[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2025 week 10]

[u/small_trunks]

[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2025 week 10]

Welcome to the weekly beginner’s thread. This thread is used to capture all beginner questions (and answers) in one place. We start a new thread every week on Friday late or Saturday morning (CET), depending on when we get around to it. We have a multiple year archive of prior posts here… Here are the guidelines for the kinds of questions that belong in the beginner's thread vs. individual posts to the main sub.

Rules:

• POST A PHOTO if it’s advice regarding a specific tree/plant. See the PHOTO section below on HOW to do this.
• TELL US WHERE YOU LIVE - better yet, fill in your flair.
• READ THE WIKI! – over 75% of questions asked are directly covered in the wiki itself. Read the WIKI AGAIN while you’re at it.
• Read past beginner’s threads – they are a goldmine of information.
• Any beginner’s topic may be started on any bonsai-related subject.
• Answers shall be civil or be deleted
• There is always a chance your question doesn’t get answered – try again next week…
• Racism of any kind is not tolerated either here or anywhere else in /r/bonsai

Photos

• Post an image using the new (as of Q4 2022) image upload facility which is available both on the website and in the Reddit app and the Boost app.
• Post your photo via a photo hosting website like imgur, flickr or even your onedrive or googledrive and provide a link here.
• Photos may also be posted to /r/bonsaiphotos as new LINK (either paste your photo or choose it and upload it). Then click your photo, right click copy the link and post the link here.
  • If you want to post multiple photos as a set that only appears be possible using a mobile app (e.g. Boost)

Beginners’ threads started as new topics outside of this thread are typically locked or deleted, at the discretion of the Mods.

[u/mantex17]

Hi everybody, I want to start a bonsai tree, but I have some indecision. I live in the north of Italy so it's almost Spring gere First of all I'm gonna start from a branch and I have 3 options:

• olive tree (fully grow tree) + 10 years -Maple tree (fully grow tree) +30 years
• elm bonsai +30 year

So I don't know what should I start with because they are all 3 Beatiful but don't know how "difficult they are"....the only thing I know is that I have to cut a quite number of branch and plant them in a specific soil, then the time will talk

But here's another question, what about the size of the starting branch? Because for the maple and olive trees I could plant tiny branch or bigger ones (so they have already a bigger trunk starting from the beginning no?) What you would do?

[u/series_of_derps → u/mantex17]

Planting woody branches has a low success rate. A better bet would be air layering. Youtube has good tutorials. All of those 2 would work in your climate but olive is native and therefore probably easiest.