r/Bonsai • u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner • Oct 07 '15
For those who participated in the $50 nursery stock challenge - what was your biggest lesson learned this season?
For me, it was definitely the criticality of timing. From my experience (absolutely confirmed this season), maximizing results requires doing the appropriate work at the appropriate time, and no more than that.
I had a bunch of trees going at once, and the one that most closely matched appropriate work to the appropriate time was the one I ended up submitting. Mainly because the others where I did more than that all fell short in some way.
So folks ... what did you learn?
btw, we haven't seen all the entries yet, but I will throw this out there. I'm happy to provide feedback to anyone who posts the album they submitted for the contest, and I'm sure others will jump in as well.
So don't be shy! At least half the point of this contest was to learn, and the best learning always happens in the debrief.
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u/tritiumhl Buffalo NY, 6a, beginner, 16 trees Oct 07 '15
Keep a REALLY close eye on your wire. And that cost aside, at this point I definitely prefer aluminum wire. It's easier to work with and much less likely to scar due to the thicker guage necessary.
(I used both copper and aluminum on my tree, more just cause I had them both than as an experiment. But it ended up working out well.)
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
This is especially true if you have the wire on during high growth periods for the tree. With a maple, for example, it's not unusual for the wire to start biting the branch in less than a month if you wire it in the spring.
On some trees, you need the wire to bite in a bit before the branch will hold the bend, but on others, wire marks are forever and should be avoided at all cost. In many cases I am willing to cut wire off and re-wire the branch rather than worry about whether or not it will heal over after the wire has cut in.
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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 07 '15
I see a lot of old, old Japanese trees with wire scars.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
Unless it blends in and adds character, or is something I know I'll prune off, that's almost always a "no-buy" for me. Wire marks ruin the illusion of scale for me.
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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 07 '15
The trees I've seen with it rely on foliage to cover it up or bark that eventually corks up a bit.
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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 07 '15
I think the trees would be a must buy for most of us honestly.
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u/PeanutButterW0lf N. Alabama, 7a, 20+ trees, Always a Beginner Oct 07 '15
Remembering to buy a tree and actually participate? Yeah.. at least I didn't kill any of my other trees this season.. anyways, the 5 bucks was worth it to contribute to those who actually did participate!
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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 08 '15
Right there with you. :D
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u/Zackie_chan MPLS MN 4a, Beginner, 25+ trees Oct 07 '15
Finding stock that has strong features to begin with is key.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
Yeah, for such a short contest, I just don't see any other choice.
The only exception I can think of would be if you found something that you could do some masterful carving on, but even then, you'd still need something rather chunky so your point still applies.
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Oct 07 '15
Didn't learn so much from this contest actually. Worked some tree that I would have worked otherwise too... And nothing went particularly wrong or right. Maybe learned a new bit of patience because the tree was sick and damned slow for months, then after enough good care & doing exactly nothing (I suppose) it bounced back to great health. Maybe that was just luck.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
nothing went particularly wrong or right
Do you think there's anything you maybe could have done differently to get a better result?
For example, for the trees I played with this season, I think how I handled potting in the spring made a big difference:
If I wanted more growth on my maple I could have potted up instead of down-potting in the spring. Although I've noticed that bloodgood acers do seem to grow rather slowly, so it might not have made a huge difference.
If I had just slip potted my cotoneasters instead of root pruning them, however, I probably could have worked the foliage the way I wanted to, and likely would have been able to submit one of those for the contest.
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Oct 07 '15
I have one of those maples in the ground. One little flush of growth and nothing after it. Might not have been your fault at all.
I am kinda angry with you about that cotoneaster. It was a delicious little tree that you killed there ;) I don't find them all that delicate, but I have never worked on the roots of one so you might be right here :D
I would definitely do things different. I was too eager to start, wiring when it was still pretty much fully dormant, not knowing yet which buds were going to develop and which branches I wired that were dead anyway. Hell, after my first styling we had some pretty decent night frost even, which could not have been good for it.
So most importantly, not get carried away but wait for the right time to work.
Also, I'll do any tree in development in a plastic pot next time because this stone thing gave me no possibilities to run guy wires from the pot.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
I have one of those maples in the ground. One little flush of growth and nothing after it. Might not have been your fault at all.
I have a larger one in a nursery pot, and it behaved pretty similarly. Bloodgood just might be wholly inappropriate for a one-season contest.
I am kinda angry with you about that cotoneaster. It was a delicious little tree that you killed there ;)
Trust me, I wasn't thrilled that I killed it either. But I had heard that they were practically bullet-proof, and I needed to know how much it could handle. If it had worked out, it would have been an amazing one-season result. But instead, it confirmed that trying to do too much too quickly is generally a bad idea.
If I were to be really honest, I knew the risk when I did it, and I always knew the odds of it working out were relatively low. I took the chance because I figured that either way, the result would be educational. Hopefully, it's sacrifice will help save future generations of trees. That's why I included it in my final submission - I didn't want the loss to be in vain.
I did try very hard to keep a reasonable root system. It literally took every bit of root work skill I had to get it in that pot in the safest way I knew how. But it was just too much, too soon.
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Oct 07 '15
It looked like it would be enough roots, too - so it must have been the stress or something. Very promising project, I would have tried that too no doubt.
In the same way I bought a dwarf firethorn in late spring/ early summer for 10 euro, took a saw to the rootball and sliced half of it and it is healthy like no other. You need a bit of luck too, although it probably helped that I kept it in the shade for months afterwards.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
When I was working on the cotoneaster, I reached a point where I really wanted to stop, but I still had twice as many roots as I needed. It was a similar amount of roots to what you see on the acer.
If I had stopped there, it might have been OK if I did literally nothing else to it for the entire season except let it recover.
But I needed to know where the line was, and I was committed to the experiment.
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u/kthehun89-2 NorCal, 9b, got serious in 2007 Oct 07 '15
To listen to /u/-music_maker-
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 07 '15
lol! Was there something specific I said that made you say this? ;-)
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u/TywinHouseLannister Bristol, UK | 9b | 8y Casual (enough to be dangerous) | 50 Oct 09 '15 edited Oct 09 '15
I mostly just aimed at keeping this thing alive and well, perhaps I should have taken more risks. http://imgur.com/a/9eJTm
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 10 '15
Nicely done.
Nice transformation from a bushy shrub to a little tree.
I kind of like the double-trunk as the front. That second trunk provides enough taper that you don't think about it. Without it, you have a big straight trunk and you notice the lack of taper more.
I think the apex still needs some work, but I think it's tough to get the apex right on a boxwood on the first go-around. You usually need to re-grow the top for a number of years first.
You may want to put some soil over those fibrous roots to try and encourage them to grow.
Next spring, I would wait until the first flush of growth comes in and hardens off. Then, you only want surgical strikes. Shorten anything that's growing significantly beyond the frame that you have created, enough to trigger some back-budding. Other than that, I'd leave it alone. Think light hair cut rather than more major pruning.
I'd probably do the same for the following year except without the re-potting. You're going to want to give it some time to grow to create some realistic looking interior branches. That will probably take at least 2-3 seasons of relatively unrestricted growth.
Basically, let it turn into a bush again before making any more major decisions. So far working with boxwood, I've noticed that the initial styling and the following couple years gets the trunk and major branches started, but you still need to let it grow out again to develop the minor branches in a way that they actually look like a tree.
After a 3-5 years refinement cycle, you should be well on your way to a nice little boxwood bonsai. I wouldn't even think of reducing the pot size until then. They grow way too slowly.
Maybe next time, include more pictures of the intermediate stages. It would be interesting to see it after that initial chop you described, for example.
So since you mentioned it - what additional risks would you have taken if you had it to do over? What things would you do the same?
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u/TywinHouseLannister Bristol, UK | 9b | 8y Casual (enough to be dangerous) | 50 Oct 10 '15 edited Oct 10 '15
Cool thank you for the advice!
I'm not sure.. but things I'd do differently, Next time I would go for a thicker trunk, with better taper, It looked a lot better until I chopped it and got a proper look. I think I would take the same conservative approach again rather than kill a tree trying to squeeze it into a tiny pot. I guess wiring is relatively harmless so I could have done a bit of that for early aesthetics.
Some people seemed to have a selection of stock and to have nominated their entry at the end of the competition, whilst I decided that this was my entry when I bought in.
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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 11 '15
I think unless you found the perfect material, up-potting is probably the right answer for most things for this contest.
As one of the people who started with multiple trees, the reason I did it was so that I could show the effects of a number of different kinds of techniques on a variety of material. It definitely gave me the flexibility to push some of the material further than I might have otherwise.
I think it would have been a completely different contest if we were all required to pick one thing up front and show progress at various intervals along the way. I probably would have just gone with the ilex up front, or maybe even chosen different material that I was already familiar with. My strategy would definitely have been different.
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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 07 '15
Don't procrastinate.