. Moreover, black bone tea can send out new shoots once a year. Reasonable pruning not only helps the bonsai maintain a year-round evergreen state, but also perfects its shape and makes the bonsai look more beautiful. Pruning and shaping work can often be carried out throughout all four seasons of the year.
As long as the growing environment is suitable, generally one growth cycle can cultivate the branches of a black bone tea bonsai to more than 0.5-0.6 cm, while two growth cycles can cultivate the branches of a black bone tea bonsai to 1-1.2 cm. Usually it can match the original stump support, and in 2 years the first section can be retained. It should be noted that although black bone tea can be pruned in all four seasons, pruning in spring and autumn is often best. But even so, because black bone tea finds it difficult to sprout new branches during natural growth, we can use this characteristic to carry out single-branch pruning to prompt it to sprout lateral buds.
After new buds grow out, we can follow the principle of retaining the strong and removing the weak, select and retain one main tender branch and one secondary tender branch, and then use metal wire to stretch the branches and make them grow horizontally. This is a very critical step in the shaping process, because if the branch direction is not guided, these branches may all remain in an upward-growing state, making it very difficult to achieve the effect of horizontally spreading branches. Therefore, when black bone tea sends out new shoots, we should promptly guide the branches. This is also an important aspect of the shaping process, and branch guiding should be done early rather than late.
Of course, here the editor has only briefly introduced two important aspects of the shaping process of a black bone tea bonsai. During the shaping process, there are still many other details that need to be handled, requiring us to draw inferences from one instance and do more exploring and summarizing, so as to gain true knowledge through practice and thereby improve our shaping skills.