I used to (attempt to) grow Bonsai back when i lived in Utah. I actually had some really cool ones. Then i moved to Vegas and pretty much gave it up. I couldn’t keep anything alive because of the dry hot summers. You can imagine how fast the soil in a shallow bonsai dish dries out when it’s 115 degrees and zero humidity.
Now that I’ve moved to northern California, i’ve decided to pick it back up again. It’s absolutely perfect for it here. I still had a bunch of pots, tools, and training wire boxed away. I went to a local nursery and bought some plants. I used to love to go stock hunting. At large nurseries there’s allways some distant, seldom visited corner of the property where some poor neglected plant has long outgrown it’s pot. Some of the branches have died from freezing or disease. The plant that no one would even consider purchasing for their yard because it’s grown all gnarly and stunted and just looks funny. That’s the plant i like to find.
I didn’t find any of those, but i did buy a few younger plants. 1-3 year old stock that the nursery should have transplanted allready but didn’t. They have a lot of potential, but it’ll be years before i can train them into anything great. Here’s shot of them before i repotted them.
From left to right, Pond Cypress, Elm (i think it’s a cassiflora elm, Pyracantha, and a very small Bittersweet. I plan on keeping that one in the Mame style. I also bought a little trident maple at another nursery the day before that isn’t in this shot.
I repotted all of them; i had to carefully wash all the dirt off the roots and untagle them. I cut the taproot off the maple, the elm, and the pond cypress. I needed to make a flat fan of roots that will form well in a shallow bonsai dish. training the shape of the roots is almost as important as training the shape of the tree, just not as aesthetic.
Anyway, here’s a couple of shots after i repotted them and trimmed them a little. I haven’t started wire-training the branches yet; I need to wait a few months for the roots to recover and let them get established in their pots. I know they don’t look like much but they will. I try to make my bonsai look like trees, rather than make my trees look like bonsai.
I bought a bag of stones that would go in the bottom of a fish tank. When all the plants were in the original pots they had a lot of moss growning in them. I saved some when i repotted them and i transplanted it just by pressing it into the dirt where i wanted it. I’m not sure if it will survive but if i keep the top of the soil moist enough they’ll grow moss on their own. This trident is going to be a very nice peice someday.
Anyway, I still have 4 or 5 larger pots that i didn’t use yet. I’m going to go searching for native stock up in the mountains one of these days. I’ll post more pictures as these one’s progress and start to take the shapes i want.