Bonsaicarpenter's JBP contest thread

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Yesterday I ordered 50 seeds off of amazon from seller golden wheat fields. For insurance purposes I ordered another 100 today from treeseeds.com. I will post some pictures of the seeds when they arrive.
 
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Seeds arrived today from treeseeds.com. @theone420 wasnt kidding about getting more than I ordered. The bowl in the second picture has the 100 seeds I ordered. Im estimating they sent 300-400 extra. I've never grown JBP before so I have nothing to compare these seeds to but they seem to be in good condition. Im planning to stratify some and try some just soaked to compare results. I will do the same with the seeds from the other vendor when they arrive.
 

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Just an update from my last post. I ended up soaking 30 seeds in hot water and 30 in cold. All 30 seeds sank in hot water and 28 of 30 sank in cold. Those were placed in separate bags with damp sphagnum moss and stratified for a week. I soaked an additional 30 in hot water (all sinkers) and those were not stratified. All seeds were from treeseeds.com.

The 3 batches of seeds were planted in separate containers on January 20th. I used a layer of wigert's bonsai soil with a layer of sand over that. They were then placed under regular fluorescent lights (nothing fancy) with 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark. My first sprouts came up around February 5-6th.

As of today I have 27 sprouts. Of the 30 seeds not stratified, 7 have sprouted. Of the 28 soaked in cold water and stratified, 8 have sprouted. Of the 30 seeds soaked in hot water and stratified, 12 have sprouted. It's a little early to tell since new sprouts continue to come up every day but, from my limited experiences, soaking in hot water and stratifying seems to be the most effective.

I received my seeds from amazon at the beginning of February. They sent me exactly the 50 I ordered. I've decided not to plant any of those at this time.

I have never grown Japanese black pine (or any pine for that matter) so I have no delusions that I may win this contest. It has been a fun learning experience so far though. I look forward to keeping an eye on everyone else's progress and using it, combined with my own experiences to learn and progress in the art of bonsai.

Good luck to everyone else with theirs!
 

Anthony

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Who cares about the competition, imagine the beauty
you will have in 6 years.

And yeah way too many seeds, ordered 30 got well over
100.
Enjoy the birthing.
Anthony
 
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Who cares about the competition, imagine the beauty
you will have in 6 years.

And yeah way too many seeds, ordered 30 got well over
100.
Enjoy the birthing.
Anthony
Yeah I'm not real worried about the competition. I see the whole thing as more of a learning tool. It's not too often that you can try something like this and track you methods and progress against so many other people who are doing the same thing at the same time.

Also, my wife cut me off from getting any new plants until we buy a house and move. This was a great excuse to get some more anyway.
 

Anthony

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When you get the house, get one where you can ground grow,
run the dogs, and let the children play.
Otherwise................................. no tomatoes.:)
Good Day
Anthony
 
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When you get the house, get one where you can ground grow,
run the dogs, and let the children play.
Otherwise................................. no tomatoes.:)
Good Day
Anthony
That's the plan. We currently have a pretty small yard. We're looking at houses with 1/2 acre+ so there will be plenty of room for ground growing once we have moved. That will hopefully come soon. We had a place under contract back in the fall that had just short of an acre but that fell through at the last minute.
 
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Ok so I have been horrible about updating this thread. My wife and I bought a house and moved back in June and lots of things have been gettin neglected as a result. I currently have 21 seedlings still living. On 4/21 17 of them were potted individually in fine DE with a lava rock drainage layer on the bottom. Drainage is starting to suffer already so next spring I plan to put them into slightly bigger containers with a better soil medium. The DE I used is just too fine and breaks down too fast. I reduced all the taproots when they were potted. 4 of them are still in a single container together because I forgot about them. Not sure what I will do with them yet.

Despite the neglect, they all look pretty healthy. They’ve starting budding and growing True needles.5A47DFB4-F78A-4EE3-ABAB-F7638E46D24B.jpeg

These 6 are my strongest seedlings.C317FF42-2E2F-457E-B0B2-E4CCEAA3DA5E.jpeg

This one is the most interesting. Something caused it to fall over and grow sideways. It has much shorter needles than all the rest. 8C895E7F-DA7A-42D1-9777-2578831BC90C.jpeg

I hope everyone else has healthy trees And is enjoying their summer.
 
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