Episode #14 Peter Tea

[00:00:00] Speaker A: There's a new Bonsai convention going down in the Midwest in 2024. It's going to be May 3 through the fifth at the Gateway Convention Center in Collinsville, Illinois, put on by the Bonsai Society of Greater St. Louis. And I highly recommend you check this one out, because they are doing everything right. I think that they are just doing a phenomenal job with the entire bow and convention. So, to start off, they got six incredible headliners. [00:00:31] Speaker B: They have. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Bjorn Bjor, home of Asan tyler sherrod of Dogwood Studios andrew Robson of Rakuyo n maria Hadstick young Cho and Morrow Stemberger. So, super high level guest artist. I'm very excited that they were able to line up those people. I don't think they could have done a better job with that. That is absolutely phenomenal. They're doing $7,500 in cash prizes for the trees, the Kusamono and the Suiseki Expo. They have $2,500 for the tree that wins Best in Show. Currently calling for entries right now. So if you go to Bonsai Central bonsaicentral.com entries, you can enter your tree. Deadline is February 1, 2024. So, once again, Bonsaicentral.com entries, you can check that out. In addition to that, they have 14 plus workshops. They have twelve informal pop up demos, two formal demos. They have dinner, which is going to be included with the price of admission on Friday. Saturday, they have nine plus Bonsai and Kusimono lectures, plus Q and A sessions. They have three professional roundtables, and they have over 15 awesome vendors, all confirmed. I would definitely recommend you check out the site and look at the workshop material. I am pumped. I would literally buy every single juniper if I could for the workshop price. I think that they are not charging enough there. They have these awesome twisty junipers. I don't know where they got them or how they were able to obtain them, but I would buy all of them. Of course, they're saving them for the workshops. They have really great workshop material. [00:02:29] Speaker B: A lot of times. [00:02:29] Speaker A: Workshop material, I'm like it's. [00:02:31] Speaker B: All right. [00:02:32] Speaker A: But this workshop material is looking very high level, so for more information, I would go to Bonsai Central. You can learn all about the convention, and I am very proud to say that they are a sponsor for this episode. Thank you so much. Definitely check baby trees. It's almost like once you start doing it, you almost have to. [00:03:11] Speaker B: He takes his hand and grabs his hat on top of his head while he's looking at it. The Black Pondo podcast. [00:03:18] Speaker A: You can ask me anything. [00:03:19] Speaker B: I'll talk about whatever. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Nice. Okay. Where did you study? Bonsai. Would you give me the short version. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Of where you studied and how you studied? Well, I started doing it as a hobby in 2001 or so, just on my own. And it wasn't until maybe 2002 or so is when I joined the Midori Club and got some help there. And I wanted to demo so so I started learning bonsai that way. But then once I got connected with Boone, then I started learning from Boon, and that's where I learned most of my bonsai initially until I went to Japan, and then I learned a lot more there. So overall, it started as a know, I was an auto mechanic and just did it on the side, had a good time doing it. At some point after I finished Boone's intensive program, I started teaching it a little bit on the weekends, and then it was like, every weekend and so forth. I was like, oh, maybe I can do this full time. That'd be great. So I kind of did that. And here nice. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah. When you were still working with Boone. That is, I believe, when I started working with. [00:04:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:45] Speaker A: I still remember driving up to San Jose and working on trees at your place in San Jose. And I remember you were very nice and very kind to me at one of the I remember, you know, I was like a young guy drove all the way up there, and you were just very friendly. And I think you even offered to have me stay at your place one night so I didn't have to get a hotel room. I don't know if you remember that, but I really remember that and really appreciate that. That was very cool. [00:05:22] Speaker B: When was that? That was like, 2008 or something like that. [00:05:27] Speaker A: I think probably. [00:05:32] Speaker B: It was around that time. Yeah, I don't remember the offering to stay, but it's kind of funny because I thought about the first time you came to the house, and I distinctly remember the first time when you brought in a juniper. I think that was the first tree you wanted to work on, and you were talking about you wanted to do this and that the tree was healthy, and the tree had a bunch of spider mites on it, and I was like, Jeremiah, so this is not the healthiest tree. Right, but you were so sure that it was healthy, right? Because you just didn't know. I did distinctly remember that, and I thought it was fun in a way, because a lot of people start that way. They have the tree, and they're trying to get it better, and you just don't know what's supposed to be what. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, and health is so important. Before you start working on those trees, you got to get them nice and healthy. So newbie move by me back know? So, Peter, you are extremely talented. You've been my bonsai teacher for a long time now, and I was thinking about actually, I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine from high school the other day, and we were talking, so I used to be really into guitar. And I had this friend, his name was Stephen Brioti, in high school, and he was so good at guitar, and it was like he didn't have to try all that hard. One thing about him was he could listen to a song and just start playing it on the guitar. He could pick up any instrument and just start playing, start jamming with other people. Whereas personally, I took lessons for like, nine years, and in order to play a song, I would have to look up the sheet music or the tabs online. I'd have to listen to it a bunch of times. And I was kind of thinking about I think that you kind of have that thing, the equivalent thing in bonsai. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Meaning you're very naturally I don't know about that. You're giving me too much credit, I think. [00:08:00] Speaker A: I think so. [00:08:01] Speaker B: I mean, I went through kind of the whole motion of learning it and stuff like that that I don't mean I just took what I learned from Boone, for example, and I was at home, and it's just a matter of me practicing and kind of seeing what happens if I do a certain mean. I'm not even sure the work is even that good to this day. Right, but I think you're being very generous when you say that. [00:08:30] Speaker A: I think you are being very humble and no, I think you have that thing you're like the guy that can just pick up a guitar and play a song when they hear it. But that's like bonsai. That's wiring and styling and grafting. You just understand it. You just get it. And I'm very impressed with that. Thanks. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Great. [00:08:54] Speaker A: Awesome, man. Well, tell me about your current property and your bonsai garden and studio. Would you tell me a little bit about that? [00:09:05] Speaker B: So, yeah, I'm in Auburn now, which is about 30 minutes northeast of Sacramento. And when I went there it's interesting, when I looked at the property, there's actually two buildings on there, and the original home is this semicircle building that was custom made by the original builder, and he was an architect in the community there. So when I went there and I saw the house, I immediately fell in love with it. I was like, of course, this would be a perfect house for bonsai. It's circular or at least a moon shape or a crescent shape. So after kind of cleaning up the land a little bit, I set up the benches. I got like 20 benches, and just down the driveway is a little smaller, smaller building, which was the in law house, and I actually lived there. So it actually works out really great because I can just walk to work every day if I have to do stuff in the garden, but I'm not in the garden all the time, so I get to get away just a little bit. So it actually worked out really good. That was one of the first properties I actually saw in Auburn. And the reason why I even moved to Auburn is a friend of mine, a good bonsai friend that I've known for 20 years now, moved to Auburn, and I was working with him, and when I got there, I noticed his trees were doing much better than when they were used to be in San Jose, and the water quality is significantly better. So it got on my radar real quick. So it worked out really good. Trees are growing better, water quality is better, and it's city water. It's not a well, which a lot of the other properties in that area that I was looking, I didn't even bother looking at the comparables for those houses. They're all unwell, and this is the only place that had that clean city water. So I went with this place. Yeah, I think I got pretty lucky. That's great. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right there at the foothills of the sierra. Right. So probably the water quality has something to do with snow melt, I'm assuming. [00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the water company itself or where they pump the water is only like three or 4 miles from my house. And so, yeah, a lot of it is surface water, snow melt, so there's no groundwater in there. It's interesting because in San Jose, I was using a reverse osmosis system to clean up the hard water because a lot of San Jose water comes from the ground. And after using that system, the tap water in auburn was actually still cleaner than after the San Jose water would go through a reverse osmosis system, and I was like, okay, we can't beat that. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's nice. How much property do you have? [00:11:53] Speaker B: It's about 1.6 acres, and I would say I'm using about little less than an acre right now because it has some hills and slopes that I'm not using at the moment, but hopefully one day I can build those areas up. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah, very cool. So, yeah, you have kind of like your house that you live in, and then you have a separate workshop, which you host workshops, and you work on trees in there, and then you leveled an area where you have all your trees, a fairly big area. And then I saw you're putting some trees into field grow. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Is that right? Yeah, that's right, because I still have a hillside, so there's a big retaining wall that's up against this hillside that I didn't dig out when I was making kind of the flat pad for the bonsai. So up on that hill. Starting this year, I started planting some stuff in the ground. Not a whole bunch, but just starting to get some stuff in there so I can just get some larger trunks and generally trees that can handle a lot of sun right now because there's not a lot of protection there. And it gets pretty hot in auburn. So things like chinese quins, crepe, myrtles, things like that. And those happen to be trees that a lot of people want also that nobody seems to be growing a lot of. So I hope to find more next year as I get more and more material. [00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah, very exciting. Yeah. We definitely need more high quality deciduous so that is fantastic to hear that you're growing some. All right. So a lot of these are kind of just random fun questions that I threw in there. So my first one of those regarding your property and your bonsai garden and studio is if I gave you 100K but you had to put it into your garden property house, you can't buy Tesla stock or Bitcoin or, I don't know, a cool car. You have to put it into either the garden, the property, something like that. What do you think you would do with it? [00:14:14] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, if I had one hundred k to spend, that would be awesome. I would probably put a good amount of it into the workshop building itself. When I got the place, that building was pretty much gutted. The original owner was gutting it to rebuild it, essentially, and they kind of left the project halfway. So I got some of the work done, but doors, some walls, finishing up bathrooms, things like that would be very helpful. In the bonsai area I've often thought about, because right now all the benches are sitting on a road base, which actually works out really good, other than it's a little tough on the shoes because it's a bit sharp, but water goes through it, but it doesn't move very much. If there's a lot of rain. Sometimes with like decomposed granite, you get a little rain and it starts cutting streams in it and things like that. So it actually worked out really good. And snails don't like to crawl on it, which is really nice. In a bonsai garden, that's a great doing an apprenticeship. Yeah. After doing an apprenticeship in Japan, the benches at Mr. Tanaka at IGN, the soil is very sandy, but then there'd be some low areas, so when it rains it would be a little muddy. And I swore that once I have my own bonsai garden, there's no mud that I can step on, so this stuff actually drains really well. I did kind of fantasize that if I had some money, I would put cement over the pathways so it won't be so bumpy. But then there's still exposed areas for the road base for water to drain. So I kind of fantasize with that. That would be very nice. I would maybe do that. Yeah. Maybe upgrade the shave cloth structure. It's all wood right now, which has lasted actually a long time. I've been there for eight years now. I came back from Japan about ten years ago, so everything's holding up really well. There was some talk about maybe I should get some metal poles for the shade cloth instead. So eventually at some point, the wood will fail. But so far I think the wood probably lasts me another ten years. Actually. So it did just be more like, okay, I have the money, so let's do it. Pretty the place up a little bit. Yeah, nice. [00:16:48] Speaker A: I like it. Speaking of shade cloth, I think it's really cool that you have even different well, you have specific species on certain benches and then you have specific shade cloth over that bench. I just think that that points to some of your character and how precise you are with bonsai in many ways. Personally, I just have one shade cloth structure with what I think is 50%. Although you were looking at it today and you were saying might be more than 50%. [00:17:26] Speaker B: It seems that way, but I always wonder. Yeah, it's hard to say sometimes for sure. I have had people buy 50% and it just looks a little different than mine. So I'm sure there's probably a plus or minus somewhere in there when they make it. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you give any tips to listeners just on shade cloth in general? Do you always recommend shade cloth? [00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Well, the environment in Auburn, the reason why I have shade cloth is that it typically gets over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In Auburn it could be as early as June, but normally it's July, August. We're going to see those temps with a high I think the hottest is maybe 112, which is not normal, but it happens. And it's very dry in the foothills also. So you just can't put trident maples or Japanese maples, things like that in that kind of sun. In a little small pot, they're going to dry up really fast. They just can't handle the root system is going to get really hot. So I divvied up my shade claw now. I mean, there's 20 benches there. And when I first built a place, I couldn't be home all the time, so I had to have an irrigation system, which is why I have certain trees in certain benches, so I can kind of fine tune the irrigation system. And then on top of that there'll be certain trees that are similar so that the shade cloth can cover those sensitive trees and say the not as sensitive trees. So right now I'm running three shade cloths. There's a couple of benches, four benches that are in the full sun. So I have things like undeveloped California junipers, especially larger ones out there in the full sun. I have my olives out in the full sun. Most of the oaks that I have are all in the full sun. Even a little bit more developed. They seem to be able to take it very well, though. I have to water that bench very often, up to four times in the summer. So as long as you can keep them hydrated, they can handle that 110 all day and they'll be growing. It's not like they stop like we think, oh, summertime is going to stall out. It'll still give me a 1ft runner sometimes on certain oaks in that full sun. So after that I start moving into 30% shade cloth, which is a lot more like refined shimpaku, kishu, things like that, mostly like conifers. And then I move into 50% where I have more of the sensitive deciduous trees or the more sensitive conifers like Hanoki Cyprus, I keep my redwoods under 50%. They seem to be much happier there. And then right at the end on the last bench, I have a kind of a it's not the most exact, but it's a sandwich of 50 and 30% together for the very sensitive trees, trees like shishigashira, Japanese maples, EZO spruce, Japanese beaches, they seem to like that amount of shade. Now the shade claw is not up the entire time. What I do is in the springtime, once the temp reaches or gets over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, normally that's when the shade cloth comes out, which is generally end of May or so. So moving into June, so it's usually the third week of May the shade cloth goes up. And in the fall when it starts cooling down, usually it's sometime at the end of October is when the temps are normally not above 80 anymore. And then that's when I pull the shade cloth. I mean, I did experiment on some stuff because trees like black pines that I have under the 30% or junipers, yeah, they can handle more than 80 degrees. Of course it could be 90 before I put the shake loud up. But I found that once you get into that kind of time period yeah, 80, they can be in the full sun even though it's 80. But then I'm gone for a couple of days and the weather suddenly gets to 95 and I'm not there to slide the shade cloth out. So I just found it easier to just kind of do it all together. And the trees seems to be growing fine, they're not showing any signs of not getting enough sunlight. So one year I did try pulling the 30% shade cloth once it hits 90 instead of 80, but it didn't seem to make a huge difference. So I just went back. Let's just keep life a little easier once I complicated enough. [00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, your trees certainly are some of the healthiest and the most green and they just have some of the best color that I have seen. So props to you on that. And I think it's because you're so precise with things like shade cloth. For example, just to clarify, you were saying you sandwiched 30 and 80. Basically you put like 30 and 50. So you were essentially creating like an 80% shade cloth, just using both 50 and 30 on top of each other. Is that what you meant? Yeah. [00:22:35] Speaker B: I'm not sure if putting 50 and 30 becomes 80, 80. I guess it's kind of ballpark. I guess I can get a light sensor. One of my clients recently told me. He got a light sensor, so he was much more precise. So maybe I should be doing that too. But again, it seems like the trees are doing fine under that. So I was just, okay, I'm going to leave it and not mess with it anymore. I suppose if I didn't see something, if I saw something funny like the trees were still getting burned or the leaves were getting excessively large, then I might say, okay, maybe I got to adjust this. But so far everything seems to be fine. So I didn't change it any further. [00:23:16] Speaker A: Great. And so you were telling me that your oaks just absolutely love water. Do you think that's one of the keys to keeping them healthy? [00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the oaks that I've had, I've had a handful of different types of oaks, like valley oaks, which is a deciduous oak. I have coastalive oaks, cork bark oaks. I have had a willow oak at one point, but those are kind of the more common. I've had Palestinian oaks, and they all seem to be the same in the sense that when I gave them a lot of sun and a lot of water, they always grew better. In my experience, just being in auburn, because there was a time where I wasn't watering them that much, and I'll look at the soil, and the soil looks moist, but then the runner is wilting, like, what's going on here? Apparently the soil is not holding enough water. So I watered it, and of course the wilt went away. The tree started pointing up again, so I was like, okay. And the soil mix I use is 50% akadama. 50% pumice, more or less. And apparently when the tree is pumping, they just need more water. So I also noticed that a lot of people, when they started repotting their oaks and putting them in shallower pots, they'll see a decline in the health. And knowing what I know now, most likely is that the trees are just not getting watered enough. And I mean, in the middle of August when it's 100 and I'm watering them four times a day. And I'm not talking about like six and then ten and then five and then nine at night or anything. We're talking like 09:00, 1233, 35, 30. I mean, it's within that window and they'll start to wilt automatically in that kind of heat. Now, I mean, I suppose if I put them under 30%, then they won't dry out as fast, but I'm kind of like, well, they're grown really well. They can handle the sun. I mean, that's less structure for me to have to build to protect them. Again, the tree isn't growing anything unusual, such as the leaves are too small or funny shaped or anything like that. So I'm kind of going with it. And as long as I can water them enough, they seem to be fine. But for those that can't water them, because, I mean, who can water their trees four times a day? I mean, that's asking a lot. And my irrigation system was doing that. It's not like I was watering. I mean, my apprentice is doing that now, but it's kind of a pain in the summertime because they're like, oh, we got to stop what we're doing. We just got to water the oaks. But they really do appreciate it, because I'll tell you what, every time somebody brings me a sick oak or I buy an oak that is sick or it's losing leaves, I give it some food and I just start watering a lot. And they always grow like 100% of the time. I've not had one instance where watering them more affected their health poorly. It's always improved it. So, I mean, short of if there's an insect problem, fungus problem, that kind of stuff, so I spray for that, but it's ten out of ten, I feed it and I start watering it a lot. They always improve in health. So I'm not sure know. I'm sure people are looking at live oaks, and they're out in the fields here in California, and generally those hills are very dry. So the assumption is that they don't like a lot of water. And I think it's either they have a long tap root and they're tapping into some kind of water source, or they're just getting enough water that they grow at a very slow rate. And for bones, or at least currently how I'm growing them, I'm trying to grow them a little bit faster to get more development. And I think once they're pumping, they just need so much water. A good tip is either water more or put it in a bigger, deeper pond, and that seems to always help. [00:27:13] Speaker A: Great tips. Great tips. Yeah, it's interesting. Trees out in their natural environment in the ground. The ground is just such a different environment than a container, and we just can't assume because a tree grows like this in the native environment, that it will grow the same in a container. And it's funny, almost didn't believe you about the oaks, because I would look at an oak and you'd go, this oak needs to be watered out in your garden. And it was like, wilting just a little bit. Like the soft new growth would be wilting just a little bit, and then we'd water it, and then you'd come back a little bit later, and then it would be what is the word, turgid, like firm, not wilted after you watered it. So I really do think that they like a lot of water, and I really appreciate you pointing that out. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it was interesting. I came back from Minnesota not too long ago, and I sold one of my clients a live oak, and the first year when they had it in their house, it was growing very slow, and the first thing I'd asked them are you watering this enough, and they say, yeah, the soil is always wet. The soil is always wet, but it's growing very slow. Things aren't really happening at the top, things like that. And I said, let's put it in a tray of water. Let's just find out. Once they put it in that tray of water, immediately the tree started growing. That was just another case of, wow, the soil looks wet. The tree, it's wet, right? How could we not be watering it enough and putting it in a tray of water? I mean, literally sitting in water about an inch up into the pot. I mean, it's in water. It's not kind of on some stones. It's in the water, and it drinks that up. And there's no signs of root rod, anything like that, or in the past. If I did see some signs of root rot because it was sitting in water, it's very minimal. It's just not an issue. Back to your point about talking about trees, that even though we see them grow in a certain environment, it doesn't mean that's the best environment for them. Dinner we were talking about Bristicomb pines. They can grow up there, and they grow really slow because they're one of the few trees that can survive that kind of condition. But you bring them down here and you start watering them, they're going to start growing way faster. We see that on a lot of trees. It's just they happen to be able to survive in that environment. Doesn't mean it's the ideal environment for them. It might have been ideal at one point, though, looking at Bristol home pines, I'd say maybe a thousand years ago, it was wetter there, and they got to the size, and now it rains so little that they grow an inch a year, if that. Or if there's a big branch, it just dies off, and it just backbuds these little tiny buds all over the mean. We see examples of that. [00:30:22] Speaker A: All the yeah, yeah, most definitely, man. You were showing me pictures of your most recent hike to the Bristol Cone Pines, and I haven't been there now, I think I was telling you, it's been like, since 2009, I think. And so I miss going up there. It's so beautiful. It's like just the coolest thing to hike around those trees, and I miss it. I need to get up there again soon. [00:30:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I try to make it a goal to visit there every two, three years or so. And then usually on the off years, I try to go up to the Sierras and do the short hike, know you've been there, see some of the big Sierras, get mean. I try. That's one of the few things I actually can do on my own or do get to do on my own, considering my schedule, that I can try to do that. So I'm glad I can do that. I need to do. It more, of course, for sure. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Peter, would you tell me a little bit you have an apprentice now. Would you tell me a little bit about your current. [00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I have an apprentice. His name is Eli Iris Tree, and he has been apprenticing with me for a little over a year and a half now. He came from Richmond, Virginia. He actually got interested in bonsai during COVID while looking up some info on moss and things like that. And so of course during COVID it was a little bit limited in accessing clubs, things like that. Nobody was meeting. Everything was shut down. And so at some point, I think he tried to get an apprenticeship with Bjorn at one point, but wasn't accepted at the time. And I happened to be in conversation with Bjorn about apprentices because somebody else actually contacted me. And Bjorn was in contact with that other person at one point. And Bjorn, nice of him enough. He actually did tell me about Eli and said, hey, maybe you would consider having Eli. So I started talking to Know. He kind of hit all the markers I was looking for. And I said, yeah, why don't you come out and give it a shot and let's see where it goes first? Apprentice. I told him up front, I said, it's going to be a little rough because I'm learning how to have an apprentice just like you're learning how to be apprentice. So it's a big learning curve for both of us, but I think we've settled down a little bit. We understand each other a little bit more. He understands my expectations more. I understand him more. And so we're working together, and it's turning out good. He's starting to produce some nice work. I'm very happy with his progress, and I think he's planning on staying for about four years. Three to four years. I was asking for three. He said he might stay four, which is fine. I mean, a typical apprenticeship in Japan is five years, so I didn't ask for five years because I felt that that might be hard for a lot of people here to commit that long because they want to get on with their lives or they're a little older. They can't do it that long. I get it right. So I asked for three, and it sounds like he's going to do more than that. So things are good. Things are good, yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker A: That's fantastic. I really like Eli. He's a great dude, really good musician. I like his music quite a bit, actually. He's got kind of like a folky type sound. Like reminds me a little bit of like, Bob Dylan and a little more rock or something like. [00:34:17] Speaker B: From what he's told me is that he learned how to play the guitar on his own. Like, he learned how to play slide guitar and things. Like, know your your guitar analogy. Eli is the guy that can play because he taught it to himself. Right? [00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:34] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's kind of funny because he lives downstairs in the workshop and when the day is over and I'm at my house down the driveway, I can hear him because he's, like, jamming it up down there. [00:34:46] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. [00:34:48] Speaker B: All that stuff. [00:34:49] Speaker A: Several times. [00:34:51] Speaker B: So I'm glad he's doing that. It's good to have other things to do during an apprenticeship. And it's not always just about the work, so I'm glad he's doing that, for sure. [00:35:03] Speaker A: How long has he been with you now? [00:35:07] Speaker B: A little over a year and a half. Next April, it'll be two. [00:35:12] Speaker A: Oh, dang. Awesome. [00:35:14] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. [00:35:16] Speaker A: Glad it's working out by yeah. Yeah, that has gone by very fast. Cool. Well, so, Peter, I was thinking one thing that I would kind of like to do with you, and I thought that this might be good for anybody that might be listening. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:33] Speaker A: One thing I'm very impressed with you on is your deciduous bonsai in. Yeah, I think that you have some of the highest quality work in the United States. And when I go out and I look at your deciduous trees, it looks like something to me that would be in Japan at bonsai professional nurseries or Kokufu. And in learning bonsai from you, I just really appreciate the different ways that you look at deciduous bonsai and the way that you work on your trees. I just think it's extremely high level and totally awesome. So I was kind of thinking that for maybe like some newer bonsai people, it might be good to just talk about what a high quality deciduous bonsai looks like to you and to kind of break down things like what should the trunk look like? What should the nabare look like, what should taper be like? Maybe the branching and silhouette, what should those look like? And was hoping that you might kind of define those things for me, if that's okay. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:36:56] Speaker A: So I guess starting with, for example, like a trunk, what does a very high quality deciduous bonsai trunk look like to you? What are some characteristics that well. [00:37:13] Speaker B: In bonsai, just looking at big picture stuff in bonsai, there's so many different styles that we can go with. So aside from, say, trunk shape and things like that or uniqueness in trunk shape, I'll talk about more maybe some general stuff about what would be considered a good trunk on a deciduous tree. But it's not always the case. It's not 100% like anything. It's never 100%. But let's just say we're starting off and somebody's new. I would say a good deciduous trunk. Generally, I always like a little bit larger. Larger, not so much as, say, taller, but wider. But that's kind of the case for most bonsai. If the trunk is a bit wider, it's easier to make the tree build the tree in proportion for it to look like a tree, say, on a deciduous tree, you hear the kind of the normal things, such as, okay, you got a trunk that's a little bit bigger. Maybe there's some movement in the trunk or there's a lot of strength in the trunk. If it's an upright tree, you're looking at root spread. That's generally 360. And 360 root spread on a deciduous tree is important mainly because just if you plant a deciduous tree in the ground, most of the time on its own, it can grow 360 root spread. Unlike, say, a Sierra juniper that's growing in granite, you don't expect them to grow 360 root spread. They're going to grow wherever they can grow. But a deciduous tree, like a Japanese maple, they're automatically going to do that. So it seems very strange in Bonsai if they doesn't have that, because it naturally does that so easily on its own. So that tends to be important, trying to get that 360 root spread. And there's all sorts of techniques to get that we're looking at. A lot of times you hear people talk about taper in the trunk, some kind of taper. Again, that's not 100%. If you want the tree to look somewhat natural, usually there is some kind of taper. Most deciduous tree has some kind of taper. If it doesn't have taper, it should be for a pretty good reason. Maybe it's a real tall, maybe you're making a boon gin or something out of a maple, which is not common, but I wish more people did that at that point. Taper is not important anymore. The root spread might not even be that important because you're going for something much more abstract in styling. So you hear kind of those basic things. What I tend to focus more on is, yeah, once I'm happy with the trunk, or I like the trunk, how much of the trunk do I have to continue to build? Maybe the top half is maybe the taper is no good, or there's a straight section that I'm not that interested in. I start looking at branches. Where are they coming out from? And importantly, when there are branches on the tree, am I getting some size differences in the branches? Are lower branches thicker than the top? So I spend a lot of a great deal of time growing lower branches. If, say, the tree doesn't have thick enough lower branches, because most trees, again, the lower branches tend to be thicker and the branches above tends to be a little skinnier, I find a lot of people aren't spending the time to grow those branches. So they have these, say, giant trunks, and it's a trident maple or Japanese maple or whichever deciduous tree they go with. And they have a bunch of skinny branches from top to bottom because they just didn't take the time. And that's the issue, really, is that it takes time, which I understand. It's hard to be patient as we go through Bonsai and we figure out at first, people say, yeah, you got to have some patience. And you're like, yeah, I got patience. Was it six months? I can deal with six months. And then you figure out, oh, no, it's like we're growing this branch for three years. You can't do anything about it. And they're like, three years. I'll be old by then. Maybe some other things. So I start on thickening, those lower branches, and then we start moving up into building ramification. One thing I didn't add on the trunk is that ideally, if there's a lot of scars in the trunk, I tend to try to heal them. Not every deciduous tree can heal very easily, but most of them can. You can get most trident, maples, maples in general, they can. Chinese quins, you can crepe myrtles, you can it gets tricky when you get into, like, the fruiting flowering trees, and those don't tend to heal. So you do have to be careful when you pick up some of those trees that if there's a lot of scarring in the trunk, don't expect to heal them. So you better like what you see. So other than that on the trunk, as you move up, you start talking about, okay, different branch sizes, where your divisions are, and if you get more ramification in your branches, it's going to make the tree look older. And I'm not talking about ramification that's 6 miles away from the trunk. We're talking about a couple of inches. So you can get that density in your tree when it gets to the final size. Inevitably, when you get that kind of density, the tree just looks older automatically. When you get into black pines and you talk about thick bark and that makes a tree look older. On deciduous trees, it's not just the age of the tree, but just the more ramification you see, the tree just naturally looks older. So that's something I use to, again, make the tree seem older. And when it doesn't have a lot of branches, it just doesn't look that old, looks young, totally. So it's really just kind of building off of that. I mean, there's a lot to know starting at the base, the inside of the tree, and I work myself out and upwards. Nice. [00:42:59] Speaker A: I like that. Yeah. Where you studied bonsai in Japan, at ICHN. I feel like the trees there have, well, the tridents and Japanese maples there and other deciduous they definitely have a crazy amount of ramification. In fact, I don't know if you saw or if you follow Seth Nelson on Instagram or Facebook, but he made me laugh the other day. I don't know if well, he's kind of joking around, I think about this, but basically there was a tree and he gave it the rock test, quote, unquote, he put a rock on the tree, and it was so dense that it just held the rock in place. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Now, definitely not recommending that anyone goes out and tries the rock test. However, the tree was so dense that it held the rock up. I think that's just hilarious. That's very interesting. [00:44:10] Speaker B: I wonder if Mr. Tanaka knows he was doing that. [00:44:15] Speaker A: Probably not. [00:44:17] Speaker B: Maybe I'll use a ping pong ball or know, table tennis ball or something. [00:44:24] Speaker A: Yes. And then yeah, I think that thickening lower branches so that they're proportional to the trunk and they have taper, especially the lower primary branches that you can see. I think that is so important. And that's kind of something that, in general, we're kind of lacking in the US. And it does take so much time, but it looks so good to me when there's thick lower branches, because it just looks like if you have this big, powerful trunk and you have these tiny little arms coming off, it's almost like maybe like a guy that works out does crazy amounts of upper body, but he skips leg day. It's like the same kind of thing. There kitty legs, little chicken legs. Yeah, I like everything in proportion. [00:45:20] Speaker B: That's right. [00:45:21] Speaker A: Yeah. That gives you the picture that it's actually like a tree in miniature. And taper in those branches, I think is very important. But I like that you preach that. [00:45:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I would say, just a tip for those that are listening, that if you do decide to grow a branch, a couple of things, just make sure you grow a branch out that you think you can use in the future. Don't grow a bad branch out, because then it just becomes a big problem. So grow branches that you know you can use in the future, especially if you're going to spend a couple of years thickening it. And for those that are curious about, well, how big do you grow the branch? A good rule is the branch thickness should be about 25% to 30%, the size of the trunk width where it's attached to. Now, again, this is not 100%, but in most cases, if you can get 30%, maybe 40% is okay. It starts getting a little bit big there. If you get up to 50%, that's more for really powerful trees. And it doesn't really work if the trunks is like, giant any more than 50%, that branch is going to look more like a trunk now, like a second trunk. So unless you're trying to grow a second trunk, you have an idea of how big you have to grow those. It has to be at least 50% where they're coming out from the trunk to get that feel. But if you're looking for a side branch, especially in your lowest main branches, I'd say about 25, 30%, it tends to work out most of the time, and in some unusual cases, it should be skinnier or actually bigger. Once you get close to the top of the tree or the middle of the tree, you don't have to grow it as big. You can get away with not quite that number. And then you get to the top. Okay. If it's 10%, it's just one of the millions of branches you're developing. It's not important that it has to be 30% anymore, but the part that you see the most or the viewer sees the most is going to be those lower branches. Right. So you want to make sure those are kind of in line, and then the top just gets lost in all the branches. So you prioritize what's the part people see the most, and so you spend time developing that. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Cool. So you're saying that, say, the primary or the key branch you want, that the percentages that you just shout out. Basically, like, wherever the branch is connected to the trunk, that's where you're measuring the thickness to determine if you want it 30%. Okay, so not like the base section, right? Where the Nabari like, right above the navari. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah, where that branch is connected on the trunk. That's the measurement I like. [00:48:12] Speaker A: That very cool. Awesome. Can we take a super quick restroom break? [00:48:20] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:48:21] Speaker A: Okay, and we're back. All right, so I had some basic bonsai questions that I was curious about, if that's okay. And then after a few of those, then I kind of just have some random fun questions. I hope that's okay. And if you don't like any of them, you can pass or skip, or you can just tell me to edit it out later. [00:48:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:48:43] Speaker A: All right, first question. Bonsai specific is what soil medium do you use and recommend? [00:48:54] Speaker B: Okay, so soil medium that I use, so generally the basic soil mixture that I use is this. So depending on the tree size, the soil size might change because that changes how much water they hold. But generally for conifers, I tend to use about 40% Akadama, and the 60% is a mixture of lava, pumice, or other kind of dryish soil. Most of the time, it's just pumice. Though sometimes the premixed soil could have a little lava or some other material in there. It is important if you decide to use pumice or lava and that you understand that each component does hold different amounts of water. And I found out that pumice is actually a bit drier than lava, at least the lava that we have here. So I just usually go with the pumice, actually. So conifers, I go 40% Akadama, let's say 60% pumice. The deciduous trees. I go 50% akadama. At 50% pumice, though, you can kind of adjust things after that. Say the tree is bigger, so I'll move into the same proportions, but medium size. What if the tree is really small? Okay, well, I can use the same mixture, but just smaller soil. But if I feel that's still too dry, I might decide to change the Akadama level to a higher percentage. So sometimes on the spot during repotting, I do kind of make those adjustments. I find a small tree that likes a lot of water and it's a conifer, like a blue Atlas cedar. I'm not just going to put 40% because that's just some number I came up with. So I do kind of go based on what I see and I try to adjust it to kind of get them to where I want. So the trees that hold more water, I'll kind of change it around a little bit. Now, having said that, the soil mixture that we used in Japan was actually a lot wetter. So conifers they would use or at IGN we would use 50% akadama, 50% pumice lava decomposed granite actually was a big chunk of the dry component and so that was conifers. And for deciduous trees, we were using up to 75% akadama. So much wetter. And interesting enough about that, that was considered the dry mix because there were bonsai professionals in Tokyo that was using 100% akadama for their Japanese maples or Trident maples. But we do see the difference in how the tree grows because of that different soil medium. Those trees tend to be a little sparser because they just didn't grow very much. So there's not as much to cut. So that's why 75% was considered to dry because the tree actually grew more than 100% akadama. So that's generally my soil mix. I use akadama mainly because I have the most experience using akadama. I know some people don't like to use that, but I think it's generally accepted that the majority of actually I would say just about all of the bonsai professionals in the US. Uses akadama. So probably a good idea to use that. There's a lot of experience with that. So it might not be a bad idea. I know it is a little bit pricier than just the soil at Home Depot and things like that, but it does work well. So I would use that. And a big part is I do use it because I have the most experience. Would I experiment with other types of soil? Absolutely I would if I had time to experiment. But then you're kind of reinventing the wheel. You have to take all the goods and bads of experimenting with new soil and all that stuff. And inevitably you have to ask yourself, is that what you really want to do in bonsai? Or do you want to style a tree or cut the tree back? Because sometimes people get caught up in soil mixtures a lot or what kind of soil and so forth. But anyways, not to rant about that. Those are the kind of the basic percentages that I use. And I'll usually use small or medium. For giant trees, I do use a larger soil, but that's usually for conifers. If I have like a big California juniper, yeah, medium sized soil is just going to be too small. So I start using half inch size pumice and things like that just because the pot is so big. [00:53:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny. I feel like a lot of bonsai professionals, they say that they use Akadama and then they say, like, oh, but I would use other stuff. I would try and experiment. And I think that's cool, but I almost just feel like just so many people in the US. Want to use other things because it's so expensive. And I get it, it is very expensive to use Akadama. But I do feel like it's some of the best soil that you can use. And it's like if you're going to spend all this time and devote all this money into your tree, you're going to wire it and style it and love it, you might as well just use something that's tried and tested, and people have been using it for years and years and years. And then the other thing I think about Akadama is just or volcanic soils, volcanic mixes in general, is that on a lot of trees, especially like conifers, you don't go all the way into the root ball and bear root the root ball. Right. Especially with conifers. And so I just feel like if you're not using a volcanic mix, it's going to cause either root rot or I just don't think that bark and other types of mixes are very good for the core, which you basically never really touch. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. [00:54:56] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that goes back to if you decide to use something like bark and all that stuff, you end up figuring things like that out. Right. It's not just, oh, my tree, I use bark this year and the tree grew fine and now it's okay. What are the long term effects if you have a more solid root ball? And are you going to run into what I think what you're saying is that the core, when it gets so compact, nothing can happen when it's that very fine soil, like potting soil versus lava. I mean, lava doesn't break down. Right. So it stays somewhat more open in there. Yeah, that's a very good point because I don't know what happens. Right. And until somebody does it and see the long term effect. Now the issue is that, yeah, if you decide to tackle that, I give somebody a lot of credit. They're going to try and tackle that. But it is an uphill battle because again, you're reinventing the wheel. You're seeing how the soil works on year one. You're trying to see how the soil works on year 20, and you're also trying to see is the root system developed in a way that allows you to develop a highly refined tree, or is it going to be less than that, or it could be even better? I can't say for sure because I don't know. I have not experienced with that soil. So, yeah, if you don't want to kind of take all the goods and bads of learning soil. And I'll tell you, it's probably going to be a lot of bad because you're learning, you're trying to figure out something new. It's not always going to work out perfect. It's going to eat up a lot of time. And again, you have to prioritize. Is that why you got into Bonsai? Again, I'll give you a lot of credit if you decide to do that, but it does eat up a lot of time. And unfortunately, I see a lot of people talking about it, and it's a discussion all the time when they could be learning so much more about or doing more fun things in Bonsai instead of talking about, well, I can use this, and that worked out fine. It's like, okay, yeah, you're missing the point here. Maybe there should be a tree that you should wire or something and make it better in that way. [00:57:22] Speaker A: Great point. [00:57:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so it was a complex thing. And again, I use Akadama because I decided I'm just not going to try to reinvent, that for sure. I'm trying to do other things in Bonsai and so it's just not a priority of mine. [00:57:40] Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense. Very nice. I'm curious, how do you manage pest and disease these days? Peter? [00:57:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that gets pretty tricky. People have a lot of issues with pests, fungus, and it's different for different a I remember in San Jose, every time I get a boxwood, aphids would attack it immediately, whereas a boxwood in Auburn, I almost never see anything happen to it. But then I'll see other problems in Auburn, and sometimes it's just Auburn and then Sacramento, which is 30 minutes away, they have a different set of problems, fungus and insects. It can get very complicated. There's no easy way out of it. Now, the only thing I can say is that inevitably, if you want to develop high level Bonsai, you do have to understand fungus or disease and insect management because you're developing a tree that's highly refined, which is in a weakened state because the tree is in a pot, it's got a lot of branches. The tree is growing slow because it's refined. I mean, insects, fungus, they know those things. They tend to attack weaker trees automatically. So that's why you have professionals. In Japan at IGN, we were a Bonsai garden that started there a hundred years ago, for example, and everything around it now is apartment buildings and cement. I mean, if you were an insect, IGN was the place to go, right? If you wanted to feed on something green. So we had to spray. Generally we sprayed every month. And as Mr. Tanaka would put it, it's not a matter of if they're going to show up, it's just when. So there was just no escaping the fact that we had to spray monthly for fungus, insects, and you're going to get different insects at different times of year. Fungus, you're going to get it more in the growing season and less in the wintertime, because fungus doesn't grow very well when it's really cold. I mean, earlier today, we were talking about Adam Toth and the garden he studied that they were spraying every two weeks. I know orchid growers that are spraying orchids every two weeks in their greenhouses because in a way, it's almost like monocrop farming, right? You have the same trees right next to each other, or the same orchids right next to each other. And so it's easy for something to just run through those trees real fast because they're all similar in that sense. And there are good and bad years, and it's easy to not think about it, but at some point, we're all going to run into this. And I ran into this. You have a tree you've been developing. Everything's going great. You're excited about showing it. And then one year, spider might just destroy half the tree. And you're not used to that. You don't know about that. But too late. Now that you figured it out, the tree is destroyed or the tree is weakened severely, and now you lost a few branches. Just that one event just cost you I don't know how many years of development. Or in my case, I remember growing a main branch on a black pine, and the trunk was really big. I was really excited about it. And a perfectly strong branch that had candles that were like eight inches long, and the branch was three 4ft long because I was thickening it. That entire branch died because of tip light. And I just had no experience with it. So all that time gone. And how do I grow a main branch back? Right earlier, when I was talking about how weakened trees get attacked, I mean, this branch was one of the strongest branches on the tree, and it still lost to Tip Blight ten years prior. I never saw Tip Blight. Maybe I saw it and I just didn't recognize it. But it did seem like when I got back from Japan, tip light was much more stronger in the Bay Area. And so people had problems with their black pines, and then we figured out what to spray for it. And so now I know a little bit more. So inevitably, we all do have to educate ourselves in how do we use fungicides, insecticides. And we're not even talking about issues with viruses and bacteria. Sometimes that gets us too, and there's no cure for that. I think overall, developing better and better boneside does force us to have to know these things, even though it seems kind of boring. We're talking about chemicals and when do we spray it's? Just this maintenance thing. But getting really refined trees, it's hard all around. Everything has to be done just right. Your cutting technique, and in this case, we're talking about your management of growing plant material, growing trees. How do you. Manage the growth and insects and fungus is just going to be part of it. So, yeah, I have a list of a bunch of different chemicals that I spray on the trees at different times of year. And, yeah, you got to do it and it's easy to do that and then see everything's okay. And then usually what happens is people start to be, well, maybe I don't have to spray every month. We'll do every two months and then things are okay. I'll spray every three months and then you kind of stop and you're like, hey, I'm good. It's been a year, nothing bad has happened. Why am I wasting a bunch of insecticides? Or why am I spraying this stuff that's not good for us to breathe in. Right. One thing I say, when you're spraying, of course, you got to have protection and all that. Don't just stand in the midst of it all. You just have to, you just have to do the sprays and it's, it's just not the, the most interesting thing in Bonsai, but that's just how it is. Yeah, just accept it and get educated on it. [01:03:44] Speaker A: For tip light, what do you spray? [01:03:51] Speaker B: I have a number of different chemicals that I use. I found that with tip light, one of the earlier chemicals that I used was Dacanol. At high enough concentration, that seems to have taken out the tip light. Like, immediately after I sprayed, it almost stopped. You might see a little bit of damage afterwards because the fungus did the damage and the tree just hasn't shown it yet. But I've seen good effects with using dacanol. I've seen good use of mankizab. Seems to work very well. But I would say the best I've seen was the use of dacanol. That seemed to work really well, or at least it stopped it really quickly. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Dacanil, nice. Okay, what about spider mites? You like fluoramite. Is that what it's called? [01:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the chemicals I use is Fluoramide. I mean, that gets into kind of a whole different area because now we're talking about not so much like your typical insect. It's like a spider. And so most insecticides don't kill spiders. So now we need to use something that's special. I mean, it's a whole management routine on how to deal with spider mites. There are safer ways. Instead of using Fluoramite, for example, there are uses of oils, but you have to be careful because some trees can't handle that. Some people will spray the trees, keep them a little bit more on the humid side. So spider mite populations are down, but I found inevitably, you do have to spray a chemical that is specific for spider mites. And the product that seems to work well for me is Fluoromites. There are other products people use there's like salt and avid, which is almost kind of like an oil, it seems. But it's important to understand what these different chemicals do, right. Fluoramide, they say it's full spectrum, so it takes out all the stages, eggs, larvae, that kind of stuff, adults, whereas other products, like Abbot, for example, I believe it, think it only takes out the adults. So there are eggs, they're going to hatch in seven days, 14 days, something like that. And so you have to spray again before they lay their next batch of eggs. Yeah, you have to spray it a bunch. So if you don't like spraying one time, you really don't want to spray three times. So Fluoride seems to work the best. You just got to be careful. If you overuse it, it only works when the spider mites are there. You can't use it as a preventative, and if you overuse it, the spider mites will become resistant to it. And then now you're going to have big problems because spraying won't work anymore. And then you have to search out a different product like Sultan and things like so I try to rotate, and I do try to rotate where I try to keep it at a minimum. Generally, if trees are healthy, they tend to have less spider mites. Or if it's a little bit more open, sometimes they're a little bit better off. Or if you keep the foliage a little wet, you spray it. That does keep the population down. But sometimes even your best efforts, they're just still going to show up and cause some damage. So you might have to bring out the heavy duty chemicals, unfortunately, to manage that. [01:07:17] Speaker A: For sure. Yeah, I actually just ordered some Fluoramite. Unfortunately, spider mite seems to be one of the things that we have a decent amount here. Also have been using Captain Jack's Deadbug brew, which is another Mitocide. [01:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I have used it in the past and found that every now and then it did work with spider mites, but it's not guaranteed for sure. I did notice using that the spider mite population is a little bit lower, but it's not 100% either. Usually if I need 100%, I go to the fluoramite. [01:07:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the Captain Jacks is definitely less toxic, I would think. And I think they might use it for organic gardening or something like yeah. [01:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's rated for organic, so so very safe stuff. I mean, you should still wear a mask and all that, but for sure it's not considered like a hard chemical like fluoramide. [01:08:21] Speaker A: Totally awesome. Thank you so much for the tips there. All right, so I have some random fun questions. At least I think they're fun. However, before we do that, I did want to ask you just a little bit about your business. Currently. I kind of forgot to do that in the beginning. Just kind of like what services you currently offer and yeah, right now the. [01:08:47] Speaker B: Services I offer are private, one on one instruction, collection management. I do a certain amount of study groups where it's a groups of people that get together and so it's more of a teaching thing. I also do tree sales, ceramic sales. I also sell a neo copper wire for wiring, most conifers in Bonsai. So I do those things. I mean I do consults, hourly consults here and there, but that's not as common. Usually it's more for the whole day, things like that. So that's generally my services. I do some consignment sales of trees too, or I help sell collections, that kind of stuff. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, I want to give you a big shout out on your copper wire. It is absolutely incredible. I love using it. And also the trees that you sell. So I'm always looking at your website is Ptbonsai.com, is that correct? [01:09:56] Speaker B: That is correct, yeah. Just the letter P and the letter T and then Bonsai.com. [01:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So on Ptbonsai.com, I'm always looking at the trees that you have for sale and you have some nice stuff and a lot of times though, it'll pop up a really nice tree. I saw like you had a Japanese beach on there the other day, some nice junipers, but sometimes those things go real quick. I would say that's definitely kind of surprised. There's not a ton of Bonsai professionals that sell trees all the time online, but you can find some really nice ones on your site. And so one tip for finding good trees is check out Peter T's Bonsai site and you can find some good ones on there every once in a. [01:10:51] Speaker B: Sometimes. I mean, I have people that check the website often and I don't have any kind of system of when I update the site with nutrients, I kind of update it as new trees come mean. You don't always have to wait until you see something on the mean. A number of people have contacted me and says, hey Peter, I'm looking for a beach. If one comes around, can you let me know? And so sometimes things get gobbled up because I just emailed the person that's looking for that particular tree immediately, or that's what they're only interested in, and if they decide to pass, then I'll put it on the website. But that's not always the case. But I try to accommodate requests as they come in. So if somebody out there is looking for a certain type of tree, just email me through the website. And so you could potentially get something that I don't have to then put on the website and look at it and say, oh no, it's gone, it's already gone. Which is not the best feeling. Yeah, and then on the website you can see the copper wire too, and the sizes, the costs, of course, and the dimensions of the coil. Sometimes that's important for people, especially if they have to carry it around all the time. I try not to make the coils too big, but also not so small because nobody wants to use number six, and the coil is, like, six inches wide, and you're just bending it like crazy just to get it to work. So that's a little crazy. So the coils for those are a little bit bigger. But yeah, check out my website. I have things updated all the time. And I would say I'm probably one of the few I think one of the few bonsai professionals that will ship trees. And the way I ship it, and you can see it on the website, I generally create most trees so that there's no damage to the tree. They don't get crushed. I don't normally just throw a tree in a box and put a bunch of peanuts in, which some people do. A branch broken is a failure in shipment for me. So I try to take care. And I know shipping is tough. It's a little tricky shipping certain size trees. And I know a lot of professionals are not big fans of shipping, so they just don't even offer shipping. But I tried to do it, and generally a lot of trees that I sell, I can ship, except for the really large ones. Those are a little bit more problematic. But yeah, check out the website. Yeah, thanks. [01:13:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Some great deals on there. All right, man. So one question that I am curious about is how is Eli's apprenticeship different than yours was? [01:13:36] Speaker B: Oh, that's a very good mean. There are a lot of similarities, and then there are a lot of differences, of course. One being one's in the US. And one's in Japan. So my apprenticeship in Japan was a little bit more traditional in the sense that I lived with the family, I lived in their house. I got less days off. I think I got one day off every two weeks. Eli, right now, I give him two days off a week like it was a regular job. And we have some basic hours from usually he starts working at eight, and then we wrap out about six or seven, depending on how long we take a lunch. In Japan, we would start at about eight. And we'd work until however late we have to work. Right. It just depends on what we're doing. If there's a lot of stuff that has to be done, then we work till midnight. I mean, there's times where we did that right, because we had to get something done. I would say one of the big differences I noticed is it's not so much the hard work or just working a lot. It's just the cultural differences. Usually it's kind of the big thing. You're in Japan. There's a certain hierarchy structure there that doesn't apply as much here in the US. Though. I mean, I adopt that in a certain way, but I can't be that strict about it, or I'm learning that I can't be that strict about it also. Right. But yeah, other than that, a little bit more days off here. A lot of the learning actually happens during the working hours, whereas in Japan, a lot of the learning I mean, if you're learning on your own while you're doing a task, that's good on you. But there isn't a lot of teaching on normal working hours. Normally it's after hours that you're doing the teaching or the learning or you're practicing on your own tree. I've not gotten Eli to do anything like that. So we're spending more time during the workday talking about how to develop trees. Now, we don't always do that. It's never that all the time, but that's when we tend to do it. So those are some of the differences. [01:15:56] Speaker A: Nice. [01:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:57] Speaker A: I've seen when I've been in some of your study groups, sometimes Eli will also be working on a tree, and I see you come over to him and point little things out and show him how things should be done or give him pointers and yeah, so that's great that he's able to learn like that. As I hear in Japan, it's not always like that. So it's nice that he's able to get that instruction from you. [01:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Some of the most more extreme cases I've hear of apprenticeships in Japan is that during the day, there is no learning, it's just working. And it's after dinner, you have to come back to the garden, and then that's your private study time. And then you work till twelve, and then you come back to the garden the next day by seven. And you're doing this every day? Yeah. In Japan, I got one day off every two weeks. I knew there was apprentices that got one day off per month. Having said that, and as crazy as that may sound, one thing that did teach me is it did teach me how much I could work without needing a day off. I took it as a learning experience. Right. I didn't take it in a bad way. It's just how it is over there. But it was interesting. And part of the apprenticeship for those interested in apprenticeship is that it's supposed to be hard in a way, because after you're done with the apprenticeship, you're supposed to start a business and get better at Bonsai on your own and work with people. I mean, that's pretty stressful. So the nice thing about a tough apprenticeship, in a way, is that once you leave a tough apprenticeship, as happy as you are about leaving a tough situation, everything else is easier after that. Right. Because you can always look back and say, oh, it was never as bad as my apprenticeship, because that was a lot of work. Okay. And now you get to set your own hours. So it was designed not to torture you, really. It was designed to really toughen you up more than anything, because if you can survive that, you can survive anything. So it was kind of that mindset or that's the mindset that I got out of my apprenticeship. [01:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad to hear you have a great perspective on that. That would be very challenging. But you're right, it does set you up for taking on the tougher challenges that come probably or after your apprenticeship. So that's great. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll tell you what, I'd be happy if I got one day off every two weeks. Now, I generally work every day doing this. It's all in, like, little hour. Couple of hours here, a couple of hours there. Block right. But that's how it is when you own your own business. You're going to work a lot. That's just how it goes. [01:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah, you do work a whole lot, man, you deserve a vacation, so I hope you can take one soon. [01:18:53] Speaker B: I'm working on that. Yeah. [01:18:56] Speaker A: Nice. So before you left for Japan, what did you think that your business would look like when you came back, and does it look like what you expected? [01:19:11] Speaker B: It was a little different when I left for Know, I saw some of the people coming back from Japan and what they were doing in their business. So the assumption, and generally this is still the assumption, is that, okay, you go to Japan, you do an apprenticeship, you come back, you start a bunch of study groups, and you travel around and do demonstrations because everybody wants to know what you learned in Japan. That was kind of the expected route, and I did that for a short period of time. When I came back, I was doing demonstration tours in Florida, in Texas, for example. They kind of have a circuit there for that kind of stuff, and I did a lot of club demos in. So then you start teaching, right, because you can make some income doing that. The interesting thing about that is that after a while, you start figuring out that, well, wait a minute, I went to Japan to learn bonsai, not because I want to teach. It's because I want to do it. So inevitably, most professionals that come back from Japan, at some point, they decide that, and they start scaling back the teaching, and they move into more producing trees. They start scaling back, maybe demonstrations a little bit because they have to manage their garden now, because they've developed their garden. And they inevitably move to a system where students would tend to come to their garden to learn, because the professional just can't leave as often as they used to. Now, I'm not saying that's the only way or the right way, but it does seem like a lot of professionals inevitably do that. There are some professionals that love teaching, and they travel a lot. That's fine. That's up to them. I knew that I do like teaching people, but I just didn't want it to be 100% of what I did. So even to this day, I'm slowly adjusting my business to what I thought coming back was just teach, do some of my own bones, and then everything's good to my business now where I'm selling a lot more things. I'm having more time developing trees and selling trees and doing a little less teaching so that it's a little bit more balanced. I'm not totally reliant on one thing versus the mean, and I learned this quickly, especially with COVID Right. If I was doing a lot of teaching and COVID shut everything down, I essentially stopped working. And so that's what happened. And so even with COVID that taught me that, well, maybe I shouldn't put all my eggs in one basket. So I started selling more trees, and that's how I got to selling. The amount of trees that I sell now is because COVID forced me to change my business plan. So it actually helped me in that sense. Whereas I was doing mostly just teaching before that and making a good living. Right. So it's hard to say no to that. So COVID kind of forced my hand, but I always wanted to do that. I just didn't quite know how to attack, and COVID just made me have to figure it out. [01:22:28] Speaker A: I'm glad that it worked out for you. And it's interesting, I feel like COVID kind of forced a lot of people into a lot of different things and hopefully a lot of that's good. I'm sure some of it is not so good, but sounds like it worked out for you. [01:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I was pretty lucky. Not everybody was so lucky. So I feel very fortunate about, you. [01:22:54] Speaker A: Know, Peter, one thing that I absolutely loved to follow of yours is your blog that you wrote while you were in Japan, Apprenticing. I think it would be really cool if at some point in time you went back through that blog and did some type of commentary on it because I'd be really curious if your opinion has changed on things or if you do things differently now. Just kind of wanted to throw that out there as an idea for you. [01:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very good idea because I haven't gone back and reread some of my blogs. So, yeah, it would be interesting because I'm sure there's a lot more to add to it now from just what I've experienced since I've come back. I'm sure some stuff is the same, but yeah, what I know now versus what I knew when I came back, which years ago. I learned a great deal since I've come back. Just experiences in creating a garden and seeing all the issues that I have in my environment versus in Japan and how some of the techniques I use in Japan doesn't quite work out exactly here, and how do I adjust and so forth. So there'd probably be a lot of comments such as, like, well, it depends here and it depends there. It depends there. [01:24:20] Speaker A: Sure. [01:24:20] Speaker B: It's not as straightforward as I thought before. [01:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I know. I really appreciated that blog, and a lot of other people did as well. It was super good and super enjoyable to read while you're in Japan. That was so great, and I'm glad that you still have it up for people to look. [01:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for checking it out. And yeah, I got tons of support from people who are reading it and gave me great comments and was appreciative of that information, and it got me motivated to share more. That was, I guess, maybe my hobby away from work, right. Even though it kind of is bones I related. But it kept my mind away from, say, the daily routine stuff and got me talking to people and sharing ideas. And hopefully, overall, the intent was to help people if you didn't know much information. Hopefully I gave some insight in that. Not that I'm the only source, but maybe it's a start, right? [01:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Very educational. It was fantastic. All right, I got kind of a deep one for you. [01:25:40] Speaker B: All right. [01:25:43] Speaker A: So how would you want to be remembered in Bonsai? Or what would you want to be remembered for? [01:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a deep question. We're talking about, like, legacy stuff here. I suppose it could change in the future. But thinking about it right now, as you ask it, I would say, at least in Bonsai, I would hope that I was remembered as someone that freely shared knowledge, stuff that I know, I'm glad to share it. And I hope people can use that however they want to use it. And that in the bones that I create. I try to take I don't want to say ideal, but maybe the long road in developing it well and not taking shortcuts in developing bones, I hope people start to recognize not that they don't recognize a good amount of people do, but some don't. Just recognizing that Bonsai is not built overnight. And I hope that I'm remembered as somebody that created high level Bonsai in small steps, as opposed to this kind of showy version of creating Bonsai. So I hope people remember I was just trying to do it right, or at least in my mind, the right way. [01:27:21] Speaker A: Awesome, man. Love it. Love it. Great answer. Thank you. [01:27:25] Speaker B: Thanks. [01:27:27] Speaker A: All right, next question. Not so deep. Not quite as deep. [01:27:32] Speaker B: All right. [01:27:34] Speaker A: What are your three favorite types of trees for Bonsai? [01:27:38] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Three favorite types of trees? Like, specific species? [01:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:27:46] Speaker B: What did you say? Okay. That, in a way, might be a harder question because there's so many to choose from. [01:27:59] Speaker A: Hard to narrow it down. I get yeah, yeah. [01:28:03] Speaker B: It's interesting because people will ask me, well, Peter, what are your favorite trees? And I always have a hard time answering because a lot of times it's always the tree that ends up being in front of me at the time. So I thought about it, and it's not so much that I like to work on any kind of specific tree. It really turns out that whatever species it is, if it's a good version of that species or interesting version of that species, that is my favorite tree when I'm working on it, because it's hard to not be just really happy when you have a trident maple in front of you and things are working out. You're building ramification, your thread graphs are taking and all that stuff. It's just a lot of fun. Or the tree is kind of turning out the way that you want, and it's a good piece of material. It's worth your effort, worth your time. And then, so I put that trident maple aside. I'm like, oh, great, that was a great tree. I'm really happy. Maybe my favorite tree is a trident maple. And then you put a juniper in front of me, or I put a juniper in front of myself, and it's got its interesting characters, and things are working out, and I'm working on it, and the work is different, but I'm working on it. It's working out. I was like, man, this was really fun, too. Which one do I pick? Is it the trident or is it the juniper? And inevitably, I figured out that it really is. As long as it's a good tree, there is no favorite. My favorite is to work on good trees. That's really what it comes down to. I like it. That's my answer. [01:29:39] Speaker A: I like it. Nice. Also, variety is the spice of life, right? [01:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I try to have a lot of variety of my trees, though I will say just be a little careful, because with variety, it's hard to keep track of everything, and you have so much variety because everything's involved with it. Okay, you have one special tree that's different from all your other trees for variety's sake, but they need so much more water, or they need less water, or there's a whole set of insect and fungus problems for that one tree, or the work on that tree is just so different than all your other trees. And so you just have to be careful that it's not costing you too much time to have that variety, or at least it better be worth it. The tree better be worth it to take up that extra time because sometimes people do get a little tied up with too many varieties and then they're trying to play catch up in so many fronts and they can't kind of especially if their goal is to learn bonsai. It could kind of affect that in a poor way because there's so many different things they have to know so quickly because they have ten different trees. So in that case, there is an argument for, well, maybe just pick three or four trees that you like and start learning there, and then slowly build up your variety in your collection after that. And it's okay to say that, you know what? I have so many different varieties, I don't want to take another one on. Right. This is more work than time that I have. And it's okay to say that you don't have to take on all the projects. I mean, I love variety, but I do have to be careful. It's very easy for me to say, oh, I don't have one of these. That would be great. And then I don't end up giving it the proper care or time that it needs because I just don't have the time, let's say, for example, or I better make the time, so just be careful. I would say with the variety part, I mean, it's fun to have different things, but it does cost you a little bit, so be aware of that, for sure. [01:31:54] Speaker A: Great points. You are correct about that. All right, next question. Let's see. What do you like most and least about being a bonsai professional? [01:32:15] Speaker B: I've not had to think about that. Well, let's start with the parts that I don't like, which is not many, right? It's not necessarily parts that I don't like. It's just kind of part of being a bonte professional. Okay. I mean, I can technically say I don't like working as much as I'm working, so that can take a bit of toll if I'm not careful in how I manage my breaks and things like that. But I also accept the fact that that's how it is when you have your own business, right? That's just how it goes. You have to be careful most of the time. Being a bonsai professional, it's generally been more on the fun side, partly because I'm now essentially my own boss, right? I don't work for anybody. I work for myself. I can be as successful or unsuccessful as I want because inevitably it falls on me, which I really love. That's great. That's the fun part about owning your own business and then something, and I'm going to kind of borrow this from somebody, an apprentice. Back when I was an apprentice in Japan, he said something that was very profound to me, and I never forgot it. And he said that when he does bonsai with his clients or with groups, those days are those people's fun day, and that's exciting to them. And he said, Why would I not like being around people or having their fun day? So that's the greatest part about doing bonsai, is when I'm either working on trees on my own, and I love doing bonsai, or I'm working with a group or individual and helping them with their bonsai or even teaching them about bonsai. That's their fun day. I mean, they took time off work to do that. They're spending money to do that. They're excited. It's so great to be part of that, because I'm not there when they're having bad days. I'm there on their fun day. So I can't complain even if. It's a lot of work. I think that's a great way to be around people, and my job allows me to do that. I'm only generally around people that are having fun in Bonsai. Absolutely. [01:34:48] Speaker A: We've been working on one tree all day today, and I can definitely tell you, anytime I get to work with you get to go up to your place or you come down to my place, it's always a fun day. And that is 100% true. It's so cool that you get to this is getting a little bit corny, but you bring joy into people's lives, and you get to give them a fun day. That's really cool that he pointed that out. I like that a lot. Awesome. [01:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:22] Speaker A: All right. [01:35:23] Speaker B: I never forgot that. I thought that was very insightful. Okay. [01:35:27] Speaker A: That's beautiful. I love it. Do you have a favorite or least favorite type of work to perform on trees? Like, anything you really enjoy doing on trees more than other things or don't? Like, maybe trees that hurt you physically or something like that are the least favorite. [01:35:53] Speaker B: It's interesting. Trees that can hurt you, like, say, a needle juniper or something like that, or something that's prickly. Not to sound weird about it, but I actually kind of find joy in working on those trees. Most people don't have trees like that because they don't enjoy being pricked by the needles and stuff like that. And I remember when I was working on needle junipers in Japan, and they were sharp. But something about it is that as you're working on it and you're working a lot and long hours, something about it when it pricked my finger, even though it sucked that it pricked my finger, it kind of woke me up. So it kind of kept me going in a way. Right. That turned out to be kind of a positive thing, because it kind of reminded me that I was alive at the time, because sometimes the work can just be so menial and mundane and just getting pricked every now and then. It kind of woke me up and got me thinking again, I actually don't have a problem working on trees that are somewhat I mean, I'm not purposely pricking myself, of course, right. You're working around it, but inevitably, it always gets you from time to time, so it doesn't really bother me too much. Boring work versus fun work. It varies from tree to tree and year to year. When I started my apprenticeship, I was pulling so many black pine needles that I was surprised to find out that you can actually fall asleep doing that. Right. You're sitting there pulling needles, and you start nodding off, right? So at first I was like, wow, this is really boring. And you finish one, and then there's another one waiting for you. And you finish that, there's another one waiting for you. I was like, oh, man. The funny thing is that towards the end of my apprenticeship, I actually enjoyed pulling needles because it was kind of a mindless task. I didn't have to think about it very much. It's just automatic. And then, of course, then I didn't get to do that anymore because Mr. Tanaka wouldn't have me do that. He'd have me do other things, like wiring and stuff. Like yeah, I can't say there's anything in particular that's boring or just not that fun. I think it goes back to the question of which was my favorite tree, is that it turns out that if I'm pulling needles on a really good black pine or I'm cutting back a really good juniper, it's really fun because the tree is really awesome and you just want to be around those trees. It's when I'm cutting back a tree that's not that exciting, or I'm pulling black pine needles on a pine that is just kind of okay. Maybe it's just a donor tree that we normally use for grafting material. That's probably the most boring part is, again, going back to working on trees that are not very exciting or interesting. [01:38:58] Speaker A: I definitely feel you on that one. [01:39:00] Speaker B: On that? [01:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I feel like my trees are somewhat prioritized by the quality of the tree. So my best trees, they're always worked on right. Exactly when they should be right on schedule. Whereas sometimes my lower quality stuff I'm like, I'll get around to it, and I think that's kind of a bad thing. I think everyone's a little bit guilty of that. Like, to a degree, some people weigh more than others, and that's a lot of why I really try and coal my collection on a regular basis and get rid of my worst quality material and keep adding to make a better and better collection and also try and keep my collection small. But I feel yawn. Like, just working on a really good quality tree is really fun and exciting, whereas low quality is like it's cool. [01:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And say you're doing the exact same thing on both trees. Say you got to wire both trees. One, you're really excited about it, and you're wiring away. The other one, you're like, I got to wire this tree. Yeah, for sure. Same work. Right? But for some reason, one is more fun than the other, and it's all because you like one tree more than the other. Or you prioritize. This is the important one versus totally important. [01:40:32] Speaker A: Totally. Peter, do you have a most memorable moment in Bonsai or maybe just one that comes to mind right now? Something memorable in Bonsai? I know I'm putting you not I didn't give him these questions beforehand. [01:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. You're holding out on me. Most memorable in Bonsai? I guess the most memorable is that's a good question. There's good things and then there's not so good things. But inevitably, either case, I try to learn from it. Maybe my most memorable, which is not necessarily a good thing, and I've told this story before, a long time ago, is that before I went to Japan, I learned how to somewhat do an approach graph on junipers. And so I had a rotary tool, all that stuff. And I was in the midori club, and I was working with some of the members there, and they, you know, I kind of want to graft this juniper. And I was like, hey, I know how to do it. We can use this approach graph technique. And they're like, okay, cool. Let's plan on it. And I'm excited. Of course. Not very experienced, but I was excited, and I was out bring the tools and so forth. So the day comes and it turns out and I learned a very valuable lesson when you're using a rotary tool and you're putting a cut into a tree, if the tree is not very stable, like, say, that the trunk is very thin. Or the branch you're cutting into with a big giant rotary tool is not very firm. And it moves a little bit. What can happen is that with the rotary tool, if the tree moves or you go in a weird angle, it can kick back because it's not this solid, heavy trunk that's just not moving right. The tool would kick back. But in this case, I was cutting a groove into a little branch that's supposed to be like the new top. We're about to grab the new top, and it kicks, but the tool doesn't kick. The tree kicks away, right? And it almost snaps that branch off, right? And I felt like the biggest dummy because the other people watching, they were like, we thought you knew how to do this. And I was like, yeah, I thought so, too. But the good part is that we were able to bring the branch up, tie it up, and the branch didn't die, even though it almost got ripped off completely. And we inevitably did do the graph, and it did take, and that part got cut off anyway, so it all worked out great. But that was probably one of my more memorable mess up times. And, I mean, we laugh about it now because the people involved are still around, and we talk about every now and then, but that was the first thing that came to mind. And memorable times in bonsai. Just doing dumb things. [01:43:36] Speaker A: Very nice. And, yeah, some good tips in there about stabilizing your tree and all that. Very nice. Awesome. Well, maybe just one or two more, and then I think we can wrap this bad boy up, get you some sleep, as I know you woke up at, like, 430 a. M. This morning to come here. All right, what makes you feel inspired or motivated? And this could be like non bonsai or bonsai, and I'm putting you on the spot, okay? [01:44:23] Speaker B: Generally, bonsai and non bonsai. It doesn't have to be anything I'm practicing, per se, like Bonsai, the things that inspire me are generally I always appreciate it when I see somebody or whatever they do, they just do it really well. They really go out of their way to just be the best they can at that. And so in Bonsai, seeing people learn it and really taking the time to try to do it well is very inspiring to me. They could be new people, experienced people. It doesn't matter. But just seeing them take the time and really trying to do the best they can inspires me to want to do better myself and to help make Bonsai better. Outside of that, I'll watch basketball highlight reels, and you see some of these players are such at a high level, and they're just pushing it. And it's inspiring just to see how a person or a group of people can do something so well that they found all the angles and they know everything about what they're doing. And it's just like this perfect movement that they're doing that no amateur can do in a way, right, because they found just everything that you could possibly do. It's almost perfect. And I know perfection is never really achieved, but when you're that close to it, it's very inspiring to me. You're just kind of looking with my mouth open, just like, wow, they really thought it through, and they really are doing it right. That's kind of the stuff that inspires me. And when I see it in Bonsa, it makes me want to go home and just start working on trees. [01:46:23] Speaker A: Ah, incredible, man. Love it. Great answer. Yeah, that was fantastic. And, hey, thank you so much, Peter, for doing this. I really, really appreciate it. [01:46:36] Speaker B: You're very welcome. [01:46:38] Speaker A: I think one thing about you this. [01:46:40] Speaker B: Is my first, and I I think. [01:46:44] Speaker A: One thing about you is that my impression of you is that you are not necessarily someone that goes out there and is always talking a lot, and you're not one to want the spotlight all the time. I feel like you let your work and your trees kind of do the talking for you, and you have very high quality, high level trees. I'm just so impressed by your work, and I just wanted to say thank you very much for always pushing me and making me try harder and do a better job. You hold your students up to a very high standard, and we're very lucky to have you in the Bullseye community because you're raising the bar all the time. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. Really appreciate you being on this podcast. [01:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it, too. Thanks. [01:47:40] Speaker A: Of course, man. Well, hey, thanks so much for your time, and I will talk to you sooner.