Overwintering Bonsai

Hello and welcome back to another episode of notion, Bonsai and today we’re going to be talking about overwintering your trees and stick around to the end of this video, where we open an exciting package: [ Music, ], alright.

So, first, what I’m going to cover is what is overwintering, because whenever I first got into Bonsai – and I heard this term – I thought it was this very complicated process where you’d have to do something to a tree, and it’s actually a lot more simple than I.

First thought overwintering is simply the term we give to helping trees through the coldness of winter. You see as it gets colder in the year. Some trees will need protected from the frost. If you live in a warmer climate, where, in the winter at night, the temperatures don’t really drop below -4 degrees, then your trees should be fine.

However, it can be a good idea to take your trees off the shelves or benches that you have them on and place them a lot lower to the ground, and this will sort of stop them getting hit by as much wind and also prevents too much sunlight.

Hitting the foliage you see, whatever the soil on a bonsai freezes, The Roots can’t sufficiently take moisture up to the branches and foliage and if you’ve got too much wine and too much direct sunlight, there’s an increase in transpiration, which is the evaporation of water from the Tree so if Moore’s evaporating off the tree, then the roots can take up, the branches can die now.

On the other hand, if you live in a much colder climate, where the temperatures maybe go below -10 degrees, you definitely want to protect your trees and overwinter them. So larger trees that have been planted in the ground like this one here can survive temperatures up to maybe -10 and below, and this is because the roots go deep underground, so they won’t freeze but Bond size like this little Rose, Bonsai and even some of the Hardiest of trees that are very Frost tolerant, will still need to be protected in Winter, and this is because, first of all, the pots are quite shallow and they can’t go deep underground to stay warm and second of all, the soil that’s used in Bonsai, unlike compost Or dirt is very aerated to allow for good drainage, but the disadvantage of this means the trees need to be protected because there’s nothing to insulate The Roots.

So how do we actually protect our trees, so they don’t die over winter. Today, I’m going to be building this cold frame. If you don’t want to use a Cold Frame, you could also use some Frost protection bags.

You can get some Frost protection blankets to put over the top of your trees. You could wrap the pots in bubble, wrap to try and keep the roots warm that way or you could place them in an unheated Greenhouse which this cold frame is kind of mamicking.

I see the whole idea is to keep the trees cold, but not too cold. If the trees get too warm, for example, if you thought of bringing them indoors, then the trees could actually wake up from dormancy and think it’s spring again and they’ll start pushing out new growth, and this is really not good for the tree, because it will deplete Its energy and over time this can kill the tree, so trees actually need to go through that dormant period in winter.

Again, if it’s too cold, not good for the tree too, warm not good for the tree, so we’re trying to create that sort of Goldilocks environment, foreign. I think I can keep it open like this or if I want it to be a little warmer in the more colder days.

I can loosen these little screws here that will close like that all right. So this is the part of my garden that I’ve decided to place the Cold Frame. It gets good amount of sunlight in this area. There is a slight Gap under here, which is a good thing.

So whenever I water the trees in here, the water can drain out, but if the pots are sitting on the ground and they’re not sort of raised up a little, they can get a little bit waterlogged. So I have got these three racks, which used to sit here, but I took them away just so.

I could get the cold frame in this used to be a cheap shelf set where the trees would sit and there was like three different tiers, but I find that just the mash on its own, when placed on the ground, is just enough to raise a tree.

Slightly off the ground, so when you water it the water drains away and there’s no like contact with the grime in the bottom of the pot, that would keep excess water in the pot and then that would lead to root rot on the tree.

So I just like to have that little Gap, so I’m really hoping these fat inside here might be might be a close one. They seem to just about fit, which is a good thing, probably remove the end. Caps off this side, yeah, that’s great I’ll.

Just do the same with these other ones. I don’t think there’s enough room for this third one I mean I could make it work, but I’d rather place this somewhere else outside. So here I have two trees. One is deciduous and the other is Evergreen.

This is a maple that has now lost its leaves for the winter, and this is an itoigawa Juniper, that’s still lovely and green. Whenever a deciduous tree like a maple or an apple or an oak tree or any tree, that loses its leaves in the winter whenever they have lost their leaves, they essentially don’t need any light until the following spring, whenever they get their leaves again and they’re fully Able to photosynthesize and turn that light into energy for the tree, but with an evergreen species like this Juniper or a pine or a spruce, the rate of photosynthesis is very much temperature dependent as Evergreens get closer and closer to below zero.

The rate of photosynthesis then slows down and as a result, if the tree gets too much light, it can actually damage some of the foliage, and this is known as photo inhibition, but the tree will then repair itself if it hasn’t got too much damage and by The following spring: the tree should recover okay and if you’re, in a climate that drops to like well below -10, then the Evergreens don’t really need that much light as they’re really really slowed down.

The metabolism isn’t moving as fast, then so now I would like to show you how I prepare the trees before I put them into the cold frame. Here. I’Ve got three different Maples and they have all lost their leaves.

If I were to place these into the cold frame, as is the trees, might do just fine, but if the trees did happen to have a fungal infection on them, some sort of fungus spores laying around and then in the Cold Frame whenever the temperatures rise again.

In Spring, the fungus and the scale insects will have the perfect breeding ground come spring. Whenever everything heats up and before you know it, you could have a tree, that’s seriously in bad Health from being eaten or attacked by a fungus.

So I’m going to show you how I prepare a tree before I put it into a cool frame. This is just a few common winter tasks that you may encounter so the first one I’m just gonna weed the tree. These could rapidly grow in a cold frame and then eventually, if you let weeds, go out of control worst case scenario, it could affect the health of the tree and get really vigorous and entangled with the roots of your tree.

So we don’t want that. Then I like to give the trunk of the tree a scrub to ensure there’s no algae growing on the trunk all right this next tree. It’S got some weeds. Also, I like to take the Moss off the top of any trees.

That’S in the Cold Frame. It’S not going to get much light anyway, so it may just wither away again scrubber in the trunk just to get rid of any algae. That may be forming pretty happy with this, and this tree also seems to be just fine, and now I’m going to treat these trees with, what’s known as a Dartmouth spray.

Now, if you wish to, you, can purchase a commercial dormant spray, you spray it on the trees and its main job is to kill off any fungus or insects that may be in the trees over winter, but I’m not going to use a commercial spray.

I’M going to make a dilute solution of lime sulfur in a 20 to 1 ratio. I would just like to give a little disclaimer before using lime sulfur. If you wish to wear gloves and eye protection, if it gets on your hands, it can irritate the skin and it’s really not good if it gets in your eyes.

So for this spray bottle that holds 1.25 liters, I’ve got 63 milliliters of the lime sulfur. To add to here, then we can put the lid on this thing if you have a smaller spray bottle, but just look up online, a ratio calculator give a little Shake.

I’M just going to pump this up, I’m just going to miss these Maples here. I would also like to mention that make sure you research the species of tree that you’re going to spray this on. If you are going to spray it, because some trees may not like to be sprayed with lime sulfur all right.

Let’S get these into the cold frame: foreign [, Music, ], [, Music, ] to open this package. It’S been sitting for a few days in my house, and I’ve been very excited to open it and see it. This package was sent to me from a guy called Jason from the Bonsai Garden I’ll leave a link to his channel.

In the description of this video, you should really check out his channel. It makes really good Bonsai videos he’s got a massive Garden, big big Garden of bonsai trees, but recently he did a giveaway for reaching 1 000 subscribers and we just happened to win the main prize, which was a beautiful Bonsai pot.

So I’m gonna I’m gonna get into this now again massive. Thank you to Jason for sending it. I’M really liking the community. It’S Foreman! In the comments section of my videos, I’m meeting lots of different people talking to lots of different people about Bonsai, and everyone is super friendly and they give really good advice about developing trees or different ways of doing things.

This is a stacker, that’s on it. It says Noya, design or Noya Design. This is the people who make the pots here we go. This is it wow? This is a beautiful pot. It’S got like a design on it that sort of mimics the artwork of The Great Wave It’s hand painted.

It’S got these little speckly dots, also above the wave to sort of simulate the splashing of water, really like the oval profile of the pot, also – and I’m just thinking what I could plant in this. If anyone in the comments would like to suggest what goes into this pot, it could be featured on a video in Spring.

Whenever I put a tree into this and here’s the little piece of paper that Jason pulled out of the Hat, I really like this pot. Thank you very much again Jason. This is a close-up of the pot, but on that I’m going to end off this video right here.

Please remember to leave a like on this video, as it helps out the channel a lot. This is just a video and a few tips on overwintering trees and some of the things that I do. But please share with me in the comments, if you would do anything differently or if you have any more tips on overwinter and trees, I’d love to hear them, but on that, thank you so very much for watching [, Music ].

Thank you.