Bring those trees into workshop for help from experienced club members.  Third Thursday workshop is your free opportunity to take advantage of all the skill and experience of the members of BSSF!

Wow, Is it really september already?  Well, at this point it may already be too late but keep an eye on your wire.  Remove wire before it has a chance to cut into the bark of your tree.  On some trees it is a good idea to remove all the wire, but on others you can remove just the pieces that are cutting in.  Rewiring can either be done immediately or left a while until fall cleanup and styling begins in Octover and November.

By September many deciduous trees in San Francisco are just looking ragged from the fog, salt and wind.  Personally, my maples always seem to get powdery mildew and by September they look like they’re almost dead.  Do all you can for the trees, shield them from wind, while giving them as much sun exposure as possible.  Schedule repotting of trees that are in dense soil, which can cause them to be more susceptible to disease.

Meanwhile, work on your junipers and cypress.  Fall is a great time to clean out the growth and wire new branches.  Some people will tell you to pinch junipers, but I find this to be counter-productive.  Let them grow, if a tip juts out more than an inch beyond the silhouette cut it back and it will bush out.  To contain the size of the tree cut back strong growth and leave interior growth to fill in for it.  Remove downward growing foliage to clean up the look of the pads.  Remove foliage that is in the middle which does not contribute to the shape of the pad to define smaller pads within larger ones.
Black pines are still growing in September, and if everything has gone right they will be showing their new needles, nice and short, in proportion with the tree.  White pines, pinyon, ponderosa, shore, lodgepole and other pines that are not candle cut finish their growing earlier in the year.  By the middle to end of September you can start cleaning them up by removing old needles and doing light wiring on the branches.  Leave heavy wiring and cutting until October or November.

If you’ve thought about going collecting now is a great time!  Think about private land that you have access to, this can be the best place to collect.  Land in the Northern Coastal ranges of California can contain Coast Live Oak, Valley Oak, Redwood, Huckleberry, Red Alder and a Variety of promising willow speices for collecting.  Get permission and go dig some stuff to add to your collection.  If you want to go to the mountains, contact the Inyo National forest and ask for a forest products permit.  $7.50 per tree will get you some fine Utah Juniper, Pinon, Lodgepole, Jefferey, or Ponderosa pine as well as a chance at other as-yet-untested potential bonsai material like Mountain mahogany, sagebrush, aspen and many others.

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