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Hey guys, I've been wanting to get into bonsai for a while now. My boyfriend and I went to a local bonsai show the other day, so now I'm all fired up about it. I've read this thread and poked around online a bit, but I'm a complete and utter noob. Last year I had a few maple seedlings pop up in my herb garden (two silvers and what seems to be a sugar)and the question of what to do with them got me thinking about bonsai. I love the aesthetic and since I putter around my dumb herbs and pepper plants constantly already, it would be a fantastic hobby for me. I have some questions about them, though. They're not currently potted - will it traumatize them if I transplanted them not in winter? Also, the silvers are shooting up like weeds - they've doubled in size since spring to about 18in tall. Do absolutely need to start with tiny seedlings or can I work with year-old saplings? Has anyone here worked with linden trees? All the lindens in the area are starting to drop seeds, so I'm thinking about sprouting a couple of those too. Oh, and my rosemary. I couple years ago I bought this crusty old rosemary plant on super sale from a garden boutique place. It sucks for regular culinary use and honestly looks like a failed bonsai. I'm thinking of making it bonsai (again?). I'll take some pictures when I get home.
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Jun 4, 2012 19:14
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Mr. Soop posted:Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with Silver and Sugar Maples. However, I do have some general advice and good news for you. Transplanting them now would probably shock them and kill them. I would say that as with most deciduous trees, wait until Autumn to transplant them into a container. Both seedlings and the year-old saplings will be fine to work with. The 18 inch ones will be a little tall, but you can always cut them down bit by bit as time goes on. Doing so will encourage them to backbud and put out shoots lower on the tree; I would advise doing this in the spring right before the tree comes out of dormancy in order to have it be ready to recover from such a large cut (maybe take it down from 18 to 12 - 10 inches) right away. Also do your best to keep all the roots intact when you dig them up as well. As for the Linden tree, I have no idea at all. Sorry. Hey thanks! I did finally remember to snap some pictures, buuut I forgot to copy them to my computer, and now I don't have my camera on me. The rosemary has a nice twisty, woody base, but with a bunch of straight-up growth on it. It used to have some nice branches that hung over the rim of its pot, but these died over the winter when it was inside my too-dark house. Luckily, I'm moving to a house with assloads of natural light in a couple months, so my plants (like the rosemary) that need to spend winters indoors don't lose branches or grow weird long shoots. I'm worried that moving will mess with my plans to pot the maples, but it's just two blocks and I'm friendly with the new tenants, so I could probably just leave them until they start losing leaves. Oh, the other day I came across a gorgeous sugar maple sapling. It's next to the sidewalk at a wooded part of the street, had been growing in the shade and under leaves, so it's stunted and has a wonderfully twisty and gnarly trunk. Hope I can remember to get it in the fall if it hasn't been killed by a weed whacker or something.  As for bonsai care for the not-usually-bonsai maples, I poked around online and this one bonsai master guy recommended that bonsai noobs start with trees native to their area so it's harder to kill them. Also, I found some bonsai forum post where someone posted pics of their silver maple bonsais, and they looked great. I'll just follow the advice out there for other bonsai maple species. I just really like the idea of using native trees in bonsai. I hope to move back to California at some point, and it would be awesome to have a collection of native bonsai like manzanita, mountain mahogany, and California juniper. Authentic You fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jun 9, 2012 |
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Jun 9, 2012 19:48
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Hey guys, I posted in here a ways back and have since been waiting for my maple seedlings to go dormant so I can transplant them to my new place up the street. Anyhow, interesting story. There's a big cedar-like tree in front of my new house. Today, I suddenly realized that the whole thing has turned orange. I didn't notice it before because it was blending in with the rest of the fall colors. I was all '  oh god the tree is dead!' at first, but then remembered reading about deciduous conifers a while ago, and how this tree looked more like a redwood than a cedar (I'm from Norcal, land of redwoods, but since this is PA, didn't think it could be a redwood). So, turns out it's a Dawn Redwood. Now I want a bonsai Dawn Redwood.  Also, been meaning to post this for a while. I saw a really cool ivy bonsai at a show a while back, and thought that would be fun (and relatively easy) to grow some ivy. I came across a really cool variegated ivy cultivar back at my parents' garden:  There were a dozen or so sprouts of this hiding in the garden with the normal ivy. I've never seen this variety in stores or nurseries - it's always the white-rimmed Glacier kind. Googling has told me this is probably the Fantasia cultivar (still not a dead ringer), on which there really isn't much info at all. I like to think I've found a special rare ivy. I'll try to get some cuttings when I'm visiting home for Christmas.
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Nov 12, 2012 21:59
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