News

We are in the full swing of summer, and while we may not love the heat, our tropical plants most certainly do! With that love comes a ton of growth, both above and below the surface of your soil medium. Monday’s meeting will be a great chance to catch up on any tropicals that have managed to outgrow your recent care, and get some help while doing so. Josh Brown will be in attendance and ready to help anybody looking for help!

Meeting Activity: An Evaluation of the Latest Addition to Our Club Trees

Per our last meeting, we have since collected the trees we voted to procure. We will be bringing most (possibly all) of those trees into this month’s meeting and evaluating their current state. The goal being to come up with a plan for each tree moving forward. They cannot currently be worked as they are in recovery for at least a year, but we can assess their current horticultural and aesthetic states and devise a best path forward for each. This is a group activity, so we look forward to input from everyone!

Meeting Activity: Tropical Night BYOT (Bring Your Own Tropical)!

With BSF quickly approaching, and the kind of heat you associate with Florida upon us, we will be having a more relaxed meeting this month. So, if you’re up for a low-key, but collaborative, evening of working on tropical bonsai then make sure you don’t miss this month’s meeting! We are now safely in the window for tropical work and repotting so dust those warm blooded trees off and bring them in!

Meeting Activity: Grafting Presentation with David Ruth!

For April we will be continue furthering our bonsai education by learning the general principles and applications behind grafting to improve the quality of our trees. If this is something you are interested in learning then make sure you come out and learn all you can! Furthermore, if you have a tree of your own you’ve been wanting to graft (a donor tree to get your grafts from, grafting knife, parafilm, and etc.) then feel free to bring it along with you and use the time post-presentation to get your grafting done either independently or with help from some of our more experienced club members.

Meeting Activity: BYOT! Led by our Club President, Alex Stanford

For the month of March we will be doing a Bring Your Own Tree night. March in North Florida is a good time to start working on some of those trees that already have, or are starting to wake up. Broadleaf evergreen, Juniper and Deciduous are all perfectly fine trees to bring in to work on at the meeting as long as they have not been recently repotted (especially if there’s been root reduction). Remember, one major insult per year! So, bring your prebonsai and bonsai in for a night of tree work and camaraderie. Let’s kick off the Spring season right by improving our trees and our craft!

Meeting Activity: Club Styling Competition (and repotting/general tree work for those not competing)

For this month’s meeting we will be having our very important Club Styling Competition. For those who may not know, the annual Club Styling Competition is used to decide who will represent our district at the annual BSF Convention. The material this year will be Juniper (procumbens nana) and is provided by the club at no cost to participants. Because North Florida Bonsai Club is the only club in our district, the winner of this competition goes on to represent NFBC at BSF.

Meeting Activity: Tool Use & Care (Some mid Winter Deciduous Tree Work too!)

This January we will be going over an often overlooked aspect of Bonsai…Tool use and maintenance. Both are critical to the horticultural health and achieving the desired aesthetic of your bonsai. David Ruth has graciously agreed to lead this topic discussion. Additionally, we encourage you to bring your Deciduous trees that need some mid-winter work. It will be a great opportunity to exercise some practical applications of what we’ve learned!

The December meeting has long served as our annual holiday party and this year we are continuing that tradition. This is a time for us to come together, reflect on the year and plan for the coming year while sharing a meal together.