What are your bonsai goals for 2024?

1. Collect 3 - 5 larger landscape specimen junipers or yews with large trunks 4" to 6" thick.

2. Air layer tops off my large trident and korean hornbeam.

3. Sell off/reduce some tropicals and ficus.

4. Rebuild my composting area since I use homemade compose as a main soil ingredient for growing out stock.

5. Finalize architectural plans for garage/greenhouse. Meeting architect next week to talk over basic layouts.

Grow baby grow! Have fun. Enjoy my little trees.

6. Oh yeah. Purchase 5x10 tow behind trailer.
 
Keep the sweet yardadori juniper I'm about to dig up alive. Keep my other promising trees alive. Get rid of some more mediocre pre-bonsai so I can focus on the nice ones. Learn more about grafting junipers. Learn more growing about pines. Try to start some JBP seedlings off to become good neagari specimens. Build some nice benches.

But like most here, I'll settle for just the first two goals. :p
 
Thanks @19Mateo83
Here are my goals:
1) put up the shade cloth for sun and heat sensitive like Japanese Maple.
2) high grading my collection... make improving to existing trees.
3) clean up the garden area (back yard)
 
@19Mateo83 your “JOIN US” made me smile!

MY goal, should I choose to accept it, is to begin:
1) digging my tiny “weed” volunteers in the near future
2) potting up my sole seedling
3) harvesting any remaining seeds, and planting some
4) Going For It by purchasing a “cheap as chips” Chinese Elm and working on it.
5) Having some living results from these small efforts.
6) Looking in on B’Nut more often — I make a good audience, if nothing else!
 
I have a bunch of what I think are hornbeams in my lot. They are growing wild and I chopped the saplings about 2years ago. I would like to bring some of those into development.
I would like to do some pretty large air layers on a few junipers and a few maples.
Mostly, I would just like to advance my craft and work to create some truly stunning pieces. It took a few years but i have good potential on a number of different trees. Looking forward to growing season...
 
MSU JBoots said:
The primary goal with a 2 week old newborn on top of my toddler now is to just keep things alive. Secondary I want to repot a few more things to get almost all my trees in the same soil to help me with watering. Some are still in organic dirt from the nursery. My tertiary goal is to push a couple trees from development towards refinement. Lastly, I hope to take another workshop at the state show again this spring! Preferably one where you bring your own tree.
Click to expand...
Forgot about my workshop goal. After signing up for the bring your own tree workshop at the state show that goal should be met!
 
One of my goals for this year is to collect more decent starter material so I can offer entry level material at an affordable price for people getting into the hobby. I see a lot of price gouging on places like eBay, Amazon, Etsy and even a few nurseries aimed at making as much money as they can from unsuspecting new hobbyists. Bonsai shouldn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.
 
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Enjoying this thread quite a bit. Thanks @19Mateo83 and everyone who has shared their goals!

Personal bonsai goals
  • Sell and/or give a few trees away. I want to end 2024 with 20-25% fewer trees than I start it with so that I can spend more time on my top dozen or so trees. If I acquire a new tree, the rule will be that I must rehome 3 trees.
  • Rather than putting together 3-4 rushed, mediocre forests, put together 1 or 2 that are more intentional.
  • Education: I'll be taking some workshops at Bonsai Central as well as a Deciduous intensive class at Andrew Robson's garden (June 22-23 if anyone else here is going that weekend), and continuing with our local study group.
  • Transition a few trees that have been ground growing to training pots starting with some serious digging and rootwork
  • Be more aggressive with fertilizing and utilizing sacrifice branches on my developing stock and raw yamadori
  • Get some of my trees in my own pots
  • Make some sweet kusamono
  • Put together 1 or 2 displays at our club show where I really work hard to make the tree and composition the best that I can make it.
  • Start getting some trees ready and thinking about putting together a shohin display for 2025
Other bonsai goals
  • Help put on a spectacular bonsai convention at Bonsai Central as part of the organizing committee
  • This year I was elected VP of the St. Louis club, so I'm working on ways to bring education on beginner, intermediate, and advanced (it's tough to do all 3!) bonsai skills and topics for the club and bring in some professionals to share their knowledge.
  • Share some knowledge about collecting and native species on our club collecting trip
  • Help elevate the knowledge about and quality of bonsai in the region
 
MSU JBoots said:
Forgot about my workshop goal. After signing up for the bring your own tree workshop at the state show that goal should be met!
Click to expand...
Did you pick out the tree yet?

One of my new goals for this year is to NOT work all my trees at once, and leave some work for workshops and study groups.
 
Going to add the following:

- Make more wooden boxes of varying size to grow on trees in development.
- Stock up on colanders/pond baskets for starter material I wish to keep off the ground.
- Invest in a steel tool box for all my bonsai tools.
- As Mateo pointed out, being mindful of unscrupulous online sellers. Personally, I prefer to buy plants in person unless it's directly purchased from a trustworthy and well-known vendor.
- Have fun, improve my skills, make bonsai friends.
 
- Root work and prune all of the ground growing seedlings
- repot a few medium sized maples
- airlayers and cuttings
- make a few clumps
- root graft a prunus cerasifera (hope it works)
- plant a few more seedlings in the ground
 
A new goal of mine: sell at least one tree, and maybe some pots. Bonus points if I sell actually decent stuff and not just the dogs of my collection at bargain prices.

I listened to an episode of Bonsai Wire where they talked about the “dunce shelf” for trees you don’t like. I feel I have a few too many trees that fit that category, and would like to move them along.
 
Goals for 24':

  • Wire branches and work on my trees and other people's trees until my hands bleed and/or fall off
  • Try to survive (in terms of human life, the house, and my trees) whatever psycho murder deathcore horrorshow firestorm suffer-circus that Mother Nature cooks up to burn down / shake out / bury the entire Pacific Northwest, typically scheduled between June and October. Heat dome? East winds? Widespread fires? Doug fir or thuja falling on my roof? Land slide pulls my house and the garden into the ravine? The long-past-due M9.0 causes a gas leak and the whole street goes boom? City/County adds exciting new fees/taxes?
TLDR: Do a lot of bonsai, ideally with other people, move the trees forward as much as possible and make it to NYE without any insurance claims. So, pretty much the same goals as last year :D 🌋

I swear, "It's a mild climate and pretty much heaven for bonsai" is the PNW's version of "come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs!". Bring it on I guess
 
MaciekA said:
Goals for 24':

  • Wire branches and work on my trees and other people's trees until my hands bleed and/or fall off
  • Try to survive (in terms of human life, the house, and my trees) whatever psycho murder deathcore horrorshow firestorm suffer-circus that Mother Nature cooks up to burn down / shake out / bury the entire Pacific Northwest, typically scheduled between June and October. Heat dome? East winds? Widespread fires? Doug fir or thuja falling on my roof? Land slide pulls my house and the garden into the ravine? The long-past-due M9.0 causes a gas leak and the whole street goes boom? City/County adds exciting new fees/taxes?
TLDR: Do a lot of bonsai, ideally with other people, move the trees forward as much as possible and make it to NYE without any insurance claims. So, pretty much the same goals as last year :D 🌋

I swear, "It's a mild climate and pretty much heaven for bonsai" is the PNW's version of "come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs!". Bring it on I guess
Click to expand...
“Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.”
 
pandacular said:
A new goal of mine: sell at least one tree, and maybe some pots. Bonus points if I sell actually decent stuff and not just the dogs of my collection at bargain prices.

I listened to an episode of Bonsai Wire where they talked about the “dunce shelf” for trees you don’t like. I feel I have a few too many trees that fit that category, and would like to move them along.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I have several sub-par nursery trees I acquired early in my bonsai journey. My intent with those was to see if I could keep them alive before moving on to better material, knowing they would never amount to anything great. They were fun to work on, survived two moves, but I see little reason to keep them around at this point.
I could use a pot or two 🙂
 
my goals :
1- to not kill any tree
2- to have healthy trees (green foliage, no diseases, pests etc)

My dream :
to be able to look at a tree and to know exactly what it needs at this moment (watering, exposition change, nothing etc) or what it suffers from (disease, root issue, insects etc)
 
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