Bald Cypress Bonsai Forest - Slab Planting - "Bill's Bayou" 

+Nigel Saunders Thanks for watching! These videos are giving my trees the kick they need.

Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks for watching. The stone told me it wanted to be a water element. I just listened. If you're ever in the New Orleans area, look me up. I have a couple dozen stones carved and will do custom orders.

¡Gracias por decirlo, y por mirar! Soy un gran fan de ciprés también. Voy a tener otro video de ciprés que sale a finales de Octubre .

I have a goal to finally sit down and create several playlists of my videos. Alas, I'm lazy. It's a struggle to get me to edit my videos. Which, by the way, I'm doing today. I shot two videos of "Brisseuse de Coeur" and will have them up within the next couple of weeks. The tree looks incredible. I've had it for 20 years, and I finally have a vision for it. Thanks for the advice, and thank you for watching!

Thank you for saying so!

"¡Gracias por ver! Espero publicar un vídeo cada dos meses. En este momento, tengo una acumulación de vídeos. Tal vez pueda publicar uno cada mes hasta que la termine. El siguiente vídeo debería salir en unos pocos días. Esté atento. Pura vida! (Costa Rica) Laissez le bon temps roulez! (New Orleans)"

Thanks for watching. I hope I was helpful.

Thank you for watching. Sometimes I don't wait and I do something impulsively. I lost an important budding branch on one of my trees because I casually glanced at the tree and the branch caught my eye. Now, I try come up with a vision for all my trees and lock it into memory (or sketch it out, which is better). Now I look at trees and consider them for a while even when I impulsively think "Those have to go." I've often said that bonsai teaches me patience.

10-15 mins seems to be the ideal length of a youtube video, from what i understood by listening to people who have mastered youtube broadcasting. Considering the amount of material you have covered, you nailed the duration perfectly I think.

Your thoughts on muck wall vs cement wall, for your slab, would be great !

Thanks for the kind words. Not all video will have updates. In those cases, I'll post a follow-up video and put links in the previous ones. As for "tightly edited", I have to listen to myself yammer on for hours just to try and find a cohesive narrative. If you know anyone who enjoys hearing themselves talk, get them to edit their own videos. Not enjoyable. Once I have the narrative, I can get it down to 30 minutes. Then it's a matter of cleaning out the stuff that is unnecessary and tightening the edits. I felt this one was too long, but with so much to cover, I couldn't get it any shorter.

I've never worked with cement walls on slabs. Thus, anything I say against them is pure speculation. That said: - Muck walls give the trees something to hold on to. It helps to stabilize them. Concrete would not do this. - Broken muck walls can be repaired with more muck and a good soak. Concrete would just last longer and not need repairs. - Moss grows well on muck. Not so much on concrete. You'd need to find the right amendments to change that. I know that moss grows better on cinder blocks than concrete blocks (in my yard). The aggregates in cinder blocks remind me of haydite (my go-to inorganic soil component). If I wanted to make a cement wall that promotes moss growth, I'd make it with a combination of 1/16"-1/8" haydite and hydrolic cement. I'm not sure what type of reinforcement structure I would use (re-bar, chicken wire, stucco mesh...) - Muck isn't sealed to the slab. Thus, it allows water to flow freely beneath the wall. Over time, the water will erode very small channels to drain the planting. Concrete would seal itself to the slab and you've got drainage problems. - Muck is natural. It is made to feel natural. Concrete is synthetic. It looks synthetic. As it erodes, it starts looking less and less natural and more man-made. - If you don't like the height of your muck walls, just add or remove it. You can do this while you're putting the trees together, or a year later if you think it should change. You're stuck with the height of the concrete wall. - Muck walls are ready as soon as you're done building them. Concrete needs to set. - You can use your bare hands with muck. You need gloves when handling concrete. I've never given it any thought up to now, but apparently I have some strong opinions against concrete. Thanks for making me think about it. If anyone has a pro-concrete stance, and personal experience to back it up, I'm open to a discussion on the matter.

10-15 is always my goal. Under 10 would be a miracle. I just won't shut up!

You're welcome. And thank you, too.

Thanks for watching!

Thank you for saying so. 21 bald cypress is an ambitious project. I'd love to see it when you've put it together. Please post a video of it, even if it's short and only pans around the project, I want to see it.

I will post i bonsai forest i green japanese maple forest with 7 trees, I potted this spring 2016.

Thanks for watching! :D

Some found in the wild, but most all of them were purchased from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. I got 50 bald cypress seedlings for $30. I had to drive about 50 miles to pick them up from one of their forestry stations. Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching! I have access to bald cypress seedlings and never have to grow them from seed. Thus, I'm not the best person to ask. However, a friend of mine lives next to a bald cypress. Seeds and leaves clog up his gutters. When he finally gets around to cleaning his gutters in late Spring, he has a 6-foot long, 5-inches wide, 3-inches deep mass of roots and seedlings. He brings them to meetings and gives them away. As with any bonsai you're attempting to grow from seed, I recommend growing as many seeds as you can. Then, over the years, you throw away (or give away), any that are not meeting your expectations. When you're finally ready to start training the tree (think 5 to 10 years down the road), you should have 3 to 5 trees that you like. More years and more give-aways and you might end up with one nice tree.

+Kristian Riis Thanks for the kind words! And the warning. Send me a link to that channel so I can monitor it.

¡Gracias por ver! Me parece musgo en mi patio trasero . Tengo ladrillos que guardo húmeda por lo que el musgo crezca . Lo llamamos "pillow moss" (musgo de almohada) y "cushion moss" (musgo colchón). Es en la familia Leucobryum de musgo. ¿De donde eres? Cómo crece el musgo donde vive? Esa será la mejor para usted musgo. Si no puede mantener el musgo húmedo, que va a morir.

Thank you!

Late December or early January is ideal for our area. I don't know when the leave start to pop in your area. It is best to do heavy work on the tree before the leaves begin to bud out. If those were trees in my backyard, here in Southern Louisiana, I could pull the trees now, cut off the root ball to the depth I wanted, knock out some of the soil to replace with an inorganic component, cut off the tips of all the branches, defoiate, and chop it down to the height I want. Get a utility knife and shorten the plastic nursery container to 6 inches, repot the tree, and submerge the roots in water. Then I'd keep the roots submerged and feed it with a weak fertilizer solution, weakly weekly, after the leaves have started to pop out again. But that's here in South Louisiana. I don't know how hot it gets in Dallas and if the humidity is comfortably high. If I were to do this in a hot dry area, I'd put it in the shade and have water misters running on it from 10am to 3pm. That's a complete guess for your area, sorry. Thanks for watching and good luck! P.S. Did I actually write that humidity needs to be "comfortably high"? That's for the tree's benefit, not mine.

I wish I could. I get saplings very easily here so I don't look into how to propagate them through cuttings. Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching! Equal parts by volume of milled peat moss, long sphagnum moss, and clay. You can add a handful of an organic animal waste compost if you like. Getting the clay incorporated throughout is difficult if the clay is in clumps. Therefore, I try to dry out the clay and use an old blender to turn it into a powder. Then mix all the ingredients dry. Then add water until it is about as sticky as you see it in the video. If I didn't cover this correctly a the 5:00 minute mark, let me know.

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry has an annual program for selling shade trees. Order's are taken July through December and trees are distributed December through March. The seedlings are not shipped. You must pick up the trees at one of their locations around the state. When you order the trees, you will specify your pick-up point. I could not find a web page for this year's sale. The first link, below, is an old out-dated form, but it does have contact information. You can begin there. The second link is a list of sale locations. Old page announcing the 2014-2015 sale: wwwcfprd.doa.louisiana.gov/LaServices/PublicPages/ServiceDetail.cfm?service_id=3274 Shade Tree Packet Sale Locations: www.ldaf.state.la.us/forestry/shade-tree-packet-sale-locations/

BillsBayou Just a heads up, I just checked with the state and they discontinued the program back in 2015 due to budget cuts.

Nooooo!!!!!! Flangdangit Thank you very much for finding this out. I've found a couple of sites on the web that offer bulk purchase of small seedlings. Not as low as 50 for $30, but some that are still fairly cheap if you want more than 25 (if their web sites are correct.) Find me on Reddit (BillsBayou in /r/bonsai) and shoot me a message. I don't want to put those sites here because web sites come and go, but I'll never get back here to edit this message.

BillsBayou Bill. I found you at Reddit but was unable to contact you as I'm not a member. Or I'm doing something wrong. Is it illegal to collect bald cypress in LA? I found some patches but don't want to break any laws.

+DeadZone318 the species is not protected. You need a permit to dig one on state land or you get a fine for each tree and/or jail time. There is a specific mention of cypress on state land: Whoever violates the provisions of Subsection A as they relate to the cutting of standing cypress trees on water bottoms owned by the state of Louisiana shall, in addition to the penalties otherwise provided in this Section, be subject to a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars, imprisonment not to exceed six months, or both. I don't touch state land.

I'd be the wrong guy to ask that question. We typically have only a few days below freezing each year. I do nothing to protect the trees except place them on the ground during the winter. From what I can quickly surmise from articles on the web, it looks like Zone 6 is the lower limit for the tree. If I were to guess, I'd say you have a fair chance of keeping the tree. You should have the pot on the ground and well mulched during winter. Check with your local bonsai clubs for the best advice. And thanks for watching!

Bald cypress bonsai are successfully grown in northern New England. Over winter them in a cool basement or attached garage. Or a bulkhead basement entrance. Good luck!

Thanks for chiming in. I'm glad to hear they can be kept that far north.

We often forget that there was once a million or so acre swamp called the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border that was full of bald cypress, among many other species. That is USDA Zone 7, I believe, but these trees are grown outdoors in the ground in zone 6, and some say they will even tolerate zone 5, as trees growing in the ground. In terms of bonsai, tropicals are grown everywhere, we just bring them indoors before temps drop below their tolerance, right? Wintering non-tropicals takes some thought, but conditions suitable for wintering black pines or Japanese maples should also bring a bald cypress through the winter in fine condition. Enjoy your videos. Keep them coming!

We in the north envy those of you living where bonsai can be overwintered outside... Of course, we might not even call that 'winter'. :)