Overwintering Bonsai – Everything You Need To Know

In this Bonsai Video we talk about Overwintering Bonsai and everything you need to know when it comes to helping your trees through the coldness of winter.

Hi everyone! When I first got started in Bonsai, I thought “overwintering” was a complicated thing, when in fact, it is simply what we do to help trees through the cold of winter. I cover why we need to protect trees in the first place and the best ways to protect your trees, depending on whether you live in a warm or cold climate—like placing your trees in a cold frame or an unheated greenhouse.

I discuss why it is best for trees to go dormant every year and methods to get them to go dormant when you live in a tropical climate, like placing a tree in a refrigerator. This year, I decided to build another greenhouse to protect some Maple seedlings that were grown from seed. I also talk about general Bonsai care tasks like weeding, removing dead leaves, applying a winter wash, removing algae from your Bonsai benches, and the watering and fertilization needs of your trees.

It’s important to note that different species of trees have different cold tolerances and needs during winter. Some can endure the frost while others need protection. Depending on the species in your collection, I recommend researching the trees as I cannot cover every tree that may have exceptions to the general rules. If you have any overwintering bonsai tips that I did not cover in this video, please share them in the comments!

Remember to like this video if it helped you and subscribe to the channel for more bonsai videos!

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00:00 – Intro.
00:57 – What is Overwintering?
01:17 – Should You Bring Your Bonsai Indoors?
02:14 – Allowing Dormancy In Hot Climates (Lowest at 5°C)
02:39 – Tropical Bonsai Species During Winter.
02:57 – Overwintering In Warm Climates (-4°C / 25°F)
04:06 – Placing Trees On The Ground.
04:45 – Removing Algae From Bonsai Benches.
05:37 – Overwintering in Cold Climates (-10°C / 14°F)
05:51 – Why Do Bonsai Need Protected In Winter?
06:35 – The Best Conditions for Bonsai In Winter.
07:52 – Building a Greenhouse.
10:00 – Protecting Seedlings.
10:33 – Using a Cold Frame.
10:49 – Light Requirements in Winter.
11:40 – Autumn/Winter Bonsai Tasks.
12:53 – Applying A Winter Wash To Control Fungus / Pests.
14:22 – Working With Lime Sulphur.
15:19 – Winter Pruning.
16:22 – Protecting Bonsai Pots Before Spraying Lime Sulphur.
17:37 – Removing / Applying Bonsai Wire Before Winter.
19:15 – Watering Bonsai During Winter.
19:58 – Fertilizing Bonsai During Winter.
20:30 – Outro.

#bonsai #overwinteringbonsai #notionbonsai

Hello and welcome back to another episode of “Notion Bonsai” and in this video I’m going to be explaining everything you need to know when it comes to overwintering your trees. [Music] All right so in this video today we’re going to be going over some of my

Methods for over wintering your bonai and really ensuring that they survive the winter but before we start remember to subscribe and leave a like on this video as it really helps out the channel a lot now I did cover this topic last

Year on overwintering Bonsai but since then I have learned a lot more about overwintering and Bonsai from various Bonsai creators Bonsai YouTubers and of course you guys in the comments so if there’s anything in this video that I

Don’t cover be sure to share it down in the comments things that you do and we can all learn from each other that way so first of all what is overwintering whenever I first got into Bonsai I thought overwintering was this

Complicated thing that you had to do to a tree or do something to the soil to do something to the tree in winter but really it’s not as complicated as I once thought overwintering is simply the term we give to helping Bonsai through the

Coldness of winter and now you may hear this and think oh this is great I will just take my bonsai bring it indoors over the winter and that way it will be protected from the frost unfortunately this is not the case at all whenever you

Take a tree that is really meant to go dormant in the dormant season and you bring that tree indoors what you’re essentially doing is forcing that tree to stay actively growing now you may not notice this after the first year of

Doing this but if you do keep doing this year after year you will seriously stress the tree out and it will diminish the health of the tree over time especially deciduous trees they really love to go dormant in the dormant season

And I like to imagine it as if Bonsai are like us in the sense that after a long day you need to rest so that whenever you get back up again the next day you’re ready to go full of energy so you will notice after a tree has gone

Through that nice darant period whenever spring comes around again the tree will be so vigorously growing versus when you tried to keep it actively growing throughout winter and I would like to say just on a side note that if you do

Live in a warm climate and you have a deciduous tree and you’re sort of struggling to get that tree to go darant for the winter because your climate is so hot there are workarounds for getting the tree to experience this dormy you

Can take your tree and place it in a refrigerator for about 6 weeks in order to simulate that dant period just make sure that you don’t have the tree freezing in there as it could harm the tree the only exception to this needed

Cold period would be tropical species like The Ficus I keep these species indoors throughout the whole year and I found they do just fine like that and although they don’t lose their leaves for the winter I have noticed Ficus do

Have a period of regist growth so in a way they go dormant when it comes to overwintering you will live in either one of of two climates a warm climate or a cold climate if you live in a warmer climate where in the winter it doesn’t

Really drop anywhere below -4 – 5° then your trees should be fine although there are some precautions you can take just to make sure your trees are at Optimal Health if you got your trees sitting on a bonsai bench like this it can be a

Good idea to take your trees Off the Bench and place them a lot lower to the ground that way the trees aren’t going to be hit by so much wind and direct sunlight you see the more wind that blow against the top of your tree and the

More sunlight hits the top of the tree there is an increase in what’s known as transpiration and that is the evaporation of water from the foliage off the tree but at the same time if it’s really cold like- 4° the actual

Soil in the pot can freeze and when that happens the rate of water uptake by The Roots going into the foliage is a lot slower so you can get some dieback and Browning on your evergreen trees that are transpiring a lot quicker than water

Can be taken up and this is known as photo inhibition but if you take your trees and place them a little bit lower to the ground where there’s less wind less sunlight this can stop this problem it’s good to note that whenever you do

Take your Bonsai off your shelves you don’t really want to have your Bonsai sitting like in direct contact with the concrete if you have Concrete in your garden because concrete has somewhat of a high conductivity to cold so it’s easily able to absorb and retain coldness so if you have your tree

Sitting on concrete over the winter the cold can actually travel from the concrete up into the roots of your Bonsai and damage them so instead what I like to do is take something like a wire mesh sit the tree on the mesh just to

Elevate it off the concrete or if you wish to you can also place your trees on some wood like I have done here underneath my bonsai benches and now that you have taken all your Bonsai off the benches for winter I find this is a

Really good time an opportunity to spend removing algae that may have built up through the growing season on your Bonsai benches from watering day after day what I did to remove the algae was to use some white vinegar on the algae

Give it a little bit of a scrub just to sort of loosen it up and work the vinegar into the wood then after this I took a pressure washer to the wood and blasted off the algae but in hindsight I wouldn’t pressure wash my bonsai benches

Again because if you pressure wash too close the pressure of the water can actually lift some of the wood fibers and this would degrade your bench over time if you guys have any suggestions for me or better ways of removing algae

Or even preventing it from forming please leave them down in the comments for me that would be really helpful the only thing that I would say is that I don’t want to use any harsh chemicals that could affect the health of the

Trees and now if you live in a much colder climate where the temperatures go to easily below – 10° then you definitely want to protect your trees in the winter and to do this you can place your trees in either a cold frame or

Greenhouse or unheated basement or garage but you may also be thinking how come the trees at my local park don’t need protected in the winter why does my bonide need to be protected and this is because large trees like this one here

Their roots are able to go deep underground away from the coldness so they don’t freeze but with Bonsai like this little aelia Bonsai that’s now beginning to shed some leaves for the winter they don’t have all that ground space to grow their Roots into so because they’re in a little small pot

Their Roots will freeze really easily another thing Bonsai soil is usually very air rated to allow lots of oxygen into the roots in most of my trees I use a mix of pomas aadama and lava rock and with this soil mix there isn’t really

Much insulation that you would have with dirt or compost it is important to understand that different species of trees have different cold tolerances some can endure the frost While others need protecting depending on the species of tree that you have I recommend that you do research on the trees in your

Collection as I can’t possibly cover every single tree that have exceptions to the general rules but when it comes to protecting your trees how do we protect the trees from the winter and to do this I like to place my trees in

Either a cold frame or a mini Greenhouse the whole idea is that we want to bring the trees into an environment where it is cold but not too cold and also not too warm we don’t want the trees to heat up and break dormy so we’re really

Looking for that goldilock zone right in the middle last year I built a little mini Cold Frame to place some of my bonsai into just to protect them from the frost and this year because I have a lot more trees and a lot more Maple

Seedlings that I really want to protect because they’re you know really young and delicate I’m going to need more overwintering space and if you remember last year I had this little mini Greenhouse that I put some of my trees

Into but since then over the last year in the growing season because I’ve been watering trees in there the joints of the greenhouse began to rust and I just didn’t quite trust putting all my bons site in a greenhouse that’s rusting so I

Threw it out today we’re going to be assembling this slightly larger one [Music] whenever I think back to how the other one rusted it was actually in these joints that the most rust occurred you see on the pipe here it’s all galvanized

But on the end of these poles that is a weakness so as I assemble this what I’m going to do is apply some grease around the area just to prevent rust in the future I’m using some multi-purpose copper grease this is designed for the

Brake discs in a car but what I really like about this one is it’s lead free and it says it forms a dense protective coating that will not wash off in normal Use [Music] [Music] what I really like about this greenhouse is that there’s plenty of room in each shelf for various trees of different heights but more specifically the top shelf because the Apex goes up like this I’ll be able to get lots of more larger trees in There and now I have filled this greenhouse with as many trees as I possibly can and as you can see in this shelf here I have placed all my Japanese maples that I grew from seed in a previous video earlier in the year I took the big seed

Tray that I grew and I separated all the Japanese maples into individual pots and also into some fresh Bonsai soil so hopefully whenever spring comes around again these trees will have survived the winter nice and safe in this greenhouse

And because they’re nice fresh Bonsai soil we should see a lot of growth from them as you can see this cooled frame that I have here is the one that I built last year in this I have put my junipers like eoy gawas I’ve got a pine some

Aelas and these trees should do just fine in here and know when you put your trees away for the winter you may be wondering do my trees still need light when it comes to what type of tree you have you will have generally one of

Three types of trees Evergreen semi evergreen or deciduous starting with deciduous trees like this Japanese maple because deciduous trees lose all of their leaves for winter the tree no longer is able to photosynthesize because it has no leaves so deciduous trees really don’t need any light

Whatsoever if you wanted to you could place your decidious trees in the dark and it wouldn’t make a difference to the health of the tree but when it comes to semi Evergreen like this aelia and Evergreen like this huki Cyprus they do

Still photosynthesize over the winter as they get some light during the day but because it is so cold the rate of photosynthesis does slow down so they don’t need as much light as they would need during the growing season now when

It comes to putting your trees away for the winter there’s a few things that I like to do to prepare the tree get the tree ready before we put it into storage with trees that lose some of their leaves I’d like to go along and pick out

Any of the leaves that have fallen off of the tree as decaying matter sitting on top of your Bonsai pots can create fungus and you can get mold problems as the trees are stored away for the winter and while I’m doing this I like to take

The time to do some weeding getting rid of any weeds that may be popping up the weeds can have an environment in which they can Thrive and it just becomes a real mess when spring comes around moving on to this Japanese maple as you

Can see there’s quite a lot of leaves in there also I just picked these out and I really love the vibrant red color that the Japanese maples produce at this time of year isn’t that so beautiful I also like to give the trunks of bons say a

Little bit of a scrub just to remove any Moss or algae that may be growing on this section that might provide too much moisture in that area over winter so to clean this you can take a toothbrush or a nylon brush you see if moisture stays

In this area for too long you can get a little bit of rotting or on species where you want that nice cragly old looking bark excess moisture in these areas can prevent that from occurring and pretty happy with that and now just

As a final thing before I put my trees away for the winter what I like to do is what’s known as a winter wash and this is essentially spraying something on the trees to control pests and fungus as if pests like skill insects lay dormant on

The tree over winter or fungus is on the wood of the tree over winter when spring comes around again and the temperatures heat up especially if your trees are in a greenhouse or Cold Frame it’ll heat up pretty quickly and this is a really nice

Condition for fungus and scale insects and other pths to thrive so I think it’s really important that we treat them now just before we put them away for winter that way when spring does come around our trees will be really happy the

Winter wash that I like to use is a delute solution of lime sulfur diluted in a ratio of 20 to1 if for whatever reason you can’t get lime sulfur in your area there are commercial fungicides and pesticides out there that you can use as

A winter wash and it is good to note also that lime sulfur cannot be used on every species of tree I don’t really like to use lime sulfur on my aelas or Ficus so it’s really important to research the species of of tree that

You’re going to be using it on first but with aelas what I like to do is use a commercial fungicide like this one here and I just missed it on the tree one day this is just to kill off any fungal spores that may be on the tree I will

Take this leave it and let it sit for a day then come back tomorrow and spray this again with a commercial pesticide and that’s a way of getting around it if you don’t have lime sulfur just as a disclaimer before using lime sulfur it

Can be an irritant if it gets on your skin and it’s also really not good if it gets in your eyes so if you wish to wear gloves and eye protection so before mixing your lime sulfur I recommend you use a ratio calculator online in order

To work out how much lime sulfur you need to water and because this holds 1.25 L of water I’ll be mixing and 65 mL of high quality lime sulfur high quality lime sulfur will have this dark deep rich orange color to it where less

Quality lime sulfur tend to have more of a light yellow color to them just going to pour it in here you want to make sure that the same day that you mix the lime sulfur is the same

Day that you treat the trees with lime sulfur I find that if you leave the lime sulfur in the container overnight and you go to use it the next day the solution will turn white and it won’t be as effective at treating fungus and

Insects so you really want to use it all after mixing it just before I miss this tree I’m going to use this opportunity as a time to prune this little Apple Air layering that we took earlier in the year that way whenever this tree begins

To build some buds and they open in Spring we can develop ramification a lot faster so now is a really good time to do some winter printing if you so wish to so I’m just going to PR these back quite hard in the hopes that this tree

Will create new buds over winter to open in Spring I cut these in quite tight I don’t really care about how the tree looks at the moment all I really care about is getting the growth nice and dense so it will look somewhat bare

After I do this but this one on top I’m going to keep as the Apex and leader of the tree that way the tree can continue to taper so I’m just going to take a little bit of scrap wire hook it around one of the

Branches as an anchor and come up around this branch and all I really want to do is straighten it the wire doesn’t have to be super tight just going to bring this up like this although it looks kind of silly now this will help the tree

Develop a really nice taper long term I’m going to cover this nice pot that way the lime sulfur doesn’t stain it especially if you have really expensive Bonsai pots to go up to like 200 300 400b the last thing you want to do is

Get it lame sulfur stained so to protect your pots I just recommend wrapping them in some aluminum foil and they will be just fine as you spray you want to cover every inch of the tree so you can rotate

It spray some more get in every single inch of the tree I’m just going to tilt this to drip off some excess lime sulfur and I’m really happy with this and even if some trees aren’t being put away for storage like this big osakazuki Maple

I’m going to have this one sit Outdoors all winter because it won’t fit in my Greenhouse or Cold Frame and it’s got lots of roots so this tree should be completely fine but I’m still going to treat it with a lime sulfur solution and

You may also notice in some of the trees that they do in Japan their Maples bark has this really nice white color to it and that is from years and years of being treated with lime sulfur the trees gain this sort of patina on the trunk of

Them which I think looks really cool versus the green color of Maples I really want to cover as much of the tree as possible not really worried about any dieback this tree has at the moment I can come in and spring and clean that up

And also before you put your trees away I find this is an excellent time to check trees that you have wired earlier in the year and check trees that might need a little bit of a tweak before they’re put away for the winter so this

Juniper that I wired earlier in the year if I look close at it I’m just checking to see if the wies biting in or not and from what I can see the wire isn’t biting in too much so I should be fine to leave the the wire on this over the

Dormant period this one on the other hand has no wire on it this is a little huki Cypress that we worked on earlier in the year we put it into this nice Bonsai pot and I did take the wire that we put on this off halfway through the

Growing season as it was just starting to bite in but now that the trees flushed out a little bit more I feel that I could add some wire to this just to tweak it ever so slightly so that whenever spring comes around and the

Wires set the branches in place I can take the wire off and the tree can flush out from spring into a really nice position I’ve just done a little tweak to this tree just to set some of the

Branches where I want them but this tree has a lot more growing to do over the next year and when spring comes I will take this tree and place it into a much larger pot and I’m also going to do a little bit of winter pruning so that

Whenever spring comes and this tree grows the tree will put energy into the branches I want them to the top of this tree has became a little bit congested so I’m going to cut off some parts that I I believe will create inverse taper over time like this in here that’s not [Music]

Needed and that just thinned it out a little and when this grows instead of the tree putting energy into the branches that were once here it’ll now go to the extremities and this will just shoot out and now that we’ve put all our

Trees away for the winter what do we do when it comes to watering and fertilization when it comes to watering I would say to follow the general guidelines that you would follow during the growing season and that is to never

Let the soil fully dry out and you also don’t want your soil to be fully moist so just like most principles and things in Bonsai we are looking for that goldilock zone of water if you take one of your trees and just feel the top

Layer of soil if it’s damp then it means it doesn’t really need watering but if it’s starting to dry out and you can feel you know it needs a little bit of water that’s when you should water your trees although it is important to

Remember in Winter because it is colder and the trees don’t have as much foliage in general they won’t need as much water as they do need during the growing season seasons and when it comes to fertilization without going into too

Much detail because the trees are going through a dormant period with a slower rate of growth I would personally opt for a balanced fertilizer with a low nitrogen content something like an NPK value of 555 I would really use this

Sparingly maybe once every four to 6 weeks during the dormant season or on the other hand if you wish to you can apply a slow release fertilizer that can be slowly and gradually released into the soil with each watering during the

Dant period and on that I’m going to end off this video right here if you enjoyed please be sure to leave a like on this video as it really helps out the channel a lot with the YouTube algorithm and if you’re new remember to subscribe and hit

The Bell to get updates from whenever I upload a video that way you can see if a new video is premiering you can chat with me live there and then if you have any suggestions for me about overwintering that I missed in this

Video please be sure to leave them in the comments below I’m always open to new and different ideas in Bonsai if you would like to support me and the things that I do on this channel hit the thanks button down below and if you would like

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