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After poring over the thread for the past couple days, I've got a couple questions for y'all! I've been toying with bonsai for a couple years now, but haven't ever given it a serious commitment. Hopefully I can buckle down and get some stuff started! Here are some of my hopefuls:   Acer macrophyllum that volunteered itself about eight years ago which I've been thoroughly unsuccessful at killing (not for lack of effort). Over the years I've grown more fond of it, and want to try my hand at turning it into a bonsai. Eventually I want to bring it down to about 1/3 of its current height. What's the rule of thumb for how often you should prune away a third of the plant? Is it once a year or every other year or-? I'd also like to try doing some deadwood sticking out the top of it; what's the safest way to kill a portion? Just stripping the bark off?   Crassula ovata and C. ovata var. 'Gollum.' The Gollum has a decent start but the plain ovata needs some work. I grew it from a cutting back in 2004, and while I love it to pieces I don't really know where to go with it. I know I'd like the trunk larger and fuller foliage, but beyond that I haven't the foggiest. Should I work on trunk girth or filling out the foliage first? How would I go about achieving girth?  My woefully light-starved P. afra, grown from cuttings (on my windowsill in gloomy OR, stolen from a plant in AZ). I'm going to try to get one of them to branch out and then go from there. Finally, a rubber tree:  I've had this guy for a long time and have never had any success with getting it to branch out (I realize the pot is laughably microscopic). Has anyone had success bonsai-ing one of these? I'm not particularly attached to it, so at worst I kill it, it will have been a good learning experience, and I have one less plant to worry about. v  vI also have what I believe are Prunus mume and Chaenomeles japonica. P. mume seems fairly common in bonsai but does C. japonica lend itself to the art at all? Thank you folks for all the wonderful information and inspiration! I'm super stoked to have stumbled upon this thread. 
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Feb 24, 2013 05:44
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Rad, thank you! We just moved from a windowless dungeon-house (which my plants have been languishing in for ~3 years, ugh) into one with that awesome West-facing picture window; most of my houseplants haven't had the chance to acclimate to it but some of my cacti are starting to pigment up again, so I'm hoping it's just a matter of time now. Will forcing energy into getting it to leaf out slow the trunk growth? My instincts tell me yes, but I really have no idea. Also, thanks for the info on the F. elastica! I picked it up at the grocery ages ago and the only thing the tag read was "houseplants clean your air!" I was pretty confident that wasn't the proper name for it. I think this one'll be my first project. 
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Feb 24, 2013 18:18
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