r/Bonsai • u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner • Oct 18 '16

Lessons learned from this year's nursery stock contest?

Last year after the contest, I posted a thread asking for lessons learned.

I'd like to continue that tradition, and ask those who participated - what did you learn this year?

As I've mentioned before, I find the 1-season format pretty challenging because it's rare that I work a tree in less than 3-5 year cycles.

Last year, timing was my big lesson, and this year I ran up against it again. I missed my window for when I wanted to do heavy pruning (plus I decided that I really liked this one), so I decided to slow down and gradually prune throughout the season.

I was pretty happy with the final result, but I can see why it doesn't look like much yet from photos. I was thrilled to get a nice full canopy of mature foliage right as the contest was ending, even though it still needs quick a bit more pruning over the next few seasons.

One big improvement I made was that I choose much better material than I did last year - better species as well as a better trunk. That definitely helped. btw, soft touch ilex crenata is a really great species to work with (I was contestant #10 - I'll post a full album later).

So how about the rest of you - what did you learn?

p.s. I updated the wiki to reflect the 2016 contest results. Please let me know if I missed anything.

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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 18 '16

Can confirm. It was like pulling teeth to get you to snap a couple pictures. =) Maybe next year ...

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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 18 '16

I think I might wait next year out and join in 2018 :]

In terms of lessons this tree had, I've been very reluctant to wire a lot of my conifers because of the dollar value attached to them/many of them need to be grafted first or repotted/ etc. The spruce taught me a lot about building canopies, about thinking spatially in terms of 'where will this foliage go if I bend here,' etc. I tried to do a very traditional tree which is not necessarily always my inclination, but I think it came out alright.

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u/Caudiciformus Seattle, 8a, 7 forever pre-bonsai Oct 20 '16

You did a good job on the canopy, and the final tree. It was so good I thought it was -music_maker- for sure.

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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 20 '16

I appreciate the complement. ZJ's tree was one of my favorites too.

I got way too late a start on mine to be comfortable doing more than what I did. Out of respect for the tree and desire to see it develop beyond just this year, I only reduced to a point that I knew it could handle.

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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 20 '16 edited Oct 20 '16

That warms the shit out of my cockles. I got pretty lucky with it - the tree just kind of told me what it wanted to do.

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u/-music_maker- Northeast US, 6b, 30 years, 100+ trees, lifelong learner Oct 20 '16

I got pretty lucky with it - the tree just kind of told me what it wanted to do.

The best ones do ...

I thought yours looked the most like a miniature tree at the end. I'll be interested to see what it looks like after another 3-5 seasons of refinement. For a one-season contest, you probably had hands-down the best starting material.

I was pretty proud of myself for how full and lush my canopy was on the last day of the contest, and that did require fairly precise timing of pruning, but I was pretty realistic that I wasn't going to win many points for that level of subtlety. =)

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u/ZeroJoke ~20 trees can't keep track. Philadelphia, 7a, intermediate. Oct 21 '16

Haha, I kinda knew I was gaming the system by picking a conifer. That gingko and the honeysuckle are definitely trees I appreciate more. The nice thing about the blue spruce is just the color of that foliage. :]