So a couple people were suggesting we do this. So we are :hihi:
Post pics, list species, anything special you're doing, just summarize and talk even if no one is listening, etc. :icon_lol:
I'll start.
My Chinese Elm and first bonsai. Got this guy in mid-late February of this year. I'm surprised it's fared this well with everything I've put it through. It's bouncing back though roud:
I'll post pics of my Maple tomorrow, it's cheering up after its 2 day ride in a dark USPS box.
My White Pine is doing well, I think I'll use some Shade cloth this summer though.
All my trees are sprouting new leaves, the moss has really become almost overwhelming on my Juniper. I managed to pull my Ficus inside anytime it got near freezing, so they have all their leaves in good shape still this year.
New sprouting is a good time to trim IME to get the right shape and to direct tree resources to the right areas.
My very nice Azalea got cooked by not watering 1 day last summer when it was 100F, I lost about 1/2 the perfect tree. I'm hoping it'll regrow this spring, but I have doubts, the toasted parts do not appear to be coming back. 1 day, that was all it took.
Keeping this thread going, I figured it was a good time to repot this juniper I got over Christmas break in Massachussetts from New England Bonsai. I repotted it into this nice, cheap training pot from Takashima Bonsai.
Spring break can't come soon enough, I'm gonna build a great bonsai stand. Here's what I plan to base it off of (sorry for poor quality):
Well. Today I went to lunch with a friend, and we decided that we should build a bonsai bench. Five hours and a trip to the Home Depot later, voila!
The whole thing still needs to be stained and I need to add a center brace around the whole thing. But for two sixteen/seventeen year old guys who decided to throw this thing together on a whim in a Tuesday afternoon, it's certainly not too shabby.
I'm having my elm professionally repotted in a place in GA day after tomorrow and will probably pick up some new material then. Which reminds me, I need to pay for the trident maple! Enjoy!
Soak it in polyurethane, lots of water, weather and abuse. Like 3-6 layers, sand between coats. Otherwise, that will be rotten and sorry lookign after a couple fo years. Water seal, heck, lots of everything.
Cool, thanks for the advice. Gotta stain it too. It's not near done yet but works for now. No bad weather on the way for a little while, so I have some time.
wow, i didnt know people could just build stuff like that.
i wouldnt even know where to start. the closest i get to building is assembling crap from ikea.
Haha, we made a mess in Home Depot for like two hours. This was actually pretty straightforward, because they sell staircase pieces. So it makes for a very easy tiered construction!
The elm is severely root bound and I don't have the tools nor do I feel I have the experience to repot such a tree. So I'd rather have it done by an experienced bonsai master. Plus, I'll buy some new material while I'm there.
Here's how I built it. These are all the pieces put together in the store, lol.
The pieces we ended up using were:
- three-step stair pieces (2x)
- 2"x4", 30" (4x)
- 2"x4", 43" (4x)
- 48"x6" (6x)
Great, now I'm going to have to build a bonsai bench. Sure would be nice to have the trees closer to eye level than sitting on the ground.
Speaking of which, this past weekend I surprisingly found the time to build a planter box from some recycled wood, and I repotted one of my trees that I started from seed about 3 years ago. I'll post pictures later tonight!
This is an ornamental peach that I've been growing from seed for the past few years. Still very far from being called a bonsai, but I'm working on it. They pot is way too big, but at this point I'm just trying to get some meat on the tree!
And here's the planter box I threw together. I had collected seeds from interesting trees this past fall and finally got around to planting them.
Trees included:
Ginkgo
Burr Oak
Locust
Douglas Fir
Bald Cypress
Some kind of deciduous magnolia
Magnolia grandiflora
Sweetgum
On the left you can see a silver x red maple that I've begun to grow on the main seiryu stone from my 48 gallon iwagumi. I was originally growing another tree on it, but it didn't take the transplant too well. A maple seed from my neighbors tree had fallen into one of the cracks in the rock and started growing, so I left it there. I'm excited to see some new growth on it this spring!
Only real indoor bonsai would be ficus and the likes. However, in the summer, even they would enjoy the outdoors much more than being stuck inside, provided that you don't live in Antarctica.
I would say that it looks pretty nice in my opinion, but its a matter of preference; some will likely say that it will drain the tree of nutrients or that its root system will tangle, but I don't think it's too big of a deal.
There are a few good places online, mostly on eBay. Make sure that you look for sellers which only sell you the actual trees in their photos, not stock photos "as an example". It's an art of perfection and you want to know exactly what you're getting roud:
Also check for local bonsai nurseries. They're few and far between, so you might have to take a little road trip.
I have a couple of quick pictures of the Montezuma cypress tree that I am training as a riparium bonsai specimen. I planted it a couple of weeks ago and it is establishing very well in its riparium planter. I decided to start to train it into a nicer shape with some bonsai wire and here it is before bending.
You can see that it just looks like a straight sapling and without a very interesting shape. After adding a few bends I think that it now looks a bit more natural. I still have more work to do on it. I am building a special very shallow tank for it and I hope to have pictures of that soon as well.
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