Bonsai: no time like the present. (NSF56k)

Surfpossum

I wanted to make something a tiny bit more organized to serve as both a repository of useful links/info and a sort of chronicling of my (and anyone else's) fumbling about in the world of bonsai, so here we are.

So what are bonsai? Literally, tray trees. Philosophically, the answer varies. Generally, though, some concept of recreating size and age on a miniature scale is present. Those two things form a pretty solid basis for design decisions: would a tree grow like this normally? Do these asymmetrical twists and turns suggest decades or centuries of struggle? Or is it going to be mighty and immobile, quietly weathering the years? Are the branches proportional to the scale of the trunk? Does the shape of the foliage suggest that it is composed of much more and smaller leaves? Is it growing towards the sun, in response to wind, etc. etc.

And how do they stay small? As far as I can tell, a tree will happily keep growing as long as it has space and nutrients to do so. What this means is that if you prune back the roots as they hit the edge of the container, they'll just start happily growing again. Correspondingly, however, they will only be able to support a tree of a certain size, and so the branches will either need to be cut back or will only grow to a certain size/density. The specifics of this all vary greatly by plant: some will eagerly grow new branches/roots from wherever, some will... not.

Anyway, let's let some professionals take over.

This is just the best introductory video. It's quite long, but I consider it essential. He does an excellent job breaking down what you should look for when selecting a tree, what criteria should drive your decisions about what to cut, and generally lays out a bunch of principles and ideas.
https://youtu.be/2479Ey40bzo

Similarly, his detail wiring video also does a great job of demonstrating specific guidelines and explaining why it be like it is. The structural wiring one is only available in the paid archives, but there's a free trial.
https://youtu.be/2n2MIkkUlSE

This guy has a bunch of videos of him collecting trees from the "wild" (known as yamadori), and a really good two-part air layering (getting roots to grow from a branch so it can be separated and become its own tree) video:
https://youtu.be/LyriV1X6neA

Here's what you need to get started:

• some pruning scissors; you probably won't need branch or knob cutters unless you're working on something with branches thicker than a pencil
• some wire (about 100g each of 1.5mm and 2.5mm is probably plenty to start)
• pots and trays
• bonsai soil; a quart should be plenty to start
• some mesh for the bottom of the tray (I'm using scraps from a window screen)
• a bit of gravel (I'm scooping it from my driveway)

This is a great place for wire, and their soil prices seem okay. I also got a pack of their plastic tray/pot combos and have been really pleased with them.
https://www.dallasbonsai.com

I have these scissors, on the recommendation of like half the bonsai club. They're nice and way cheaper than some options.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004NCH6HG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_shMlCbVXCRG5Q

All that should run you somewhere around $50 to $70, and then there should be tons of plants at nurseries in the $15 to $25 range that would make great starting trees.
The main consideration, I would say, is whether your tree will be an indoor or outdoor one. I've read that a ficus makes for a good, hardy indoor plant. See the trees I've worked on below for outdoor suggestions.

Some useful terms to be aware of!

• apical region: the top bit of the foliage; found by looking for the two breaks on either side of the highest point
• auxins: hormones that control growth; they concentrate in the tips of branches, which causes the branches to grow longer. Removing the tips therefore usually results in the rest of the branch developing more ramification
• defining branch: the main or longest branch; this is used to set the tone for the overall shape or movement of the foliage
• detail wiring: wiring that arranges the foliage
• front: the angle from which the tree will be looked at; usually chosen by examining the base, the movement in the trunk, and a defining branch
• internode length: the space between two branches; you want some variety here, but generally no extremes
• inverse taper: when the trunk starts to get wider instead of thinner, generally caused by several branches growing from the same node; traditionally considered undesirable
• jin: deadwood; a branch that has had the living portion (the bark and foliage) stripped away
• movement: the shape/flow of a thing; generally want to consider whether something has left or right movement when designing
• nebari: the exposed roots at the base; you will usually have to dig down to expose these; feel free to do so (within reason) while at a nursery
• pad: kind of a chunk of foliage; naturally tends to be kind of flat along the bottom, with the tips growing thinner/upwards to the sun
• ramification: the fine branches and leaves at the ends of larger branches
• shari: an exposed section of the trunk where bark has been removed to expose deadwood
• structural wiring: wiring that adjusts the trunk or main branches

A big ol' pile of stuff I have around the house:

This is the very first plant I got! I went to a local bonsai club meeting and the club president brought a plant from the nursery to give away for free and I waited a good few minutes and then snatched it. I haven't done much to it since the initial pruning because I want to see if I can air layer it to make a new thing from one of the upper portions.

Various junk I have sitting around the house/porch/shed:

The kitchen windowsill has been completely taken over. These start around September and I don't have any of the more recent pictures on hand I think.








I also don't have pictures handy of most of the seedlings I collected from around the neighborhood. I do have a picture of this guy, who's currently residing in the back yard in one of the planters along with like fifty other things that may or may not already be dead. I just checked on it today tho and its roots seem healthy so I'm v glad! I thought it was completely dead for sure.


This is my current avocado. I had one that grew to about three feet tall and then promptly died when I planted it out back. This one is gonna stay small and its struggling because I tried to wire it like an idiot but I have HOPE even though it died all the way back to that little nub.




A ginkgo and umbrella pine my mother in law gave me:

They've been moved to the shed along with the remaining pine seedlings.


I also have these seed trays sitting on my desk; they've since had a ton more seeds added, and I've got an additional three trays around the house. Some of my pine seeds sprouted, so that's exciting!

These are the actual trees I've gotten from nurseries and done some actual work on.

This is a green cushion Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Green Cushion') and it was about 15 dollars. I feel like this was a pretty good starter tree. It's super dense, so I got a lot of practice with pruning stuff, and the foliage doesn't need a lot of fine tuning to look pretty good. I did very little detailing on this (because I wasn't really sure how to) and I think it's rather neat. I would definitely recommend this as a starter.

This is a baby blue dwarf Sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Baby Blue') which was about 20 bucks. Pruning it was kind of difficult because basically every branch was the same size and slightly on the small side, so nothing really popped out as being something to keep. It still was fairly easy to work with, though, and looking back at it I think when it comes to more detailed pruning the way its ramification grows will make it fairly easy to follow the guidelines in the detail wiring video.

This is a little blue rug juniper (Juniperus horizantalis). While not the most inconvenient to work with, something about it definitely felt more difficult than the previous two. I feel like design-wise it was more of a challenge, maybe?

Those last three all wound up buried under a bunch of mulch for the winter. We haven't been getting a whole lot of frost but since I shouldn't be touching them for about six months anyway, this will help keep me away from them as well.

This is a dwarf Alberta spruce (Picea glauca 'Conica') that was going to be our Christmas tree. It was 60 smackeroos but has a massive trunk for its size. It's gotten waaaaay more planning put into it than my previous attempts, and is also way larger (about 2.5 feet). I would probably not recommend starting on something of this size, but from a pruning perspective it was much easier to follow guidelines when determining what to cut; the finer ramification was generally easily identifiable as being too close to another piece (snip), coming off the top or the bottom of the branch (snip snip), or too thin compared to its branch (snip). So it did have that going for it. That said, I'm about four sessions in and it still needs at least one more.

And last but not least, here are a bunch of pictures of the various trees the people at the local bonsai club have. Some of these are absolute units, some are amazingly delicate, all of them are just great. No further comments.

This is still way less organized/thorough than I'd like but whatever, let's get going.

Surfpossum

It's been about a week, so! It's a beautiful sunny day, let's catalog some stuff.

These all reside on the kitchen windowsill on the northern side of the house. They don't get much direct sun and I water them a little bit nearly every day. They seem to be doing all right with this routine. The two in the middle are a Delonix regia and a Jacaranda mimisifolia from a bonsai kit, the one on the left is an acorn I found.


Same location; the stuff on the left is from the lilac tree I found and the stick on the right is the apology hydrangea. The latter has grown a very healthy amount of roots while the lilacs have not grown anything below the dirt. I've re-wounded them and put more root hormone on them, this time focusing around areas near buds (since that's supposed to be where meristematic cells get concentrated). Below we have one of the maple seedlings I collected and some of seedlings that sprouted from the pine seeds that I collected from a random pine cone.


These reside by my monitor; they're on the southern side of the house and get a decent amount of (partial) sun if I remember to pull the blinds up in the morning. The trays have a bunch of different seeds from around the neighborhood, the avocado has I think been nibbled on by the cats, and the little circular tray has some recently sprouted cypress (my best guess) seeds. They also get watered pretty frequently, tho two of the shoots seemed to get off to a bad start (one was still stuck inside the main shell, the other is just not looking great, but one seems quite hearty).


This is a 72-cell seed starting tray I found at Home Depot; it was something like $7 so I grabbed it and moved one of my trays of maple seeds into it. It's residing on the porch now because the plastic cover will keep critters out.


On the left here is the first free plant I got, which has steadfastly refused to go dormant and lose its leaves. On the right is the still unfinished dwarf Alberta spruce.


Here are the three other trees I've pruned/wired. They're still covered in mulch and seem to be doing okay. The porch is on the west side of the house so these all get a decent amount of sun in the afternoon.


This is a Japanese maple that was here when we bought the house. I'm hoping to try air-layering on it and making a bonsai out of one of its branches, tho I haven't found a very appealing configuration yet.


These guys have been residing in the shed to protect them from frost and the seedlings from squirrels; the one on the far left fell victim to their curiosity. The little planters are all pine seedlings from the aforementioned kit; the two on the left are a ginkgo and a Japanese umbrella pine that my mother-in-law gave me, but they are both quite tricky specimens when it comes to bonsai so I'm just hoping they survive for now.


These two planters are just what I toss random things into. One is full of bits of a rhododendron branch that I found; none of them have sprouted roots but it wasn't the right season really and I also didn't try to do any of the things you do when clipping (cutting the leaves, the buds, wounding the stems, dipping in root hormone). The other one has a bunch of seeds and a branch from the lilac tree, because why not. It's also got a couple of the little shoots that I first collected in it, and at least two of them appear to still be alive.



This is the lilac tree I found on the street; it's definitely meant to be leaning like that and that's not the result of a rushed support structure and ensuing windstorm. It's still quite green under the bark and it's been a few weeks now so maybe it'll survive? And then I can try air-layering on it, too!


Also, @Brody I watched this video of a hemlock pruning/design session and there was a lot of good stuff about soil composition, growth patterns, etc. in it. If you decide to try the free trial I would highly recommend the whole thing. A few notes:
- he mentions that when pruning, you can cut back to the buds, signified by these tiny little swellings where the tips of his scissors are. These buds will form new growth the next year, instead of the whole little branch dying off completely like on some other species. iirc these buds are also supposed to indicate that a tree is growing healthily and in a good state to be pruned/repotted.

- there was something about the soil needing a good amount of lava and pumice mixed in with the akadama (the former creating space for air, the latter holding water for absorption by the roots) because of something about it not going dormant or whatever. It was somewhere around the 20-25 minute mark I think.
- general design concepts: the tree started out as shown on the left, ended up as shown on the right. The idea being that in its natural environment this tree would be subject to high winds, its pads would naturally be much flatter and less fluffy (due to the upward branches being bent down/broken off by snow and the downward branches dying off due to lack of sun), and pulling everything over to the right and letting the branches in the back drop down to fill the negative space on the left gives it a much more dynamic feeling. The pads on the lower left in the after picture are the more "finalized" ones, the rest did not get finished to the same extent.

Brody

Awesome. I was going to try and get a better picture of it while it was light out today, but spent shoo much time just picking up branches from the storm. Managed to build a little box that's sunk into the ground cause I'm paranoid about freezing, and it's supposed to get close in the next couple of days. Also, I've been trying to build up the strength too effort post about how crazy repotting was.

But here is the potted tree,


And here is it somewhat styled,


I haven't measured, but the thing is a solid 2 feet tall I think, about as tall as Sapling. I've been bringing her out to water it with me, but she is terrified of it.

Brody

Potting was crazy. I had to hack the shit out of some massive roots. There were a couple that were easily thicker than the thickest branch. It was in a 2 gallon plastic nursery pot, and the pot is 5"*10"*2". I spent a solid 15 minutes raking out the roots, and then had a big pair of knob cutter and a little hand saw, and I thought I was going to destroy the foliage/branches turning it on its side so I could go to town. I eventually got it to fit (duh), but it was a bit nerve wracking.

I got to do about half the wiring on there. Ken (the guy helping me) probably would have let me do more, but the first couple branches I just watched him doing it. He said I had pretty good technique on the branches I did! (He has 50+ trees, and I think he's helped touch up a couple Pacific Bonsai Museums trees.)

The red line is the trunk line, I really like the S shape. Orange stuff is the more forward branches, and the yellow is all moving away from the viewer. The purple area I need to finish cleaning. The blue lines are little bits of dead wood/branches that I feel like add some nice character.

davidsdurions

Hello! I do the bonsai too. I basically have only three currently that are just in a state of holding maintenance because I have zero minutes left in my days for now. I used to have a few more I. The past and have always enjoyed it.

I was planning on repotting what I have this week and starting some new this spring so this thread is good timing.

I’ll do some before/after pictures and post them after the reporting.

Happy tree caring!

Brody

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQw97uQoVxg

Bonsai Mirai released a short video about picking tree's to start with.

Surfpossum

It's that time of week again!

The grocery store had some $12 pussy willows so here we are; I took a gamble because I had no idea what the trunk would end up looking like. The soil was initially almost up to that first branch, and the entire pot was solid roots. And I still didn't find any sort of base; this side has some decent looking roots but the other side has some coming out about three quarters of an inch above that spot and then nothing for at least another inch. So we'll see how it looks when I repot it later.




Here we have that first plant I got; it grew some purple berries, which allowed me to google what it is specifically: a boxleaf honeysuckle, Lonicera nitida. We can also see some reddish buds forming; this plant backbuds ferociously, so it is capable of growing new branches willy-nilly. These sorts of buds also indicate when the plant enters a growing phase; they'll burst into leaves and that's a good indicator that now is the time to, eg, do some air-layering (which is what I plan to do). Of course, these ones showed up a bit early; they were tricked by the burst of warm weather we had recently and might die later (thanks, climate change!).




This is just that spruce I was working on last time. Did a bit of light cleaning at the top of it but still haven't really tackled it.




The lilac cuttings are, I think, finally giving up. That one is still growing quite happily but isn't developing any roots so it's probably doomed. The apology hydrangea, meanwhile, is opening up those leaves that I thought were for sure dead, so it might pull through yet.




Here we see two of the pine seedlings popping up; one of them seems quite hearty. None of the other 20ish seeds have shown any signs of life.




The Delonix in the middle here rather abruptly had these leaves turn yellow; according to the internet this could be due to too much light, not enough light, too much water, not enough water, or too much fertilizer. More helpfully, most seedlings will need 12ish hours of light, 8ish hours of darkness, no fertilizer, and the soil should be allowed to almost dry out between waterings. I suspect in my case it's both not enough light during the day and that I've been watering it slightly too much.




Two of the three cypress seedlings died off (they were still kind of inside the seed pod and probably didn't survive my efforts to free them) but the first one seems to be doing quite well!




Mirai also added the next beginner video; I think this one is slightly more helpful than the first of these series (as this one deals with how to "clean" a tree when you first start pruning, meaning stuff you can safely cut before making decisions) but I can't see anything besides those mobile game ads:

Surfpossum

Also @Brody I did a bit of doodling on your hemlock; this would involve some pretty severe cuts but it's what caught my eye as I was looking at it. The idea is to maximize the s-curve you've got by making the bit on the right the apex, and then having the foliage follow the same sorta swooshing motion.



Not trying to say you should do this, of course, more just tossing it out there in case anything about it sparks some interest.

Brody

Yeah, that area on the bottom right is actually filled with a branch from the back, because I was worried about too much negative space. I think I'll definitely be making some big changes eventually, but considering I already did some moderate pruning and a repot, I'm going to wait and see if it lives through the year. I definitely really like the S shape its got going though.

Surfpossum

Here we are again, another week down.

I spent quite a bit of time this week browsing this site: http://www.nwplants.com/ and just noting which plants seemed like they might make for good bonsai (looking for small leaves and a single large trunk, generally). Here's a list of the things that caught my eye; the first set is trees, the second is shrubs.

Abies lasiocarpa
Chamaecyparis nootkatensis
Crataegus douglasii
Cupressus bakeri
Larix lyalli
Sequioadendron giganteum
Sequoia sempervirens
Thuja plicata
Tsuga heterophylla

Arctostaphylos patula
Physocarpus capitatus
Vaccinium membranaceum
Vaccinium ovatum
Vaccinium ovalifolium
Vaccinium parvifolium * this one seems especially neat
Viburnum opulus

I also started chopping away at and exposing the roots of the big ol' rhododendron that I originally totally only bought for the students to take cuttings from.

rhododendron 1

rhododendron 2

I couldn't really decide which angle would work the best as the front, so I took a couple of shots of the roots; suggestions are welcome.

rhododendron roots 1

rhododendron roots 2

rhododendron roots 3

rhododendron roots 4

I also did a pair of sketches based on the currently selected front. Initially I was gonna go for a very sparse look, but then thought maybe a more unified mass might work better. Got a week or two before I bring it home and really start working on it.

rhododendron sketch 1 and 2:

I was buying a pot for the rhododendron (it was about $35 before a 30% discount, hopefully it's big enough for it) when I walked past a rack of evergreen huckleberries, Vaccinium ovatum, which were one of the things I was looking at online earlier. They were $8 so naturally I grabbed one and a little $6 pot for it.



Here's the huckleberry after a very quick pass at pruning and repotting. I already don't like the angle it's at, so that will need to change.



Here are two sketches I created based off of it. I started with 1, and am strongly leaning towards 2 now. So much so that I did an additional bit of pruning based off of it already.

huckleberry sketch 1 & 2

New plan for the angle of it and some additional pruning:


Two things I learned while working with this little guy! Huckleberries seem to be pretty dang fragile. The branches seem deeeEEEeeecently flexible in between nodes, but they split pretty easily at any junction. I super-glued the crack back together, tho, so I'm sure it'll be fine. The other thing is that it was super finicky to tie it into the pot, but the more I think about it the more I realize that I think you're supposed to insert the two ends of the wire up from below and twist them together on top, not the other way around. Also, these smaller pots often seem to have only one hole, but thanks to ENGINEERING we can work around that with a stick:


And look at how well the apology hydrangea seems to be doing! All the leaves from that cluster seem to be opening up and looking healthy.



This little guy is also pushing out new leaves; very exciting!



And of course we also went to a nursery today; I wanted to check out this one dwarf Mugo pine they had (Mugo pines seem like a super great species if you don't want to have to do any wiring, btw, but these ones were on the pricier side; $40 to $70) but I didn't love it as much this time, so I grabbed a lavender start and another little pot:



I really recommend going out to a nursery and just poking around at the various plants; it's a lot of fun to look at different species and finding something that does something a little unique or cool, or just finding a type of plant that looks really neat. There were at least six different plants that I would've bought today if I had unlimited bonsai money, and that was in just one section of the nursery in their off-season.

So It Goes

SURF YOU GOT TOO MANY PLANTS BUD

I like rhody roots 2 and sketch 2

thank you for sharing!!

Brody

I agree with SiG, roots #2 is best roots.

Surfpossum

Just a quick update this week to keep the habit going. I put some stuff into pots! The first one here is a little guy that I grabbed off a bush last summer; the branch had become partially buried and sprouted roots. It was sitting out in my back yard and I noticed that it had a bunch of buds forming (something like a dozen!) so I decided to move it indoors because we had a cold snap coming. The second is the little lavender plant I got; not looking very bonsai-y (yet?) but it seems to still be alive, at least. And last is the apology hydrangea, which seems to be doing quite well.



I've moved everything that was out front and in a pot into the shed while temperatures are way down. Two of my little guys were buried out front so I put an old plastic bin over them at night to keep the wind off; I'm hoping the mulch and the snow will keep the roots insulated enough that they'll survive.

Mirai uploaded two winter videos, a prep one and a care one. I haven't watched them myself, yet, but figured I'd toss them in here.

Brody

@Surfpossum Ryan actually gets into that, and talks about snow being a great insulator. Your main concerns are temperatures below 28 degrees for any extended period, and wind chill(stealing moisture from the leaves) and root freezing are your main issues. Also, stuff in bigger pots/in the ground will do a lot better, because their roots are better insulated/warmed by the Earth (thats why tree don't all die every winter).

Edit: I also moved my tree inside last night, and I'm super glad I did, cause it got way colder than I expected.

Surfpossum

It's still wintertime! It's still cold and snowy out there! I dug up the trees I had out front and moved them into the shed, because I'm hoping the little bit of sunlight it gets will keep it moderately warmer than the outside world. Not feeling super hopeful, tho. I might try to create a space in one of the less heated rooms, which will delight my wife, I'm sure.

Meanwhile the stuff inside seems to be doing well! A couple of the buds that I mentioned last week are sprouting quite vigorously, and it's very exciting! The two on the right in the second photo and the two on the upper left in the third are from the kit I got last summer; one of each type left. I'm hoping the pine seedlings (which were in the shed until recently) have just gone dormant, not dead. The two greener pine seedlings are from a bunch that I got from a random pine cone.





I also stuck some lavender cuttings in next to the oak seedling because why not, and you can see some potatoes that I'll probably take in for the horticulture class to cut up and propagate.

On a different note, I just came across this channel and it seems like a delightful hobby as well; I'll probably be giving this a shot because MORE PLANTS, ALL THE PLANTS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6DnKCnlSxE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNnsbfslxxc

Brody

I'm super terrified my tree is going to die, it's been in my shed for a week now. But this snow just isn't getting any better.

So It Goes

Oh nooooo bonsai theft

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/02/11/asia/japan-bonsai-theft-intl/index.html?r=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/02/12/bonsai-tree-stolen-japan-owners-hope-400-year-old-tree-watered/2846836002/

Brody

The worst part is at the end where they say they'd like the tree back, but even if they don't get it back, to make sure the tree is watered.

Surfpossum

Very exciting news this week! One of the paperbark maple seeds that was sitting in my fridge decided to sprout early. I've eagerly moved it into a little pot; here it is partially exposed for a photoshoot:



Getting to watch seedlings pop up is super fun! The cypress and pine seedlings (which I also just collected while walking the dogs around the neighborhood) all seem to be doing well, too. Meanwhile, my avocado hasn't really been growing any of the little leaflets it's been putting out; maybe the cats have been eating them, or maybe it's because the soil got compacted away from the main roots somehow. Anyway, I've replaced the soil just in case, and I have no idea how its roots ended up like this:



I also grabbed some lump charcoal (not strictly necessary) and made some terrariums using empty spice jars. They look a bit nicer in person, and I didn't bother getting tweezers or anything; I just used a pokey stick to press the plants and moss down. They were fairly finicky and I think I maybe added too much gravel and charcoal; if anybody is thinking of giving one a go, I'd recommend maybe starting with a mason jar size thing.



Finally, one of the buds on this fine fellow has basically exploded; I'm hoping the others will start soon as well, because most of them haven't changed much:



I also moved my bigger trees outside again; it's been p sunny and hopefully we won't see the temperature drop quite as harshly as it did.

Oh, and I happened across this video; the second tree he wires ends up looking super cool imo, and it's created out of a completely unremarkable looking little juniper.

https://youtu.be/bwX0hxAdL4A

...I may need to get another juniper.

Surfpossum

I may let this thread go dormant soon but first! One more update.

The cypress and paperbark maple (front right and center) seem to be doing quite well; the maple will actually completely change direction over the course of a day to orient itself towards the light (I rotate it once in a while to get it to do that and toughen up the stem). I cut the giant shoot on the little guy in the front left back (after double checking with the bonsai club leader) to encourage the other buds to get their little buds moving. It seems to be working? Or possibly just a coincidence. The lavender in the back seems to be doing all right, and I have no idea what the avocado's deal is at this point.



The trees in the shed look like they're doing... okay? I'll be moving all that stuff back outdoors now that the cold seems to have passed.

We went to the Flower and Garden Show in Seattle yesterday for my birthday; I found a plant, a ming aralia, that looked super cool but one of the shopkeepers looked it up and it is considered toxic to cats so we didn't get it. After further research, however, it seems that it's toxic in the sense that it can cause various rashes, vomiting, and diarrhea, and that serious effects are very rare. So, for anyone who was looking for an indoor plant (@So It Goes ?) this one is apparently very easygoing and can look amazing. It also looked like it was very inclined to grow new branches and foliage along existing trunks, so it's not like once you cut part of it off you have to live with it forever.



The one I saw was a little over a foot tall and had a bunch of trunks coming up kind of like this, except nicer:



And looked like some kind of elvish forest city.

Anyway, I obviously wasn't gonna come away without any plants; we found a really cool looking prayer plant early on, and then while I was waiting to ask them about the aralia I discovered a couple of Jacqueline Hillier elms and dwarf Chinese elms. Naturally my wife bought me one of each.

I spent about an hour this morning just digging down into the soil; I pulled them out of their pots and added some gravel to the bottom, then put them back in to raise them up a bit. I just used a wooden skewer to clear dirt out, occasionally cutting off the finer roots as I went. I think this is probably gonna be the front of the Jacqueline Hillier elm:

Meanwhile, I hit roots pretty early on the Chinese elm, but one spot didn't have any so I decided to keep going to see what I could find. And look at this buried treasure!

With some of the upper roots removed:

I'll have to take a better picture because those don't really do justice to that massive gnarled and twisting base that was hiding under that first set of roots. It looks super cool and I am, as usual, v excited.

Update: here are the two elms after some pruning and wiring. They were much more delicate than the stuff I've worked with previously; the Chinese elm was particularly brittle. That leftmost branch broke entirely off, so I've wrapped some sphagnum moss around it to help keep it damp in the hopes that I can graft it back on. There were two other branches that snapped off that I'm pretending were happy accidents.




I would not recommend these for a first attempt at wiring; I was able to sort of get by but I definitely felt like my skills were still pretty lacking. But overall I'm pretty happy with them so far!

Brody

I went by one of the local nurseries this week, and I saw a couple of scotch/mugo pines that might have been interesting, but I a) can't afford to be buying trees right now b) kind of want the next thing I pick up to be a deciduous tree.

Sapling had a bunch of fun pointing at everything and saying "Tree!" though. Almost bought one of her namesakes. Not sure I could bonsai it, but it would still be cool to have one in the backyard.

Edit: Also, my parents have a couple of fruit tree's in their front yard they are planning on ditching, I'm thinking of trying to air layer a couple pieces before they cut them down in the winter.

Brody

@Surfpossum have you ordered any saplings online? I was at Crater Lake recently, and saw a bunch of amazing whitebark pines. I think I want to try and find one to bonsai.

Surfpossum

@Brody I haven't ever ordered anything online, no, but this is the only place selling whitebark pine saplings a cursory googling turned up, and I was going to recommend (based on a gut feeling) that ordering from a nursery would be the way to go. Buuuuuut looks like you'd have to wait until November for it to ship.

I had someone buy me several bare root saplings earlier this year, and they have had a decent survival rate (5 out of 7 are alive and doing well, and the two that died were probably my fault).

Brody

This website looks dangerous. All sorts of species that I never see at the local nursery...

Surfpossum

Hold on t'yer butts, it's a big old Bonsai Update™!

Previous updates can be found here.

I've been having a lot of fun with terrariums; you can find all kinds of awesome little plants that do great in them for under $5. The first one I made is doing quite well; I've had to cut back the nerve plants a few times (and have gotten the cuttings to root) and have added some ferns and moss and stuff.

Most of the residents in the pearrarium are doing well, but since it's not as sealed I think the mosses and smaller things are getting a bit dried out.

Here's a bottle featuring some Fittonia (nerve plants), a random snapdragon seedling, a piece of some thing I got for $3 at Lowe's, and angel tears and some kind of moss as ground cover.

My mother-in-law gave me this pothos cutting so I stuck it in a jug along with a few other bits and pieces of stuff.


Let's take a look at everything on or around the kitchen windowsill!
The little Japanese holly is slowly filling out, taking its sweet time but that's okay.

The Delonix regia or Royal Poinciana and Jacaranda mimisifolia or jacaranda are both doing fantastically well. The jacaranda particularly looks great; I've clipped one of its branches to the pot to bend it down a bit. They've recovered very well from the earlier sunburn.

I think I should probably repot the apology hydrangea; I dunno how much longer that tiny pot can sustain all the growing it's trying to do.

I've been going nuts with cuttings. From left to right: junipers, nerve plants, nerve plants, various unknowns, nerve plants, various plants my mother-in-law just gave me that I forgot the names of. One is a fuchsia, I think, that black flower?

My pine and... cedar? seedlings are mostly taking their time, aside from that one lad going wild there.

I got to snag a bunch of seedlings from a friend's yard before they weeded them out, featuring an oak seedling and unknowns.

And naturally walking the dogs yields plenty of neighborhood finds, mostly I think lilacs and maples.

The Jacqueline Hillier elm didn't die! It's still not looking great, but grew a bunch more leaves after losing nearly everything so who knows what's up with it. Maybe elevating its pot to let water drain and air circulate under it did the trick.


Now let's take a look at the stuff out back!
The last Japanese larch seems to be doing all right; I think that it will look swell in that pot if it fills out, so I'm hoping it lives.

I unwired the dwarf Alberta spruce and am just letting it grow for now, since my planned design turned out to be extremely eh. I'll wait and see if inspiration strikes.

The Hinoki cypress and blue rug juniper are recovering pretty well from the winter. The juniper is a bit more precarious since I've got it over a rock instead of buried nicely, but it seems to be hanging on (and has a snapdragon roommate; the things are everywhere for some reason).

The quince I got a while back isn't looking great but it hasn't been getting worse so I'm just leaving it alone.

I stopped by a nursery the other day to get some dirt and a pot and they had Japanese maples grown from seed! That's the first time I've seen non-grafted ones, so naturally I had to grab a Little Prince of Oregon. It's way too tall, so I've started air-layering it (bit late in the year, but might as well try it instead of just chopping it down).

My Lonicera nitida (evergreen honeysuckle) is looking good! The leaves are a bit pale still, but it's been growing well so I pruned it to clean things up a bit.

The gold... cone? juniper is a bit intimidating still. It's an absolute unit and there is so much wiring to be done. I'll get there eventually tho.

The Blue Pacific Shore junipers have been going nuts; the first one I had unwired a while back and it lost nearly all the shape it had so I've rewired and pruned it up (there's also a cutting on the right side that I forgot to remove for the photo). I repotted and pruned up the second one recently as well, but I'm trying to do less to that one.

And then of course there's the seed tray, featuring all kinds of random stuff like an oak seedling from the cemetery, pine seedlings from where I substitute, a myrtle from Texas, and a variety of lilac, maple, and other unknown seedlings.


Whew! And now, a moment of silence for those that we've lost.

The dwarf sawara cypress, which barely made it through the winter and then didn't survive me trying to have its roots be slightly exposed.
The rhododendron that I didn't take out of the greenhouse quickly enough when the weather started getting warmer.
The two Japanese larches that for some reason died while the third one didn't.
The dwarf Chinese elm that seemed to be doing just fine and then gave up.

rip


I had meant for this to be a catalog of nearly everything but I just realized I forgot the ficus and of course there are the two ponderosa pines, the sequioa, the hemlock, the Japanese golden something or other that are all planted around the fence, the spider plants, the lilies and orchids, the seedlings under the deck out front, the maple, rhododendron, and Japanese holly on the porch, along with the other pine seedlings, and

Brody

I should see if I can find one of those honeysuckles from a nursery down here, the bark on that adds so much to it.

Surfpossum

It's getting to be that terrifying part of the year, when plants need to be cold but not too cold. Basically, many trees need a couple of months of cold to go dormant, otherwise they, uh, die. After a couple of years.

To that end, I've gathered up a bunch of my seedlings from the porch and kitchen windowsill:



And stuck them in my planter of stuff:



I'm hoping this planter is large enough to provide them the normal insulation dirt would create. For my larger trees, I grabbed a pallet a neighbor was getting rid of and just dumped mulch over everything:



This is roughly what I did last year and most of those guys survived, so. Fingers crossed. I also created a little windbreak with some left over scraps of roofing.

Some videos on what slightly more professional people have to say on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NokSQ9STQ_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8JwO1n9-hg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1o--xtxjg

Brody

Yeah, I'm little farther south than you, so last year I just put my hemlock in the shed for the 2 weeks or so it dropped below 28f. I think this year is supposed to be colder, I guess I'll see what I can come up with.

Did you have a juniper die from over watering? I got one for my birthday, but I'm starting to worry all this rain might not be good for it.

Surfpossum

Brody wrote: »

Yeah, I'm little farther south than you, so last year I just put my hemlock in the shed for the 2 weeks or so it dropped below 28f. I think this year is supposed to be colder, I guess I'll see what I can come up with.

Did you have a juniper die from over watering? I got one for my birthday, but I'm starting to worry all this rain might not be good for it.

I think I did, yes, tho I'm not 100% sure if it was over watering or if I let it get too dry a few too many times earlier in the heat wave. It was in bonsai soil, and I had another one in regular potting soil and that one was doing fine, so who knows for sure.

I did move that one and my other remaining juniper into my little greenhouse after that because I had the same concern about the rain; I'm hoping that because mulch messes with water it'll cut down on how much of the rain collects in the pots but, again, who knows.