Christmas. Time to reflect and observe.
Time to work on my bonsai ! ?
This trident maple is an experiment tree. It has many challenges and for the next years should do a lot of growing to heal a big cut. So also an ideal tree to try a technique unknown to me for building a nice nebari (rootspread).
So I have been exploring differnt techniques to develop a good nebari. In my search, the name Ebihara and hist technique as applied to japanese maples came up. I decided to give this a try, as it makes sense and I suspect it will work well to create a well-balanced evenly spreading nebari. The technique forces all roots to grow in a single plane, rather than in a 3D space as normally the case in a pot.
Trident maple bonsai Healthy trident maple roots Ebihara nebari technique on trident maple bonsai
To start, I verified the health of the tree. Lots of happy rots in the pot, so healthy enough to take a little bit of abuse. I proceeded to trim all the roots back and placing the tree on a wooden board. In this case I modified the original technique and used wires to attach the boar to the tree, instead of screwing a screw through the board into the trunk. With small nails I have then placed all roots “in their own space”, and used thin aluminium wire to keep the roots down.
Back into a pot. Let’s see what the next year(s) will bring!