Hyn Patty's JBP Contest Thread

[Hyn Patty]

All right then. I'm getting a later start than a lot of you but I have no expectation of winning the contest, so that's all right! I'm new to trying pines as bonsai and I see that JBP's are expensive to buy so I'm going to try the patient route by seed. My goal for this contest is just to get any of these to make it 6 years. Whoo!

I ordered 30 seeds from ALLooABOUTooSEEDS on Etsy which are reputed to be have been collected from trees in the Mikawa district of Japan.
I also ordered 50 seeds from pandoragarden on Ebay as they were dirt cheap at $2.80 cents plus $2 shipping. I expect they'll take 2 or 3 weeks to arrive from overseas.
And 50 seeds from TreeSeeds.com (along with a small number of other kinds of seeds my husband will groan over as if I didn't already have too many plants).

If I end up with way more than I want to keep, I figure they'll make great gifts to bonsai friends and fodder for trades.

 

[Fonz]

Good luck!
Treeseeds.com are top notch seeds. 80-90% germination, big seeds)
Pandoragarden I got a germination ratio of 2%... (3 out of 150, small seeds)

 

[Hyn Patty]

Yes, I saw that /after/ I ordered a small quantity from Pandoragarden that others who had ordered from them had low success rates. Thankfully they were very cheap so it's not much loss if they don't do well. Which is a good reason to order a few from more than one vendor to cover one's butt. I suppose we just need to be careful to leave suitable poor feedback for Pandoragarden's auctions if the germination rates are shoddy. I appreciate your input!

 

[Hyn Patty]

The 'Mikawa' JBP seeds from www.myseeds.com arrived today. That was very fast. I'll get them soaking this evening and then into the fridge to start the 30 days stratification.

 

[Hyn Patty]

And the '50' Japanese Black Pine seeds I ordered from TreeSeeds.com arrived today! They were indeed /very/ generous as you can see there are a ton more than 50 seeds in there! I also ordered a number of other seeds and every one of them was exceptionally generous with how many they sent - far more than the 25 of each of the other varieties I ordered.

 

[Hyn Patty]

Well, I had great germination on most of my seedlings and they started out great but ... SO MUCH RAIN. OMG. Once we got moved to the new house, all it did was rain. The rest of May, all of June and July with barely a day between that it didn't storm. So many trees down, so much flooding. Wow. August was only slightly better. Needless to say most of my seedlings died even sheltered beneath the deck - just too much fungus and copper treatments didn't help much. Now it's February and some of those seedlings didn't overwinter well. I have just a few left that look decent but I think it's fair to say I'm out of the contest. Still, I have a bunch more seed I am starting shortly so I'll give it another go for myself. It's a great learning experience. I sure hope we don't have the constant storms and awful downpours we had last spring and summer though the past two weeks have yet again been nothing but storms and rain. I'll keep adding to my thread here for my own reference and I do enjoy reading everyone else's updates!

 

[Hyn Patty]

In other news, a number of my other tree seedlings made it through just fine. I've been repotting them in prep to plant them out into the ground once they get more size on them. Not JPB's though.

 

[Hyn Patty]

Poor little baby. But this one is a survivor through the summer from Hell and a harsh winter spent outside! Pathetic, but I'm glad any of them survived after what they've been through. This next winter I should at least have a cold frame set up.

 

[Anthony]

Don't give up, please.
Plant some more seed.
By year three you can propagate and the cuttings will
jump ahead.

Think less of a competition and more of learning to grow.

Thus far for down here maybe 3 will be suitable for growing
on and ultimately keeping for the future.
But at pots of 16 x 6 inches, 3 will still use up a lot of sun
space.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[my nellie]

I agree with the above. Don't give up. It's your chance to learn how to grow JBP. It's the same for me, too.

 

[Hyn Patty]

Thank you both. Yes, that's more my thinking - just learn from it and one way or another I'll get some good trees to work with out of it yet! I have another 100 or so JPB seeds stratifying now that'll be started soon. It should be a lot easier to focus on them this year without the whole moving fiasco thing and all the unpacking.