Final Peter Pulldown

The Laughing Buddha Peter Pepper is entering the home stretch in it's bonsaification process.  Today is a little over a month since the last pulldown, and it was ready for one last round.

The soil has now been pulled all the way down to the base of the statue.  The smaller roots have been flared out to ensure a nice wide base.

Since there's no way to know which ones of these will end up filling out like the top ones did, we're trying to give the plant as many positive options as possible.  That way, no matter which one it selects (or even better yet, which ones), we'll end up with something nice.

You will have noticed by now that I have tied the roots down once again.  There isn't anything wrong with the roots, as you can see by the above picture they are still pretty firmly locked onto the statue.  However, the bottoms are still new enough that they aren't locked into shape yet, so some jute twine to pull them in close while they thicken up will help ensure a nice flow down the contours of the statue, as it already has on top.

Now, just because we've done the final soil pulldown doesn't mean we're through, far from it.  It just means that we've finished elongating the roots.  There's still a checklist of things that need to be done over the next several months to finish this one out.

1) Base Roots

Its going to take months before those roots fill out enough to be considered "done", and a close eye will have to be kept on it as before to make sure it doesn't suffer any insect damage.

2) Root Polish

Don't know if there is a better term for it, but its what I call it.  You can see in some of the closeups above that the top roots that have been exposed for months still have stubby root nubs coming off the main root trunks.  I've been leaving them there for the plant to clean up as much as it will, but eventually I'm going to need to go in with a sharp knife and start shaving those off so that the main root is nice and smooth.  If this were truly a full sized tree that had any great age to it, those roots would be perfectly smooth, and while we could wait 5 years for the plant to finish the job itself, I'd rather help it along now (or at least in the near future).

3) Canopy Shaping

We've done some basic shaping to the canopy as we've gone, but I've gone fairly easy on it so far.  Reason being that we've been stressing the plant by messing with it's roots this whole time, so messing with the leaves at the same time would have probably been a bit too much for it to handle.  Oh, it would have lived through it, but that much stress would have stunted it and slowed it down quite a bit.  Not what we want when we're trying to get everything done in a single season.  Once the roots are done, we can really go at the canopy though.

Number 3 there will be the most long term need.  Up until now, we've been basically shaping roots and only paying lip service to shaping the limbs.  Now that the roots are almost done, we can start treating the top like a proper bonsai.

Its easy to get discouraged by the slow pace of projects like this, as when you're looking at it every day you don't really notice the changes.  So, here's a picture of how it was looking in February:

And way back in last November when we started him:

So not too bad, considering we've only been actively working on him for about 8 months.