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madlilnerd posted:Oh man, I put an avocado stone on to sprout yesterday, but I didn't know you could bonsai them! I really want to do this. If you can bonsai a kitten, you can bonsai an avocado.
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Oct 6, 2012 05:25
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BonsaiOutlet seems to be cheaper through their amazon store. I think they were selling 10 packs of 8" plastic training pots for $27 there last I checked. They seem nice looking enough to me for home displaying if it's not like a gift or "showpiece" plant, but I'm also somebody with a bunch of indoor plants still in their garden center pots sitting in his living room. Also hi, bonsai thread. I lurked and maybe posted here a couple of times like 6 years ago. I've been gardening since I was a kid, and was always curious about bonsai but never got into the hobby. Then I found the Herons Bonsai/Peter Chan youtube stuff by accident in December and I've been playing through the back catalog while doing lab work. I've probably long-missed the cutoff for snagging good christmas season garden center rejects, but I'm excited to try my hand at torturing clearance-bin plants on the cheap. I wish cannabis weren't an annual so that I could bonsai it.
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Jan 30, 2020 02:25
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Platystemon posted:I sterilise tools with bleach, which is a strong argument for stainless steel. loving scrub, doesn’t even have an autoclave in their house 
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Mar 3, 2020 15:44
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Goddamnit! I was watching this online shop to grab some conifer/maple saplings cheap. They were available up until like last week too. Guess everybody else had the same idea whatwith this virus and all that. Fuckin snapped up all the 4-6’ pines and regular bonsai specimens and whatnot lickety split!
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Mar 19, 2020 18:56
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So on Friday I ended up spending three hours buying toilet paper at Costco, which turned into me having to Zoom into a remote meeting from the parking lot. Fortunately Costco is next to Home Depot and, welp, Home Depot got their first shipment of nursery stock in. Not like there’s a public health crisis forcing many of us to work from home kicking off or anything. Tldr- in the last 2 days between plants and tools/etc I dropped like $150 on bonsai poo poo. Picked up two 30” leyland cypresses that are actually groups (offshoots? I’m banking on being able to separate them, if they share a root it’s way deep down- I’m pretty sure they’re multiple trees sharing one pot), two 12” black pines, and an 8” juniper I’m absolutely in love with. Got some fresh pots, wire, and a few other things coming in the next few days. Can’t wait! Spent a good 3 hours yesterday cleaning up the juniper, one of the pines, and one of the cypress pots. Hopefully gonna get a few individual plantings and at least one forest out of the cypresses.
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Mar 22, 2020 12:46
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poo poo yeah! My wires and cutter arrived a day early
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Mar 24, 2020 19:06
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Just wasted most of the day trying to turn a $24 Home Despot four-trunk Leyland cypress, that I bought back in March when I was a lot dumber about cypresses, into worthwhile stuff. Now I know why everybody’s like “don’t waste your time with Leyland cypress”. You start taking apart the solid wood chunk that forms the heart of the beastie (after watching a few YouTube rednecks show you how, including one dude who turns the top of a 30 foot tree into a five foot tree, which is admittedly pretty cool, and another cat who just goes to town ripping a shrub to literal pieces with his bare hands and then just like shoves them in some dirt swearing that they’ll grow like that). You get them apart and you collect the bigger bottom branches that have to come off for not-quite-air (ground?) layering. You bend them and notice that they have pleasing, willowy shapes. You become optimistic. You look at the now-solitary trunks. these will make killer uprights, you think as you spread the branches out to get a good look. And then you understand. This plant’s proportions are totally off and there’s not really any good way to compensate for it or trim the branches to a more acceptable size and induce budback. It just looks mawkish and gangly and weird. You bend them this way and that way. What do you even do with them? Well, nevermind. gently caress the haters. I’m gonna make something worthwhile here. Anything can bonsai with enough work.....since then I’ve made a teeny tiny forest out of a bunch of the harvested branches. Not sure that it’ll look great or even survive but whatever. I’m currently fiddling around with trying to wire up the smallest trunk into an interesting shape. The 3 larger ones are all separated and potted to allow rooting. Clearly not gonna return them. Hopefully they root and then....I guess I plant them in the yard? My landlord will probably like it. I still have another one, which also ain’t getting returned. For the $ I should’ve gotten another picea and juniper instead (I’ve been super happy with how the ones I got on the same trip have been turning out).
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Apr 21, 2020 21:49
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Crocoduck posted:Two kind of contradictory pieces of advice. Ultimately, I’m running out of plants to work on and I sure as poo poo ain’t going back to Home Depot anytime soon. Well hello Mr Leyland Cypress what can I do with you...
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Apr 22, 2020 20:40
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I’m beginning to wonder if a leyland wouldn’t make a good tanuki candidate. They’re really short-lived trees, only 20-25 years so I can see why you might not want to even try when something like a juniper exists.Silver John posted:Ok, picture time, didn’t do great with the pruning as can be seen by the bald spot Looks nice!
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Apr 26, 2020 11:53
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Jestery posted:I let my potbelly fig grow a whole bunch more leaves in preparation for the lessened sunlight of winter. And with letting him grow a little wild and moving his locale to a slightly more cool and moist one, he has started growing aerial root every where. Which is rad  hell yeah
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Apr 26, 2020 12:08
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Seasonal/workflow question for you older hands- how late in the season can I reasonably do a bunch of serious repotting/pruning/wiring (ie start a “fresh” plant) before it becomes risky or you get less than optimal results? I’ve got a couple more conifers that I haven’t started working on yet, and I have my eye on a flowering forsythia stump that a previous tenant left randomly planted in the back yard. The juniper and dwarf spruces I took from nursery stock and set up back in March are looking fantastic and the first one I worked on is starting to get a lot of budback in the places I pruned. It’s been raining heavily this whole month (raining a bunch today, otherwise I’d have posted pics) and I’ve only had to water like three times. Everybody looks super happy and healthy and I hope to god I didn’t just loving jinx this whole deal. So anyway, how long in the season can I keep doing this? I’m assuming that by mid to late summer it’s definitely too late if you expect the plant to still grow.
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Apr 26, 2020 23:33
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Crocoduck posted:I'm repotting a san jose and an itoigawa juniper this weekend. My spruce and maples have already passed the window. I'm in PA, zone 7a I think - if you live south of me you're further along in the season, if you live further north you're a little behind. What you want to look for in the spruce is bud swell - if they'rve started looking like little popcorn balls you're too late. Define “little popcorn balls” pls  (I’m in MA, btw, so north of you)
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Apr 27, 2020 00:38
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Graaah some loving bird or other animal went ahead and ripped all the moss off of my juniper, and only the juniper, and left it wadded up in a little heap  It was really well established too, but apparently not as established as the moss on the picea plantings
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May 15, 2020 23:47
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fwiw, I really like Peter Chan and he definitely got me into actually doing bonsai rather than planning to get into bonsai at a later date, or after owning a home or whatever else but there are more "serious" and traditionally rigorous people out there. I like Bjorn's stuff a lot, incredibly talented dude. With all that said, I'm struggling to see the intent behind the cuts you made to that picea. I wasn't there and I don't know how those branches looked in person or met the trunk, so I'm curious to hear what your intent with the tree is. Why did you lop off its top? Where do you want it to get? Crocoduck posted:Italian Bonsai Dream wanna make that porno
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May 31, 2020 01:53
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Aw dang, I just pinched/back trimmed my spruces about 2 weeks ago and I'm waiting to take pics when the backbudding has grown in for a bit. They've both come so far since March (I've also got one pre-bonsai that's a bit of a mess where I tried to turn a second head into a jin and it worked but it's an ugly, out of place jin, but also I don't think I can just shave it down and go formal upright so I'm leaving it for now and letting it mature). But now I might not get the chance. Maybe I'll post some fresh pics, and progress shots from the spring. Do we have a lifeboat Discord for this?
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Jun 25, 2020 05:00
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Oof, and I thought I did bad by my azaleas this year when I forgot to water them during the first week of the George Floyd protests and killed off all their flowers early Good luck little floor tree
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Jun 30, 2020 20:10
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Second flush of growth is coming in wonderfully on the piceas. Idk whether to take pictures this weekend or wait for them to grow out for a couple more weeks. I think I might have to repot two of them but I’m scared. And I really don’t want to mess up the scape on one of them. I took pics in late May and never posted them (more important poo poo happened in America and I got distracted 🤷🏻♂️ ) but the trees look so much better now. Really glad I soaked them in tupperwares during the heatwave last week. I wound up killing a good bunch of the leaves on my azaleas by being too late with soaking them. These things appear to be bulletproof tho and they’ve since grown back fresh leaves + budding ramification. Call it an ad hoc defoliation I guess 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️. They may not be true Satsukis but for $6.50 a pop (60% off) at Home Despot they’ve done marvelously.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:33
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1) how do people here feel about ficus bonsai? What about “Ficus ginseng” grafts of the sort commonly sold in places like IKEA? 2) say somebody hypothetically got one with attractive aerial roots to try some root-over-rock planting, and when Will this heal? Even better, will the plant grow scar tissue around the area? Will it throw out more aerials to fill in the space? Can anything be done to make the situation better? Should the injury be wrapped/packed? What if this hypothetical individual wanted to keep the tree around the rock and needed the split there? It seems like it’s in a precarious spot but it’s a ficus, and we deliberately split trunks and branches in this hobby all the time. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 00:02
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Sludge Tank posted:I've always loved Bonsai but I've never actually tried my hand at it. 1) put it outside. It’s a pine. It needs to be outside. Also if it’s a native tree it’s going to do exponentially better outside. Indoor climate is much drier and darker than what it wants, and it’s going to need all the sunlight it can get. 2) the cuts don’t look too bad, but it’s going to need a lot of attention. That doesn’t mean fussing— in fact fussing is bad. But you’re gonna have to be 100% on top of making sure it’s got proper water, it’s getting adequate sun, it’s not getting scorched or burned, etc. A little tree like that with that much pruning, and in a small bonsai pot, is going to be at risk of dying in no time flat if it dries out too much. 3) get rid of the gravel for now (maybe not, but I see it getting in the way right now). This tree is in active training right now, and will be for the foreseeable future. “Finishing” the pot at this moment is like putting on a suit and tie to go to the gym. Also gravel is tacky mall-bonsai poo poo, and you’re much better than that. Gravel is for scrubs. It’s how posers get clocked from a mile away. Use moss as cover instead. 4) consider how you want the tree to look in the future. Do you want it to grow big? Do you want it to stay small? How big/small? Do you want lots of ramification and foliage and complex growth? For a sapling that small and pruned back I’d actually strongly consider a bigger pot in the future. Like a big ol’ “normal” round nursery pot. Right now it’s gonna be way overkill, but in a few months to a year you might want to actually let the plant grow its roots out a bit and grab a lot of soil’s worth of nutrients. You might even go as big as five gallons for a season or two. If you want to be a real champ, stick that sucker in the ground for a year or four and really watch it get thick and strong. But right now it’s way too small to benefit from or frankly survive something like that, so keeping it in its pot outdoors should suffice. Given the room, saplings tend to explode in growth for a couple of years, and you can either let them do that or prune them back/train them hard multiple times to get the desired effect. A lot of the most striking looking/classic tabletop trees started out as 6 foot tall trees that spent a decade maturing in the ground and were hard-chopped back. Just make sure the pot doesn’t dry out too much- you have to be an absolute fascist when it comes to making sure plants in bonsai pots don’t dry out too much. The pots are shallow and wide, which makes them excellent at evaporation and very poor at retention. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 12:02
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Sludge Tank posted:Thanks for the advice. I will take that all into consideration. Huon Pine is actually a conifer, not a pine.  you mean “it’s actually a podocarp, not a pine”. both are conifers. Edit: also my point about a bigger pot isn’t to give the foliage less area to weep over, or whatever. It’s to let the roots, and by extension the trunk, get big. But the pot you’ve got now is plenty big, and actually should be for a long time. I’d recommend finding a good shady spot outside and letting it live there for a while. And definitely get more trees, bonsai is all about having as many trees as you can afford/fit/manage, having too few trees leads to fussing over the few trees that you have which leads to dead trees. The more trees you have the more things you have to work on on a given day. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 12:31
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Hubis posted:OK, here's a partial seasonal update I like the twin trunk myself. It looks interesting. Different from a lot of junipers, but each seems to have its own potential and character. You could always decide to turn one into a jin or sacrifice it, or split it away and turn it into its own separate tree (a cascade?) down the road. ......To be honest, the more I look at it the more I think you’d regret splitting the trunks. As they grow out you’ll be happy to have the one on the right stretch horizontally and the one on the left add balance and verticality. You can always bring branches from any of the big sections around and fold them into a very attractive layered look by closing the gap between them a little bit. But the negative space and visible trunks will look cool if they thicken up and grow new branches and foliage in the future. The tree looks very balanced with the two trunks and has a lot of potential. Another idea is to bring the rightward section down into a cascade and use the other trunk to balance it up top. Lots of options, lots of potential. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 00:54
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lil poopendorfer posted:Thank you all Where did you get it?
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Jul 19, 2020 01:52
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dog I literally mix $5 sphagnum moss with $5 nursery pot soil and occasionally $5 cactus/palm/citrus media and I think for a couple nice ($6-7?) potting soil and I think everybody's pulling through ok
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Jul 19, 2020 20:06
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In fact I'm so fuckin pleased as punch with my conicas. Apparently everybody but peter chan (and apparently NEBonsai, who occasionally sell specimen conicas for hundreds) thinks they're heretical anyway so I might as well go like 65% sphagnum right into a training pot. I might as well leave these suckers in big tupperwares of water in full summer sun all day long. I might as well clip the apical buds in june. Might as well name them things like Bake-kujira. tbh, I hewed pretty close to peter's late winter (march, early april...so "mud season" in NE) timing and "heavy style/clip/wire and right into a training pot" style of not loving around or dawdling too much, and then I babied them and watched them closely for the next two months. I would've clipped them in May/first week of June but America happened. They seem fine, climate change makes fools of us and our tree calendars anyway. But it seems like most people who hate them approach them like a pine and/or juniper and/or dry them the gently caress out. They also really benefit/suffer from "instant bonsai" syndrome, where you can take a really nice source specimen and turn it into a really good looking bonsai in a comparatively short amount of time, but that also means that the final product is really sensitive to the quality of your source. You can take a juniper or a pine or a ficus, decide that you hate everything about them, cut them down to virtually a stump (or in the ficus' case, literally) and start the tree over. The sky's the limit. A picea "conica" won't do that for you, so you really have to pay attention to stuff like interesting trunks, multiple heads, cool roots, neat branches, etc from the beginning. You can't take a random conica and make it into whatever you want with work the way you can a juniper. You have to commit to spending 3 hours at the garden center rifling through all 100 trees to find the most interesting two, but I think it's worth it if you can keep 'em alive. And maybe keep them in deeper training pots rather than the thinnest bonsai pot that a pine can take. IDK. Pride cometh before the fall, all these trees could be dead next week
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Jul 19, 2020 20:26
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It’s finally looking like it’s going to cool off a bit so I’m thinking it’s as good a time as any to repot my azaleas from nursery pots into trainers. I was going to use my usual potting mix but that’s super organic/water heavy (like mainly sphagnum) which seems to have worked on my trees in summer because of how dry and hot it’s been (we’ll have to keep an eye on them going forward) and then I thought about using cactus mix to save money but now I think I actually want to do this as correctly as possible so as to not stress or harm or kill my plants. Also if I ever want to show or board them I don’t want people to laugh at my scrub ways. So perlite. How adequate of a kanuma replacement is it? Would a 40% sphagnum/organic potting soil 60% perlite mixture make a decent azalea substrate? Should I repot my healthy picea, juniper, and somewhat-less-healthy ficus in a similar mix? The current substrate all my trees are in is very moss-heavy. Probably like 70-80% organic and 20-30% nice soil. It’s very rich, premium stuff, but it’s not the best draining. It’s probably saved me from scorching these guys during summer but there are 3 other seasons to contend with here in MA (or at least winter and mud seasons). trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 14:37
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Also- thoughts on getting ahold of pumice and/or turface? I wanna pot these suckers right.
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Aug 3, 2020 16:41
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lil poopendorfer posted:I dont really like perlite, it's too light and always ends up floating to the top of my soil, leaving the bottom without any. It has poor cation exchange capacity, so it doesnt retain any nutrients for the tree to take up. Cool. Going by your recipe, can I swap the crushed clay for bio-balls (expanded clay) and/or pumice? I seem to have an easier shot of getting pumice for whatever reason. There’s a NAPA in my neck of the woods so the DE shouldn’t be too hard to get.
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Aug 3, 2020 17:06
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My local HD has some really lovely looking blue star junipers and boxwoods in, and it got me thinking about trying some planting and styling techniques that I was too intimidated/didn’t have adequate plants for in the winter/spring. If I pick up some plants now or during the end-of-season, can I repot and do major styling to them at the end of summer/fall? Could I start trimming branches and doing initial shaping? I imagine that the hottest days of the year will be largely behind us shortly but we’ll have about 9-12 weeks of pretty mild weather before stuff starts to really cool down (I’m in New England). Should I wait until late winter/early spring to do the initial shapes? Should I buy 1-2 cheap trees now or wait until the holidays? Like I said, I’m looking at junipers and boxwood. Also thinking about harvesting a couple of the feral invasive Forsythia that populate the woods behind my parents’ house around Labor Day. I’m also waiting until we stop getting daily 90+ degree days before I repot my azaleas. I’m frankly pretty thrilled with how they look at the moment, still in their nursery pots. They’ve come a long way from the ragged $6 bushes I got back in April. Definitely getting rootbound in those nursery pots tho. Good plan? Bad plan? I asked about soil mix last week and got together the necessary ingredients (pumice arrived today) but I want to make sure I do this right and don’t gently caress my plants up. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 01:58
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Crocoduck posted:Bad plan, bad plan, bad plan. To everything, there is a season and this season is not for that poo poo. No, no worries— that’s exactly the straight talk I was looking for. I would’ve repotted my azaleas right after flowering but they flowered in early-to-mid-June, during the riots and during the first big heatwave of the summer. Not only was I distracted for a big part of that window, I felt like it was maybe too hot and dry to safely do it then, or right afterward
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Aug 13, 2020 12:27
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Thanks for the advice! I guess I should clarify that I was hoping to repot into large training pots, not shallow finished pots. But if it’s a bad idea, then it’s a bad idea. Would moving them into larger nursery pots be good/bad? Like, no disturbing the root ball at all, just pop ‘em in and surround with soil? I’m worried about the root density in the current nursery pots, there’s a good amount of roots that are pressed up against the sides of the pots and I’m worried they’ll 1) risk excess moisture problems 2) risk freezing/frosting/burning in winter with no soil around them to insulate and direct contact with the cold surface. Based on the advice ITT and some quick research, it seems like I can clip 1 or 2 branches that I don’t want regrowth on, right? Obviously no heavy styling or pruning, not that either of them need it—but one of the azaleas has a medium branch that’s begun pressing hard into another part of the plant and affecting the ability of that area to properly fill in; and the other has a big ugly stick pointing out of the back of the trunk with some wee branches coming off the end. I just want to lop both of them off. The bushes have a ton of growth, I’d be taking like less than 5% off. But if leaving a wound like that in August on the plant is bad, I suppose I can leave them. Also, while we’re on the subject of seasonally-appropriate care: are small poly tunnels and plant tents good ways of wintering these guys outside? I can always put them in a garage, or indoors, or in my CRV, when it gets too cold or rough. Alternatively I’m in MA, and NEBonsai’s boarding rates aren’t terrible for maybe a few of the more delicate/worthy plants (probably not the picea, those things appear bulletproof and also I would probably be laughed at). lil poopendorfer posted:E: this might be the excuse you need to get some tropical trees. Grab a ginseng ficus and a portulacaria at Home Depot and get to work I’ve got two ginseng ficus (one that looks great even after I cracked its trunk getting it around a rock, and one that had 3/5 branches die from the trauma of being moved from IKEA to my house) and I have yet to find a porticularia that I really like. I could grab and separate some $3 mini HD porticularia to grow up, but I already did exactly that with three different jade varietals and now I have like 20 little jade plants that are all way too young and small for bonsai. But they look nice in my succulent menagerie.
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Aug 13, 2020 14:52
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Yeah I was thinking something low to the ground and cheap, like those pop-up tent style ones.
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Aug 14, 2020 00:16
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lil poopendorfer posted:Good advice Thanks for this! Figure it’s a good opportunity to post pics. Maybe too many pics, and I probably should’ve shown the backs. 🤷🏻♂️ Azalea 1:  The tufty, taller bit on the left is coming out of the branch I want to remove, there should be enough branching and foliage to fill that space in.    Pls ignore the leaves I haven’t deadheaded yet.  This nursery soil seems dense and high in organic stuff, but also it seems to drain decently well and it’s got lots of big chunks. The plants seem to have thrived in it all spring and summer, FWIW.  Azalea 2:  Don’t be fooled by that $12.98 pricetag, baybee (I actually paid $6.49 for each. They looked ragged )   That thick straight horn coming out of the back is the branch I wanna cut on this one. I was hoping it would thicken the trunk a bit, but now I think it might be best gone. Idk. The rest of the back “tail” on this very birdlike plant might need a shearing of some kind, but taking that ugly branch off won’t change its appearance very much from the front three views, and will actually tidy the back up a bit. I go back and forth on that “tail”. Sometimes I think it looks bad and overgrown and sloppy, and other times I think it looks nice and mounded, especially when flowered. I see tons of satsukis and pro work with mounds like that (albeit much fuller and more grown out and much better coiffed). Also, I’m half-expecting/half-hoping that the young shoots coming up through the middle will fill it in. That used to be a big hole a few weeks ago. Crazy how fast they grow, esp compared to my dwarf spruces. I really dig the wide slope of this tree and how one side swoops down lower and wider than the other. It really gives a sense of grace, almost like the plant is bowing to you or flying. I’ve noticed that a lot of the branches that I wanted to cut back in May or early June, and that I neglected due to the protests among other things, ended up really filling out both plants and giving them lovely mature appearances. Some branches that seemed excessive, out of place, or sacrificial ended up growing into real key parts. For all that’s been said about missing seasonal deadlines/windows and wanting to do a ton of work on your plants, I’ve come to appreciate just also letting your plant do it’s thing and grow into a tree. To be fair, I did take like 40% off of each azalea back in early April.  And the roots. The soil isn’t waterlogged, I just had this guy sitting in a Rubbermaid tub all day, and immediately before taking pics. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 02:39
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lil poopendorfer posted:Wowww you make me really wanna get an azalea now Thank you! It’s not all good plant genes tho  . (I feel like a stage mom) I’ll try to find some older pics, maybe I have some from when I got them. But it suffices to say that they were really rough looking. I definitely picked the two with the best potential and workable bits of the bunch, but both were initially much taller with big vertical branches ending in these horrible clumpy masses of smaller branches and leaves (think of the “tail” on Tree 2 but like 6-8 inches taller, like a weird azalea lollipop. Only one of them had “wings” then and they were pitiful— like 1-2 little branches. I had some branches wired up on both trees but I took the wires off in late May/early June. Like I said earlier, I initially thought about pruning and thinning out a lot of the summer growth before being pleasantly surprised (at least for now). They finished their first big extension in around mid-June and then put forth another big second flush, which is honestly where they got a lot of the density that you see now. And for a while both had great big holes where the old lollipop branches used to be. I think I’m gonna let them both just do their thing from here on out, unless there’s something that really needs removal or attending to, and then do a big annual styling in early 2021. I imagine that as the trees get bigger the perceived space between the branches will open up a little bit. For some hybrid megacorporate nursery plants, I’m over the moon with how they’ve responded this year (or maybe precisely *because they’re Home Depot-bought affronts to God and Nature? They’re tenacious as gently caress, I get the sense that they’d be unkillable as yard plants once established). Their flowers are white, btw, definitely no Satuski-like variegation. I really regret not getting any flower shots this year- partially that’s because I wrecked their flowers early by forgetting to soak them during the early June heat spike that accompanied the first week of protests. But definitely get your mitts on some azaleas! They’re wicked hardy and they honestly take way less work than I imagined to look halfway decent, esp if you pick good stock/plants that are naturally gonna behave and grow in an aesthetically pleasing ‘bonsai friendly’ way. Definitely easier and much faster-growing than a lot of conifers. They’ve wound up being some of my favorite plants to work with and I’d love to add some real-deal satsukis to the menagerie, maybe in 2021.
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Aug 14, 2020 20:45
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I never seem to see them, let alone for such attractive prices.
works pretty well though and I like the ability to progressively increase the tension with precises click-by-click ratcheting. You can cut holes in your nursery cans to mount them.
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lil poopendorfer posted:E: this might be the excuse you need to get some tropical trees. Grab a ginseng ficus and a portulacaria at Home Depot and get to work Ok Comboomer posted:I’ve got two ginseng ficus (one that looks great even after I cracked its trunk getting it around a rock, and one that had 3/5 branches die from the trauma of being moved from IKEA to my house) and I have yet to find a porticularia that I really like. I could grab and separate some $3 mini HD porticularia to grow up, but I already did exactly that with three different jade varietals and now I have like 20 little jade plants that are all way too young and small for bonsai. But they look nice in my succulent menagerie. I went to Mahoney’s for the first time this weekend—as an aside: MAgoons, Mahoney’s is loving heaven. Best plant/garden store I’ve ever been to. Absolutely loving massive, and the plants all look catalog fresh and beautiful. They have literally everything I could ever want in a plant store except variegated monstera, because you’re gonna be paying $150 to special order that poo poo anyway given how in-trend it is. Definitely worth visiting for A-grade material, or for houseplants and yard plants in general. Anyway, the tldr is I found a porticularia I like, and I’ll probably buy a couple more soon:  Not bad for $17, definitely head and shoulders above any of the other elephant bushes I’ve seen. Probably helps that this one’s been prepped specifically for sale as pre-bonsai. (No clue why it’s sideways, the original image is not. Blame imgur, not me or my lovely plant)
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Aug 17, 2020 23:43
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lil poopendorfer posted:Wow, nice find! That’s a steal, compared to what I usually see. Are you gonna repot it or let it grow out? I could see the argument for either one. I actually have no clue, I’ve been trying to educate myself on portulacaria (gonna spell it right this time) bonsai, and keeping them in general. I still don’t know at all where I wanna go with it but I definitely want the trunk to thicken up. Right now it looks kinda rootbound to me (lots of fat roots snaking around the bottom perimeter of the pot, tree looks like it’s 1-2 months away from falling out) so I may repot it into an 8” or 11” training pot (about 4” deep, so lots of room to grow roots and get big) and let it grow out there. Also looking at some of the monstrose jade propagates I have going and thinking about which ones I wanna keep “wild type” and which ones could go into training over the next year. Turns out the monstrose forms look a lot better as bonsai to my eyes than the standard morph with the big ovoid leaves. I’ve got a bunch of Gollums, Hobbits, and Ogre Ears to play with. Kind of amazing how cheap and ubiquitous those got in the last few years. Still no chance of getting a Gimli without knowing somebody or paying hundreds of dollars—such a gorgeous and odd looking jade tho. I would also love some good grow light/tent recommendations for my tropicals and succulents, but I think there’s at least one better thread for that (General plant thread, maybe the Gardening thread too but they’re more into vegetables)
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Aug 21, 2020 16:37
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Added another tall portulocaria, a wide pot with 4-5 short but fat portulocaria trunks, and a threefer of schefflera + a crop of other desired houseplants (a bunch of croton varietals that I didn’t have and a monstera adansonii, finally I can die on Instagram) I have a problem.
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Sep 1, 2020 00:05
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Jestery posted:Hey there bud this makes a great phone background, btw
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Sep 2, 2020 10:18
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eSporks posted:Just getting into the hobby. I've been thinking about buying sever juniper procumbens to practice trimming and styling and to play around with on the cheap. I can't really find a good source for affordable pots, I was wondering if anyone had recommendations? Amazon, unfortunately. Unless you wanna go straight to BonsaiOutlet, etc. I have been told that you shouldn’t really prune junipers now. On that advice I, personally, have decided to wait until late Winter to buy new outdoor plants for 2021 rather than buy them now and require caring for a bunch of shrubby prebonsai through overwintering. I am happy that I followed people’s advice to take care of the outdoor bonsai I currently have for the year. For you that means more study on what you want to do in March. Watch and read as much as you can, it will make you more confident and decisive and you’ll waste less time. Learn about as many different basic species (get to know a few popular junipers, pines, larches, spruces, etc, and a few azaleas, boxwoods, maples, forsythia, etc.) as you can so that when you see something you’ve never heard of, but that looks potentially ‘bonsai-able’, for $5 at the garden center you can quickly figure out if it’s worth getting (usually yes, but also knowing poo poo will help you not waste $75 on bullshit Leyland Cypress like I did, that money could’ve gone into junipers  )Meanwhile, spend a bunch of that “I want juniper now” money on indoor bonsai like ficuses, Schhefflera, portulacaria, jade and start working on those now while you can still sun them outside/keep them by an open window. Plus, stores are gonna be rank with cheap conifers after the holidays. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 16:48
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Why don’t I ever see twin-trunk cascades (or I guess twin-cascade, if you’re thinking about two-line trees where the primary branch hangs down and forms the cascade portion while the rest of the tree stays up top)? What I mean is why are cascades with two or more big swoops so rare, as to almost be nonexistent? Is it a “looking too shrubby and small” thing? Certainly a lot of junipers and portulacaria have the starting branches and mass to do it. Is it tradition?
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Sep 16, 2020 08:05
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 03:00 |
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I’d get a couple of ficus, maybe some spekboom if you can find it large enough, and schefflera. Ideally you’re gonna want to spend more than $100 to start tho. $16-30 will get you 1-2 cheap ceramic pots or a set of 3-9 (depending on size) plastic trainers on Amazon. Personally I’d start with the latter. Wire- $15-30 will get you enough wire in enough sizes to start. Wire cutters- $10 Plant cutters- 2-3 sizes @ Home Depot/Amazon, nothing fancy, no “real” bonsai tools- at min you want a set of fine/precision pruning shears and a branch lopper which will run you about $12-$20 total. This will get you up and running but eventually you’ll want to start amassing a set of decent tools. My first pruning shears were $6 at Home Depot and they worked decently enough but I more-or less killed them for their intended purpose after about 3 months. Soil- somebody gave me an easy soil mix a few weeks back, expect to spend $30-40 on it. So that’s already at least $100 on gear and I haven’t budgeted in any plants yet. You could go all-in, plants and gear for like $150-$200. Maybe $125 if you were really thrifty/smart about getting plants (a lot of tropicals like schefflera are sold potted in groups, so like a $15 6” pot might have 3-4 individual plants in it, also lots of people have neglected ficus/etc they don’t want which can often make decent starter material). That would set you up with the basics and give you the option to add a bunch more plants and/or gear (lights, etc) over the course of the following year. Edit: you want gloves? You probably want gloves. Home Depot has them surprisingly cheap but I’d still probs expect to spend $5-$20 on a set. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 15:08
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