The Long Game

Jluke33

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Most advice I see on the forum when folks post is how to get a tree from material to bonsai-ish as fast as possible. I've got a lot of nursery stock that I'm taking this approach with, but I've got a small trident maple that I think I want to live in a Bonsai pot from the beginning and just take it extremely slow. Are there any threads or advice on early life care for material that's going to start it's life in a bonsai pot?

thanks!
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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I think it's pretty straight forward: keep it in the pot and try to keep it tiny by starting development early on. But also know when to back down on cutting back, it's going to be slower and less vigorous compared to the rest, so adjust your techniques and do give your trees some well deserved relaxation.

I have a bunch of seedlings and some older material that went straight into tiny pots. My JRP for instance make candles the size of my thumb nail. The ones in the bigger pots make candles the size of my entire hand. I allow my JRP to double flush in one year, cutting back the candles at the right time in summer.. And single flush the next year to regain strength, so I cut those shoots back in early fall.
Is that the best way? I'm not sure. But it seems to be working.
 

sorce

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I dig long game.


But...
bonsai-ish as fast as possible.

I don't think this is a thing, or possible.
Keeping this in mind may help you glean more information from everything you read.

I believe there is material that is faster than others, but you can't make a decision to go fast and be successful. You also can't just chose to go slow.

Everything is exactly what it is.

Sorce
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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A tale I occasionally recount, but is relevant to the "long game". One of the difficulties with bonsai is understanding when, or at what life stage different techniques are appropriate.

For example, way back in 1973, I had started classes at a community college, I was barely 18 years old. There was a florist shop that I passed on the way to the bus stop. They had little slender less than a year old cuttings of a dwarf pomegranate. I picked one up. Let it grow wild for barely 6 months, then started "practicing bonsai" on it. I'd let it grow maybe 2 or 3 internodes, barely 6 new leaves, and then I'd be pruning it. I let 3 or more branches stay at a node. I immediately moved it to the "best bonsai pot" I could find, a $10 cheap Chinese import. The tree followed me as I moved to university, through 12 changes of domicile in 4 years. Fast forward 32 years, its now 2005. I had been up to this point self taught in bonsai. I took a critical look at the pomegranate. Compared mine to photos on the web and in books of other trees that had been "in training" for 30 or more years, and realized my tree still looked like crap. That is what convinced me I was "missing the point" as a self taught bonsai artist. So I joined the Milwaukee Bonsai Society, and began taking classes, first with one time visits from various artists, one day workshops, then signed up for a 3 year class, where Ted Matson would fly in from California 3 or 4 times a year, in order to capture all the seasonal work that needs to be done. There were 15 or so that split the cost, 6 of us shared Ted on Saturday, 6 on Sunday, and 3 shared him on Monday. We'd split the fee and travel expenses.

The photo below is the pomegranate in 2012, some 39 years after I first stuck it in a small bonsai pot. This trunk is about 14 inches tall, and the diameter is just under 1 inch diameter. Sure, it is pleasant enough, but note, a 39 year old pomegranate should have a trunk more than 1 inch in diameter. When the "old farts" tell you the trunk diameter stops increasing once you move a tree from the ground or a LARGE nursery pot, to a bonsai pot, they are not wrong. I got proof. nearly 40 years and the trunk is only 1 inch in diameter. I suspect your maple will fare similarly. Key is I made all the classic mistakes. Confined the tree to too small a pot, too early in development. I did not allow sufficient extension of branches, to allow the growth needed to thicken the trunk. And I did not have a "good vision" for what this tree could become. Key is, repeated rounds of pruning during the growing season, and keeping the root system confined in a mostly mineeral, inorganic, soil, all lead to a general lack of development. Now in praise of pomegranate as a species for bonsai, it did survive a large number of accidents that none of my other trees from early in my career survived. All my early trees, except this pomegranate perished in one mishap or another. I finally did make a fatal mistake with this tree, it is no longer with me. But it was a learning experience.

8-7-2012a (2019_10_20 19_42_16 UTC).jpg


to see what 40 year old pomegranates could look like, check out Bonhe's thread on his Pomegranates.

 

Forsoothe!

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I already was a serious gardener for 30 years when introduced to bonsai in the late '90's. I had collected an ERC from the roadside in autumn 1973, put it in a bonsai pot in my family room in front of a big window and watched it go downhill for a couple months. I decided I wasn't doing something right so I planted it outside my back door in November. It's still there...ERC at Noll.JPG
I joined a local bonsai club in 1999 and did know one thing important: As a gardener, there are some things to have that are superior and belong in a serious garden and a lot of other stuff which is filler material, but I didn't know what was best for bonsai, so I set out to find out which species I would want to have started at day one when year 10 or 20 rolled around. It sounds better than it actually was. I acquired some trees that were above my pay grade with the predictable outcome. After 20 years now, I have a varied lot. Some common trees and and some that nobody else has, actually just like my yard turned out, and just like my music collection. Esoteric. If I were to do it over again and right, and for me not necessarily applicable to anyone else, I would stick with easy trees to start and work my way up in-parallel with skills.
 
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