Your post here was so great that I probably did 2 or 3 'attempted replies' that I wasn't happy with, honestly there was still a lot for me to mull-over and even to learn but wanted to say sorry for such a delay & thanks for such a great, thorough ans
One of 100 Nursery trees is worth buying for the trunk.
One of 100 of those are going to have roots that it is possible to bring down to a Bonsai pot without killing them.
Heh this does seem to be the case!! Obviously things vary wildly but I got several Loropetalums after my final yamma one had died, finally got *one* to survive and it's still just 'alive' not thriving (hmm maybe I should put it to higher sun? It gets mostly-indirect light til ~noon, then all indirect....am afraid to look at it wrong, my sole surviving Loro....though its roots were done fully & it's in a colander so it's not gonna need another root-job that'll kill it now I can just wait&hope it gets strong and only intervene when the rootplate has 'eaten-away' everything in the colander except the minerals/rocks ;P )
It really is insane I'd like to avoid nursery buys as much as I can, just needed that Loro as I neeeeed one lol but yeah I'm much happier to collect yamadori that's (IMO!!) giving you great trunks all over the plate whereas nurseries.....not so much
[[though this type of preference would also, of course, have to take into account your tastes/preferences for bonsai-aesthetics, some like small Naturalistic bonsai others like big squat "Fairy Tale Style"(Pall) trees, I'm all-in on the latter and yamma's are the path there and to be clear I'm hardly touching conifers I mean broadleaf deciduous....trunk-chop-wounding is a PITB to cover but it's like a 5yr venture if done right, heck I've already got some closed chop wounds in my collection, IMO nursery is getting stock to "build-into" a bonsai whereas yammas are far more often "getting stock to reduce-down-into" bonsai, yes you reduce
then add a canopy/apex but especially when you've got thicker yamma trunks the inherent die-back, since they no longer have a fraction of the rootplate they're used to having, creates so much wild features in the body that I just cannot 'get' the idea of nursery being a main avenue!! I know not everyone is capable of collecting yamma's, but w/ how difficult starting-from-nursery is, if I couldn't get yamma's I'd be buying stock that was already processed for bonsai & just pay that premium, not worth the #'s game of nurseries IMO the odds just suck from what I've seen!!
I been cutting 70% off of juniper roots leaving full tops. Doing this..
filling around a bit with DE, mossing the tops, and they push roots in a week. Full moon Repot...key.
I have 2 concepts of how Nursery Roots become bonsai Roots.
Dry Death, and Wet Death.
If you transition to a regular pot, or leave it in the nursery pot, the core is able to remain wet, and everything will rot out in time, making it easy to remove excess and put fresh soil.
In baskets, because there is no pot wall returning water into the center and up the core, the center mass dries out, and becomes easy to remove the excess, and add fresh soil.
you lost me a bit here...
However...
Disagreement: You're saying 'center dries-out better with grow-basket containers', I feel like it's not right to distinguish "center" here...the
whole rootplate gets along better in such containers in fact the reason I made this thread & all my Loropetalum drama? Well after the last yamma died I started buying nursery ones just lil ~$10-15 specimen and, one-by-one, I'd "prep them for bonsai" primarily their roots (one instance I did remove a good deal of the top, another instance I did some defoliation, 2 or 3 instances I left the tops fully un-touched) Did varying degrees of aggressiveness to the roots (both "1 step" and "gonna need more root-work" approaches), and only
1 survived - it was:
- moderately pruned up-top, got
- a full 'bonsai-pot' root job, and was
- 1-of-2 that I'd put into a root-maker container
My other failed-loro in a root-maker (colander) was also the one I did the hardest canopy-reduction on, so not blaming colander for that....I think that having an aerial root-pruning is of massive significance in fact my last two container builds, that'd normally have been me making wooden boxes, were instead me bending metal hardware-cloth(thick metal screening) into shape and lining with 'shade cloth' to make my own 'grow bag' containers!!
This works simply because In an environment where there is daily surface water, surface roots grow. That is a tree thing. We have to utilize these tree things to our benefit when transitioning these materials.
Important observation for sure
Yes I do this myself in fact I like using thin, wet bark (I get a good deal of this from carving green-wood that's being prepped for wood-working/carving) because it's a great physical barrier and moist,
once established though I find most species actually do better with 'open top' substrates that 'can breathe' in fact in my nursery I'm always 'shuffling-around' top dressings(or 'mulchings') in that, when in-need of some, I just go and remove it from a specimen that'd previously needed it but no longer does...I know what you mean Re trees loving to grow their feeders right-at soil level but for obvious reasons this can negate the aesthetics we're aiming for in that area for instance I've got some Maples with really showy bases/nebari and, being swamp trees, they'd actually benefit a good deal if I could just leave big messy piles of leaf-mulch atop their substrate (and I do in year-1
) but they just aggressively shoot roots into it from higher-up on the bark than I'd like so with stronger rooters it's actually a fight/takes some vigilance to keep the soil-level just right, for transplants or specimen who were just root-pruned then it's great IMO and even things like bark-rot at the base don't become an issue for a lil bit and the plant tends to only 'need' the help of that surface-protection for a lil bit as all those surface roots, once a bit further along, have enough downward growth that "exposing the surface" just kills a tiny% and the rest of the surface roots simply toughen-up their uppermost-layer as necessary in fact this is something I "play with" so far as design aesthetics on some specimen by the technique of "continual, over-time raising" of the specimen in its container / relative to its soil-surface
Rather than water "deeply" like all the books on finished bonsai say, why not just lightly water the surface every hour? Trees want to live, they'll figure out how to rid themselves of the excess BS below that they aren't using, and they will grow where the conditions are right.
well...heh I could say a lot about this[not in-disagreement, just a topic I deal w/ frequently because water balance can be a PITB here&now when the trees are thirsty as can be but the atmosphere never dries out!] but......watering deeply is actually a problem for me this time of year in FL because it's so humid, not only do I not water-deeply many days but I've also found that mid-day irrigation helps a great deal above&beyond mere water-to-the-roots.....when doing a "pall style watering" (hosing the heck outta everything) you're showing the crowns/canopies/trunks, as-if it'd been raining out, the trees have been cooled via external sources and:
- are not devoting nearly as much energy(resources) to transpiration&cooling, and
- are not spending hours doing that midday "quasi-senescent wilt", here in FL we've got days where the roots simply cannot pull the water needed to keep the foliage turgid, artificial irrigations in the midday
can (this, coupled w/ getting pH on-point, has let the use of Pall's fertilization approach, here in semi-tropic Florida, has led to some stunning growth rates in my nursery I mean it's insane it was last summer when I had to dial-back nitrogen because I just couldn't keep-up w/ the vegetative rates
and the increased pests that soft, forced growth tends to invite -- I never use chemicals / have pest issues, and I'm quite sure it's simply result of Pall-type watering although will say I make a point of being aggressive to the foliage w/ the hose, it really sets-back any pest attacks
)
By not 'watering deeply' I mean it's just not
every watering, I do flood-waterings w/ pure rainwater at least every few days, and the sheer volume of water from the hosings can 'flood' in many cases (I am at the trees/canopies more than the surfaces) but again it's too-humid right now so I'm back to hand-waterings and, in that context, I do do a standard 'pall style' of heavy heavy waterings, let them dry-out, repeat (it's funny because the ground here can be wet, the air so moist you can feel it, but my thirstier trees will have sucked their substrate bone-dry lol!!)
My God good for you! Sorceress asked my 15YO girlfriend what she wanted for her birthday and she said a pack of beef jerky, somehow Sorceress upsold her to a gold chain. WTF!? Beef jerky is so much more useful!
