Jason
Chumono
Vance Wood posted this on another thread:
"The quest for the "Instant Bonsai" is the root of all the problems. Many just beginning the hobby/art don't want to hear that it takes usually ten years to develop a decent bonsai from raw material. These individuals are then flooded with a plethora of advise from buying expensive pre-bonsai they can neither afford or have the tools to take care of, to collecting Yamadori and the like. Many are told to plant things in the ground not realizing this practice will give you a fat-ass trunk with a featureless bark, leaving the problem of developing a good bark.
There are quick ways of doing a lot of things but for every short cut there is a down side in development somewhere else. I am not Pooh-poohing these practices, I am Pooh-poohing the tendency to accept the speedy over the patient as a sacrament in lieu of good sense and care. Then in the end the grower has a bonsai that falls short of what they expected, replete with an abundance of faults that can be linked back to some short cut taken at some earlier date. So in short form: There is a lack of good resources about bonsai mostly because those things that should be practiced are looked upon as doing it the hard way and receive not much more than criticism.
Been there done that!"
I just read the above post and realized I'm one of those individuals plunking things in the ground for "fat ass" trunks so I was just wondering if someone could address the differences in bark features of container vs. ground grown material. What would be the differences in them and why would there be differences? Are all species affected or just pines? I guess I'd never thought hard about this as an issue.
"The quest for the "Instant Bonsai" is the root of all the problems. Many just beginning the hobby/art don't want to hear that it takes usually ten years to develop a decent bonsai from raw material. These individuals are then flooded with a plethora of advise from buying expensive pre-bonsai they can neither afford or have the tools to take care of, to collecting Yamadori and the like. Many are told to plant things in the ground not realizing this practice will give you a fat-ass trunk with a featureless bark, leaving the problem of developing a good bark.
There are quick ways of doing a lot of things but for every short cut there is a down side in development somewhere else. I am not Pooh-poohing these practices, I am Pooh-poohing the tendency to accept the speedy over the patient as a sacrament in lieu of good sense and care. Then in the end the grower has a bonsai that falls short of what they expected, replete with an abundance of faults that can be linked back to some short cut taken at some earlier date. So in short form: There is a lack of good resources about bonsai mostly because those things that should be practiced are looked upon as doing it the hard way and receive not much more than criticism.
Been there done that!"
I just read the above post and realized I'm one of those individuals plunking things in the ground for "fat ass" trunks so I was just wondering if someone could address the differences in bark features of container vs. ground grown material. What would be the differences in them and why would there be differences? Are all species affected or just pines? I guess I'd never thought hard about this as an issue.