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Bonsai!

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:16:00 No.986138 View View Reply Original Report

Any do bonsai in /an/?

I've been doing bonsai for several years, learning all the ways to neglect and kill the things apparently.

PROTIP: don't use JB weld as a substitute for Japanese cut paste. It'll kill the entire tree.

Anyway, its been a few years since I planted a variegated Japanese willow on top of a large stone I got on a trip to the mountains. Today, I transplanted it into a temp container to start more intensive training. It had been let go wild pretty much without top training. Once there's light tomorrow, I'll try to remember to provide a pic.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:25:00 No.986146 Report

Quoted By: >>986148 >>986450

>>986138
Here's one of my first and better bonsai.....that my cat's ended up killing. It is about 2 years old in these pics.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:29:00 No.986148 Report

Quoted By: >>986150

>>986146
Here's the same peach leaf willow about 10 minutes after I first found it in a sand bar in a local river. It was just a twig that fell off, got stuck, and rooted a little.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:32:00 No.986150 Report

Quoted By: >>986151 >>986161

>>986148
Progressive pics.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:35:00 No.986151 Report

Quoted By:

>>986150
Last good pic of the leaves prior to most of the branches getting frost bite that winter. I was watering it here.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:40:00 No.986152 Report

Quoted By: >>986161

Looks pretty fucking cool.

>on top of a large stone

Can you plant whatever the fuck on top of stones? Reveal your secrets!

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:42:00 No.986154 Report

Quoted By:

This is a 25yo Creeping Juniper that was turned into a bonsai for about 2 years before my house sister killed it by not watering it while I was away on vacation. :/

I was developing the bare side to strip and treat the bark to make it white like in the OP pic. As well as trim it to look better than in the photo.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:48:00 No.986156 Report

Quoted By: >>986162

So, do you have to keep these outside all the time? Are there any that you can keep inside?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:49:00 No.986161 Report

Quoted By: >>986163 >>986167 >>986439

>>986152
See this pic,>>986150You basically grow the tree in a pot for a while until it has long enough roots (4-6 inches) to start to wrap down a stone of your choice.

Then you place the bare roots on top the stone and make sure it is fitting snug against the rock. You can make it snug by using some semi-damp soil about 1/4-1 inch thick depending on the size of your stone/roots/tree/look you're going for. Then you wrap that sucker TIGHT with some sort of plastic or pretty much anything durable. Leave the bottom of the stone and bottom edges of soil/roots exposed so the roots can spread down and out into your bonsai planter tray.

Once you've done that you can set the entire thing into the ground right up to the top of the stone. If you do that, I recommend burying the stone on top of a large piece of plywood at least 2'x2' but it is better to be 3'x3'. And leave it for a couple years. I buried mine in a large pot as you can see it in the black pot. Later I removed it and planted it in a shallow bonsai tray, but I left the plastic wrapped on it for a couple more years. I had to change the plastic a couple of times because of it rotting and flaking off due to sun exposure.

Google, "root over rock bonsai"

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:51:00 No.986162 Report

Quoted By: >>986167

>>986156
All normal variety trees are kept outside at all times until you bring them in to show off as displays for parties or special events. Only plants that can live fully inside can be used inside. Trees that need a winter dormant period need to be outside in the winter and protected from excessive temps.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:53:00 No.986163 Report

Quoted By:

>>986161
Also, after at least 2 years, you can usually take the wrappings off and expose and wash the roots over the rock. They should have been going down into and spreading out in the soil around the stone.

With most trees, you only need to repot them once a year and trim their root ball and rake it out. With the willow family you may need to do that 2 times a year because they grow like mad and get root bound quickly..

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 10:58:00 No.986167 Report

Quoted By: >>986171 >>986182

>>986161
>>986162

Awesome; I would like to get into this but I cant keep any nice plants outside. Animals/Conditions. 10/1 a cat would piss in my pot or it would get knocked over by troublesome dogs.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 11:07:00 No.986171 Report

Quoted By: >>986437

OP again.

Here's the bonsai I was working on today. These photos are from 2007. Crap it's been almost 4 years since I planted that thing in the ground on that stone. No wonder it has such a huge root. lol

>>986167
I know that feel.

That has happened to all my bonsai except 3. One is inside usually 24/7 and is a tropical, red, double-petal hibiscus. The other two are willows.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 11:13:00 No.986173 Report

Quoted By: >>986184

Speaking of cats. Here was my joy. A maple shito size bonsai. It was almost 2 years old in this pic I think. A cat ate it. ;__;

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 11:20:00 No.986182 Report

Quoted By: >>986184

>>986167
You need, "tropical indoor bonsai" so you don't need to have them outside.

http://www.hollowcreekbonsai.com/productCat39286.ctlg

Check out that listing then go to a nursery to find what you need.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 11:22:00 No.986184 Report

Quoted By:

>>986182
Oops, for got the rest of that post. The 2" tall lava rock you see int hat pic was for the>>986173shito bonsai to wrap around and be a sekijoju style bonsai, had it lived.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 11:33:00 No.986192 Report

Quoted By:

Here's my last bonsai I have pics of. This is another fast growing Peach Leaf Willow. I am trying to train it in a very special root style that I have no clue what the name of is and have only seen an example of once. Basically, it is planted in that PVC pipe with holes so it can grow its roots down to the bottom. Once it has done that nicely, I will remove the pipe and expose the upper roots. what you'll see is a tree atop a tall set of weird looking roots.

This is a pic after it was first planted over 4 years ago. I have since removed it from that pipe and planted it in a second pipe and planted that into the ground. Which deer nearly killed two years in a row. I get to repot it again this year.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 12:09:00 No.986216 Report

Quoted By:

I've been into bonsai for a couple of years. I am very good at killing my plants. Last year I shelled out a nice bit of money and bought proper pots, soil and plants at the Potomac Bonsai Festival at the National Arboretum in DC. Every single one of the plants I bought died. Though, a few of my maple tree seedlings actually survived the winter. I was very proud of that.

I would like to get up the courage to buy an already established tree, but they are so expensive and with my track record of killing plants I'm going to hold off on that for a while.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 12:12:00 No.986218 Report

Quoted By: >>986434

All these people talking about deers and cats killing their plants. Why the fuck would you leave your bonsai out where they could get eaten or mauled to death?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 20:55:00 No.986434 Report

Quoted By:

>>986218
Deer actually came up onto my porch to eat the bonsai one time. They reached their heads down into the little fences I had and ate the bonsai.

I now have a 6-feet high fence all around my property. The cat situation was due to juvenile kittens. I even had my stuff fence in to keep the cats out, but they found a way in and turned the cages into their own jungle gyms. You can see fencing around a few bonsai in some of the pics in this thread. I usually took the fencing off for photos.

It isn't like I wasn't trying and the trees do need to stay outside in the rain and sun.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 21:10:00 No.986437 Report

Quoted By: >>986439

>>986138
>>986171
>variegated Japanese willow

More correctly this is a Hakuro-nishiki Dappled Willow (Salix integra). Here are this morning's images. I'm using an old wooden table as a planter so that I have something to tie the top to that is 100% sturdy. I'll also be able to place a fence around it to help protect it better on this thing too. If it survives the transplant and pruning, it will stay in this for several years as I try to figure out what to do with the top now that i can see the root pattern over the rock on the bottom.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 21:21:00 No.986439 Report

Quoted By:

>>986437
Here is the same willow when I first transferred it out of the plastic pot it came in from the nursery and onto the stone where it remained for nearly 4 years, until yesterday. These images show the process I described in>>986161Note that the step of securing the stone to the root mass with wire is not shown.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 21:36:00 No.986443 Report

Quoted By: >>986450 >>986462

OP, at this point in time I suggest you tell us of all the hilarious ways you have killed your bonsai because I for one am raring to read some.

On that note, as a serious question, is it possible to grow a bonsai of a fruiting tree and have edible fruit, or do all the fruit turn out sour/bitter/rotting off before ripening?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 21:52:00 No.986450 Report

Quoted By:

>>986443
Fruit trees are highly prized as bonsai. Google it! I've been trying to get an air layering from my orchard's crab apple to no avail. It just repairs itself too well before growing roots in the bag. You can bonsai anything really. The best looking will naturally have small fruit since a bonsai is meant to look like a tiny tree that is really old.

Mine mostly died from cats, deer, winter freezing (it gets -15F here once each winter and -40F once every 20-30 years or more) and other people forgetting to water them while I was away. Only this one>>986146I killed by accident when a cat popped the root off the tree and I tried to affix it to the rock again with a tiny amount of epoxy. Not much to tell really.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 22:56:00 No.986462 Report

Quoted By: >>986481

>>986443
There's a plant shop near where I currently live, and they sell really small lemon and lime trees. About only a couple of feet tall, if even that. And they even had real fruit when I saw them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 23:32:00 No.986474 Report

Quoted By: >>986477

This thread inspired me to try bonsai. I carefully dug up a 2'' maple seedling (not sure on the exact species), put it in a small pot with a bit of gravel at the bottom and the local dirt it was growing in, watered it, and now it's out on the porch in the sun. I'm googling for information but getting a little overwhelmed--can anyone offer tips, good websites to go to?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 23:45:00 No.986477 Report

Quoted By:

>>986474
Basically, treat it like any other plant. Don't put it into a small bonsai just yet until you decide on what to do with it.

You may want to have it's top most portion of roots exposed later on, which is the norm for bonsai. So, take that into account. The difficult part can be making sure it is properly watered and not drying out in the sun too much. Even if it rains, you still need to water a bonsai.

Don't hone in on one single website. I recommend googling bonsai styles and then once you find one that suits you and the tree, google several tutorials on how to perfect that style.

There's a metric fuckton of info on caring for bonsai. you can pretty much toss it all out the window and do what you want past the general stuff like watering, feeding, repotting, pest control, and how to do trimming/pruning.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Apr 2011 23:50:00 No.986481 Report

Quoted By:

>>986462
There are several size categories of bonsai. They range from a couple inches tall to around 4 feet tall. The basic goal is to make the small tree look like it is a large tree and not just some sapling. Almost all bonsai styles are modeled after real world trees and growing conditions; from twisted mountain tops to picturesque field trees.

Trees with naturally small leaves are best to get the proportions right. All trees will shrink their own leaves when you start pinching them. Essentially there's a limited square area of leaf surface space the roots can support. So when you pinch the trees to make more leaves, the square area stays the same and the leaves end up smaller. That is why you may see a sapling with only 2 massive leaves or a sapling that has been damaged and has 20 tiny leaves even though both are the same type and variety.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 05:48:00 No.986646 Report

Quoted By:

>>986138
bump

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 10:24:00 No.986862 Report

Quoted By:

So, no one else actually does any kind of bonsai on /an/?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 10:31:00 No.986869 Report

Quoted By:

I have a grove of maples, a small single maple, and a medium sized shrub that I forced into being a bonsai. I just don't have a camera to take a picture of any of them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 10:35:00 No.986877 Report

Quoted By:

I figure people on 4chan would love bonsai. It's basically crippling torture and bondage as a high art.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 10:36:00 No.986878 Report

Quoted By: >>986882 >>987059

Is this possible to do in the Canadian prairies or is it too cold here `-`

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 10:41:00 No.986882 Report

Quoted By: >>987059

>>986878
Nevermind, disregard that. Mind blanked about the tropical ones. I might give this a try :o

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 19:24:00 No.987059 Report

Quoted By:

>>986878
>>986882
>can I do bonsai here in my climate?

Look outside your house. Do you see trees? If yes then you can do outside bonsai with local tree species. If no, then you must live in Antarctica. FYI, cold climates tend to have nice conifers for bonsai. The smaller the needles/leaves, on the original tree, the better.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 01 May 2011 20:29:00 No.987083 Report

Quoted By:

You guys can use shrubs too. Most evergreen bonsai are actually shrubs.

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