blue atlas cedar

I found a cedar at a local nursery that will be good for a bonsai.I had them cut the top off at the branch that will be the new apex..nothing else but easing it out of the container to see the roots. they are a solid mass filling the pot..do i do anything else to the tree now??? like always i need your help again!! thanks in advance john

Howzit John,

I have two that are growing it the ground. If it's possible, can you post pic's of your blue atlas please. Much Mahalo.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

Tim,I will get my daughter to post the tree if i can keep her still long enougth.. there is not too much to it right now..ithink it can be if i can keep it alive long enough tho...how can you grow ceder there?? i did not think it would be cold enough for them to rest in winter.. John

Howzit John,

I had mine as a seedling for about a year now and it's growing strong. Let's see after a few years from now if it's still growing.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

This is the cedar that I have posted on questions forum. Any advice would be helpful.
Thank you so much!
John

I have this in the wrong place as usual but here is the tree ..thank you I am sorry...john

No you haven't - fret ye not. As I said in my PM, I merged the two topics so that people could see the "full story" rather than jump between boards. It was a simple case of merge the shorter one into the longer one.

Re the tree. I have had a number of these and allowing for climatic differences across the ocean, If I was aiming for a larger tree (ie Chuhin and bigger) I'd usually let mine grow a bit more substantial branch structure before doing much to it unless it was to bend the trunks into a cascade or semi-cascade. I've found Blue Atlas Cedars work well as both of these styles. I also often use these trees as demo trees for hands-on introduction to bonsai sessions as they are inexpensive and plentiful in my local nursery and when young and whippy are very malleable. They also throw out new growth from the trunk fairly extensively which develops into new branches - similar to larch in that respect.

I only have a shohin one in development at the moment. I will try to take a pic tomorrow sometime but it is far from show ready.

btw I've found that over here at the beginning of hot spell they tend to drop needles almost to the point of being denuded and do a good impression of being dead. In most cases they have put on a new growth successfully and quickly.

Hope this helps.

Howzit John,

Nice tree.

If you get a chance, check out this book "The Art of Natural Bonsai" by Dave Joyce. I highly recommend it. It has a lot of good information and he also has a case history of his blue atlas cedar from a garden center stock.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

Thank you Tim for the book title.. What do you think of this tree fof a bonsai?? have a good day..john

A'ole Pilikea (No Problem) I think this tree would be a good bonsai. As you know cedars take a long time to develop. So if your in it for the long haul it'll be a nice tree.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

I have a couple of blue atlas cedars in my collection that I inherited from an older grower 15yrs ago. I love them as bonsai but as you have been told they are very slow to develop especially once you have put them in a bonsai pot. With a tree like yours it could be a good plant to plant it in a bigger pot and spend some time growing it on. With a nice open potting mix and plenty of food you should be able to develop it much more quickly than if you commit it to a bonsai pot straight away. Interesting that Fiona should talk about needle drop this is something I have never experienced and it gets mighty hot here in summer. Most of the year I grow my cedars in full sun but protect them from the really fierce heat of summer(once the temps get above 35 degrees). I also repot them during the warmest months of the year. Good luck.
Craig

Craig,,you say that you repot in summer?? I know nowit is fall or winter there..i am going to put the tree in a larger pot for this year..when do you prune and wire?? i got 2 larches and just washed the roots down no pruneing they are not doing so well..i guess i need to learn a lot more aboutthis type of trees thank you john

moyogijohn wrote:i got 2 larches and just washed the roots down no pruneing they are not doing so well.

Good grief!!!
Quick Fiona, we need a thread for larches.
Iris

Yes I repot/rootprune in January which is mid summer here. I used to do it in spring after the new growth had hardened off and always experienced a level of needle drop. Then I spoke to a very experienced cedar grower about it and he told me to try repotting them on the hottest day of the year, I have to say I found that advice a bit alarming, but since I have started potting them in the warm weather there has been no more needle drop. Of course the trees go into total shade for a few weeks until they recover. I know nothing about larch having never grown one so can't help you there.
Craig

Also John, When you re-pot don't root pruned to much of the root ball. Blue atlas don't like it when you take to much off and they do like to go in a larger pot.

A Hui Hou,
-Tim

moyogijohn wrote:This is the cedar that I have posted on questions forum. Any advice would be helpful.
Thank you so much!
John

Hi John

This is a very similar tree, but with a slightly raised lower branch to the right - to add some character (IMHO;-)) This christmas (2010) the Atlas cedar was the top of pops in contemporay christmas tree fashion in Denmark. I got it from a neighbour after it had served it's purpose. It will need years of training and pruning as the tree grows denser, however it might serve as inspiration for your tree, rather than me attempting to give any good advice. I didn't touch the smallest twigs. It looks a bit busy, but I wanted to let the tree grow a bit more and later on I might turn the twigs into jinns or remove them completely. I too would like a comment.... hell I would even love to see a virtual made by Dorothy or somebody as clever with a mouse-click ;-)

Loke Emil,,,Your tree looks a lot like the one i HAD....BE VERY CAREFUL..how you start your workwith this one...there are some really nice cedars bonsaied..let some one expline how you go about pruning roots...everyone tried to help me but i failedwith this one...make it work ok??? take care john

moyogijohn wrote:Loke Emil,,,Your tree looks a lot like the one i HAD....BE VERY CAREFUL..how you start your workwith this one...there are some really nice cedars bonsaied..let some one expline how you go about pruning roots...everyone tried to help me but i failedwith this one...make it work ok??? take care john

Dear John

feel absolutely free to describe your working proces and it's unintended failiures. It might help my tree survive ;-)

I understand that the cedar tree doesn't like hard root pruning, thrives in rather large pots during the growing years as a pre bonsai. I also learned that the cedar takes well to wiring. Repotting this species is something people disagree on, from what I understand: some say repot during the hottest weeks of the year, others say before new growth hardens etc.

I welcome any experienced knowledge towards bonsaiing this species ;-)

Sorry your cedar suffered the unexpected death?? why did the roots die? ...perhabs forumites would elaborate a bit more on this species?

Loke Emil,,,Thanks for your reply...what i did was what i was told not too do,,,I pruned the roots too much,,in a hurry to make them small..too much water by misting the foliage because the foliage started turning brown... Just go slow and look on the internet for pictures of cedars bonsaied...listen to what these great people tell you!!!!! take care john

Don't root prune your cedar during the cold months they hate it, if I were you I would wait until june or july(assuming you live in the northern hemisphere) when the weather is consistently warm and the night temps have come up. And don't root prune when they have soft growth you need to do it after the new growth has hardened off.
Craigw

Hi Craigw

a 1000thanks for the advise :-)

John, go get another cedar and let us embark on a great cedar ventue together here in this thread. I don't mean to highjack the thread, but it seems like the cedar is a much appreciated species, though hard to succeed with - thus dismissed as a great bonsai species. I love it - for it's color and accessability as a nursery stock material - and I certainly will try to make it with this one. Are you game ;-) ?

I don't like to consider a rootball as a ball, especially when prunning a container grown tree - I try to treat each rootbranch as a part of a whole. So rootpruning is never just a matter of pruning halfs, thirds, fifths etc.

Everyone! How well does a cedar respond to removíng, say, a tap root? Little by little or all in one? with cutting paste or left bare? Does a rooting hormone (powder) help new feeder roots butting on the cedar? And while I'm at it: soilmixes for this species? which is the best soil as a growing medium for a pre bonsai? And is it adviseable to completely clean the cedar roots from the container soil?

Craigw! You say repot on the hottest day of the summer: how would a greenhouse with a heatbed do for an earlyer first repotting in the spring (reaching summer night temps)? Same-same or?!
Again, any experienced comments are most welcome ;-)

I have never grown my cedars in a hot house or with bottom heat so I can't really comment on that. I repot my trees when the day time temps are around the 30-35 degree mark and the night temps would be around 15-20 degrees.
They are quite a popular species here in south eastern Australia and I have seen a wonderful old tree at the national collection in Washington. I had an old friend (now deceased) who loved them and grew lots of them. He used to develop his cedars in poly-boxes and during the growing season literally mulched them with chicken manure pellets, they grew like rockets. I use a very free draining mix, diatomite and rotted pine bark very throughly sieved to remove all the fines.
Craigw

When people hear the name cedar, they think of a tree from high cool mountains, like the Cedar of Lebanon. But remember that Cedrus atlantica is from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. It is not surprising that it likes to be repotted in midsummer. Even less surprising when you realize that many of us learned the hard way that even mugo pines in some climates like to be repotted in midsummer, which makes no logical sense at all.
Iris

Hi All

First post here after struggling for a week to register, seemingly this forum doesn't like Yahoo addresses, by GMail is fine.

I planted some atlas cedar seed two weeks ago, I'd never seen one before but I fell in love with the one standing in the Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town (SA) while on holiday.

I am severely jealous of what you can buy in nurseries , but I'm also very happy that (hopefully) I'll have some seedlings in the near future.

Thanks for that advice, I'm years away from being able to use it, but hopefully it gets stuck somewhere in my brain.

Greets

Gerhard