Material development plans? Anyone?

[wvbonsai]

Over the past few seasons I have been developing sort of a material development plan. What I do is during the late winter/early spring I prune away a few excess branches from just about every tree I am currently developing and root them as hardwood cuttings. I grow them out most of that season in the cutting flat and later shift them to grow beds. They spend another 1 or 2 seasons in the grow beds until the reach gallon size or so. After that they are planted out on my farm for further growing. This way I usually have about 30-50 cuttings being advanced each season. I usually keep the best specimen from each species to be developed at my home where I can have a closer eye. In the future I will have plenty of stock that I can trade or develop myself.
I was interested to see if there was anyone else doing similar things on a small scale?

 

[Saru Bonsai]

I'm actually planning to start something similar this spring. I too will take a good amount of cuttings for every different tree i own. I plan on doing a fair amount of shimpakus, and wiring them up with many bends, to create a yamadori look. I would also like to try to do the same with young pines. I'd like to get a fairly good size collection of stock to grow on for many years. I'm only 20, so i figure if i start now, i might have some decent stock in a few years. I have been studying Mr. Brent Walston's site and blog quite a bit to make sure i get a good start. I really like the way he develops stock, and how he goes about doing it. Its gonna be a busy spring this year with all the bonsai work, as well as the spring buzz at my family's garden center.

 

[sfhellwig]

I have been contemplating the same. Around here you can't buy a Japanese Maple cheaper than $90 and I need some stock to learn on. I have bought seedlings to grow on and it looks like in a couple of seasons I will have a dozen trees to try a few things on. Slow start but I have about $15 invested right now. Have also been collecting quite a few seeds to start. Cuttings would absolutely be a quicker turn but I'm trying it one stage at a time. I'm looking at adding 12-20 plants a season for the first couple years. It might become too much quickly if I can't find others interested in the stock I don't keep for myself.

 

[bwaynef]

It might become too much quickly if I can't find others interested in the stock I don't keep for myself.

Learn to cull.

 

[sfhellwig]

Learn to cull.

If I were doing this for money and working with limited space I would set criteria for the number I could keep. Since this would be a personal effort and I would be working on spare farm land I really have no interest in throwing plants away unless they are truly faulty. If they become too much "bonsai" for me they will be left for a few years and then I have landscape trees to sell.