North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [nafex] bonsai apples

In Victorian England, one way to dwarf an apple was to plant it with a large flat paving stone at the bottom of the hole to restrict the downward movement of the roots.  At the same time, the side roots were cut with a straight spade every year.  The root pruning kept a normally full size tree much smaller than it would have been.  Had they just cut the top back, the tree would have just become a mass of vegetative water sprouts every year.  Cutting the roots kept the tree balanced so it would be fruitful at a small size.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, unusual fruits, writing, consulting, more, at http://www.hevanet.com/lonrom

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From: "GIANNI-2" <GIANNI-2@prodigy.net>
To: <nafex@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [nafex] bonsai apples
Date: Thu, Feb 1, 2001, 1:07 PM

 

 
Subject: Re: [nafex] bonsai apples

At 11:02 AM 02/01/2001 +0000, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
>where can I get information as to how to bonsai apple trees?  What
>type of rootstocks should I use and will it work? thanks
  Mike,
Mike:
The art of growing miniaturized "full size" trees is called
"Bonkei" for outdoor landscapes, Bonsai pronounced bone-ceye
is the indoor culture.
Almost anything can be Bonsaied. What you are basically
trying to acomplish is maintaining a root ball within a pot
and topworking the growth to shape and conform the growth to
a particular pattern or shape. By keeping the roots trimmed
on a regular basis you can successfully grow almost anything
indoors or out. A lot of Bonkei is bagged with burlap (Root
ball) and allowed to rot down signaling time for a root trim
and rebagging when the crown starts to bolt. There are so many
techniques for so many specie it's impossible to go into.
One trick is to take your hole for your target (Apple tree) &
build a 5 walled receptacle out of concrete or some heavy duty
plastic (allowing for drainage) making the receptacle 1/3 larger
than the rootball. This restricts the roots from taking off and
allows you to train the growth and help the tree to get settled
into growing stunted. The key is to keep the taproot snipped or
tied and you can restrict a lot of growth but you will have to
unearth the tree every so often to monitor what is going on
depending on what genus it is. If you start with saplings then
it will be easier to keep them in check with a minimum of labor.
Rotsa ruck!
Gianni

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