If You Are Serious About Bonsai

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Shohin
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Thanks Will. But, that is not my site. I work as a field slave for Oregon Bonsai, but do not own any part of the company.

As for posting trees on this site, yes, in the past week I have posted 6. 5 collected from the wild, 1 collected from a nursery (and I say so in the threads).

As for my personal collection, I have approx 110 trees in various stages - 90% of the trees have been in training for less than 3 years (when I got re-invgiorated in bonsai), so they are not too far along - and various quality/potential - from total garbage to quite excellent material. I would say my trees with the greatest potential are all either collected yamadori or field grown potensai.

As for the best stock for my own personal preferences and what is in my collection - two worlds apart based upon, mostly, income. I do not get the discounts on materials that Jason does, so I do not have access to the same stock (i.e. my wife controls the checkbook and at this juncture it is not fat enough to continually spend hundreds of dollars on trees). My backyard looks quite different than Jason's, Randy's, Walter's, etc. - but that is where my preference is and why I am now a) pimping myself out and freezing my ass off in Canada so that soon it will be so, b) have begun importing hand made pots for sale (website coming soon) to help pay for the hobby.

While I believe good stock and bad stock can be acquired anywhere, I strongly believe the best stock will come from yamadori. Maybe that is my skewed view on life, but it is my view and I am sticking to it!

Rich, live from Edmonton
 
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Vance Wood

Lord Mugo
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Thanks Will. But, that is not my site. I work as a field slave for Oregon Bonsai, but do not own any part of the company.

As for posting trees on this site, yes, in the past week I have posted 6. 5 collected from the wild, 1 collected from a nursery (and I say so in the threads).

As for my personal collection, I have approx 110 trees in various stages - 90% of the trees have been in training for less than 3 years (when I got re-invgiorated in bonsai), so they are not too far along - and various quality/potential - from total garbage to quite excellent material. I would say my trees with the greatest potential are all either collected yamadori or field grown potensai.

As for the best stock for my own personal preferences and what is in my collection - two worlds apart based upon, mostly, income. I do not get the discounts on materials that Jason does, so I do not have access to the same stock (i.e. my wife controls the checkbook and at this juncture it is not fat enough to continually spend hundreds of dollars on trees). My backyard looks quite different than Jason's, Randy's, Walter's, etc. - but that is where my preference is and why I am now a) pimping myself out and freezing my ass off in Canada so that soon it will be so, b) have begun importing hand made pots for sale (website coming soon) to help pay for the hobby.

While I believe good stock and bad stock can be acquired anywhere, I strongly believe the best stock will come from yamadori. Maybe that is my skewed view on life, but it is my view and I am sticking to it!

Rich, live from Edmonton

Thank you for your honesty, that is refreshing beyond belief. It would seem you are limited by some of the same problems that plague me, ---- mostly income. As to the Yamadori, the Junipers are beautiful and the Pines are Ponderosa--which I do not care for. They do not do particularly well here in Michigan.

As to the subject of Yamadori being the best for World class bonsai, I would agree with one caveat: It is not the fact that this may be so 90% of the time admitting that this is so is the same as adding credence to those who claim there is no use for nursery trees. As to the trees at Oregon Bonsai. The field grown stuff is not much better than stuff I can find in the nurseries around here, and there is nothing special about our nurseries. The issue is not where to look it is how to look. It is this one issue that really prys apart the rhetoric because it applies to both disciplines. I hold this to be an immutable truth: If you do not know how to find good material in a nursery you will not be able to recognize good material in the field, even if you trip over it; in the nursery if it is in the garbage heap.

I remember when I lived in California. Once a year our club would have a field trip to a ranch in the Trinity Alps where we had permission to dig anything we wanted from the property which was large and varied. There were about thirty of us that went one year and some came back with some really nice stuff and others came back with the same kind of crap they would pick up at a nursery. So nothing changes. That year I came back with a Lodge Pole Pine, a Douglas Fir with a crushed trunk and a double trunked White Fire. All of which were very nice and I wish I still had them. So why was there the disparity? Knowing what to look for and not settling for less.
 
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Shohin
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Thank you for your honesty, that is refreshing beyond belief.

Thanks. I try...

As to the trees at Oregon Bonsai.

Please understand what is on the site is probably 1% of what is available, and, most of the time the best stuff is sold the minute it is unloaded from the truck or dug in the field and never makes it into a training pot at this location. Your impression, as well as everyone else - including Dwayne - is limited to what is available on the site. This is why it needs to be updated, but more importantly one needs to visit - to turn the tree hundreds of times, right Attila?

Once a year our club would have a field trip to a ranch in the Trinity AlpsQUOTE]

I am very, very jealous...
 

Vance Wood

Lord Mugo
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Once a year our club would have a field trip to a ranch in the Trinity AlpsQUOTE]

I am very, very jealous...

Yeah, I miss those days too and the people as well, it was a long time ago and a world away. Things change and sometimes not for the good for everybody, but they change. After Nov. 1965 my life changed and I never returned to California. Everything I had collected died during an Iowa tornado while I was over seas. So I started over with what was available and learned to do the best I can with the cards I have been dealt.
 
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