Funny story... I think this is actually the closest thing I have to a "real" bonsai at the moment. It's only in a training pot, but everything else I have is in actual planter pots. I have this thing wired down, and everything. I used the shovel to cut a similar outline as my training pot, so the roots were already shaped "correctly" to fit right in.
The training pot is just 2×4's glued and screwed together. For the bottom, I have a layer of window screen above a layer of expanded metal screwed to the bottom of the frame. The expanded metal actually adds quite a bit of structural rigidity to the whole thing.
My substrate is a 50/50 mix of soil and napa 8822 dry sweep... with some random gravel/pebbles thrown in. I had a base layer of said substrate mix at the bottom of the training pot, which I sprinkled some 6-6-6 fetilizer on before saturating. I then sprinkled in some of the dirt from around the vine's roots... I want them emzymes or bacteria or whatever. Then I filled it up little by little with more substrate mix, making sure to gently work it into the roots. Once full, I sprinkled a little bit more 6-6-6 fertilizer on top, and saturated the whole thing.
Now I just have to hope for the best, I guess.
