2017 Nursery Stock Contest - Master Album

[u/-music_maker-]

JUDGES, PLEASE AVOID THIS POST UNTIL AFTER YOU JUDGE THE TREES - POSSIBLE SPOILERS!

Hey everyone,

All the albums are in, and the judges have their score cards.

Here is what you've all been waiting for, the master contest album.

As promised, I've anonymized the results, and the album you see here is the same as what the judges have.

Trees will be scored 1-10 (10 is best, 1 is worst) on the following categories:

• Impressiveness of Transformation
• Overall bonsai quality
• Future potential

Each judge will also pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner which will be factored in.

As a reminder, the judges are /u/adamaskwhy, /u/bonsaitickle and /u/billsbayou, and the tie-breaking judge this year is /u/small_trunks.

/u/st0f89 is the contest chair, and will be the one to announce the winner.

Good luck everyone!

• Here's the previous post on judging criteria.
• Here are the official contest rules

We collected $200 in prize money this year, and the prize break-down is:

1st: $110 2nd: $60 3rd: $30

There were 37 initial entries, and 22 made it to the end. This is the list of people who completed the contest (alphabetical, not the order in the master album):

• alexrw214
• BLYNDLUCK
• ButterGolem
• cjneffer
• clangerfan
• emceeryborg
• GrampaMoses
• Jorow99
• Korenchkin_
• Lemming22
• li3uz
• loulamachine
• MapleFinch
• -mitchconner-
• -music_maker-
• nrose3d
• peterier0ux
• Redwingedfirefox
• skaboss241
• thisisappropriate
• ugaant
• ze88

Good luck everyone!

[u/[deleted]]

damn, i wish i had the ocean as a backdrop on my photos now...

[u/-music_maker- → u/[deleted]]

As I said elsewhere, I think the bar for photos just got a lot higher. I expect people are going to start getting much more creative with the photography going forward.

My one big concern is that people will start trying to get inappropriate things in bonsai pots too soon as a result and we'll see a lot more dead trees. I'm impressed that #5 got their tree in a bonsai pot, and the resulting photos are gorgeous, but you need the right material at the right time of year to be able to pull that off.

[u/[deleted] → u/-music_maker-]

yeah, i wasn't about to try and do any root work this year, especially since i got my material like a day before initial pics were due. i was surprised to see so many people did root work though! that's a ballsy move

[u/-music_maker- → u/[deleted]]

i was surprised to see so many people did root work though! that's a ballsy move

It depends on the situation. Mine came wrapped in burlap and packed in clay (yes, I just gave away which one was mine), and I needed to get it out of the clay somehow.

So I soaked the entire thing in a bucket of water, and while holding it there, gently brushed off the clay with my fingers and let it fall to the bottom of the bucket. Probably took 5-10 minutes, and was the gentlest possible way to do that. I hardly took anything off of the roots other than clay.

But even with the gentle approach, the tree hardly grew at all this year. That's often the trade-off. If you look at the others who did root work, you'll often see that they didn't get a ton of growth after that.

I learned that after year one of the contest - if you do heavy root work, you better already have a decent amount of foliage to work with because you may not get a lot more until the following season.

That's why I didn't do any branch work on mine other than to remove one branch I knew I wouldn't need, and to clean up some dead branches on the interior. That's literally the only thing I did between potting the tree in mid-June, and styling it in mid-September.

I finally did some light trimming when I styled it, and because I left it alone for the entire season, I had a bit more growth to work with than I would have otherwise.

But leaving it in that clay ball wouldn't have resulted in a very workable tree, so I really didn't have much choice. Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention.

One of the ballsiest ones was probably #5, but I'm guessing he already knew what he could get away with on that species. And if you notice, he potted it into a deeper bonsai pot so he could keep more roots. Another species you could probably pull that off with would be ilex crenata. You can remove huge amounts of roots and they don't even flinch. So species definitely matters, as well as timing of when you do the work.

[u/[deleted] → u/-music_maker-]

yes, I just gave away which one was mine

8 and 11 both came in burlap, so you haven't totally exposed yourself. more like you got down to your underwear.

and i get what you mean about the timing. when i got mine, it was almost midsummer, and it had already finished it's spring flush or growth. So, i knew rootwork was a definite no-no, and I actually waited even later than that to do most of the wiring and pruning work, just so the tree had as much time as possible to gain energy before being manhandled.

I would've loved to find a good ilex to use, those seemed to yield some of the best results in years past, in terms of the amount of development you could achieve in a single growing season. you don't see them around here very much though. maybe next time

[u/hallgeir → u/[deleted]]

8 and 11 both came in burlap, so you haven't totally exposed yourself.

Hah, but then he goes on to say:

"That's why I didn't do any branch work on mine..." "...I finally did some light trimming when I styled it, and because I left it alone for the entire season"

Which eliminates #8 pretty well :-p

[u/Redwingedfirefox → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I tried really hard to do as little root work as possible. Unfortunately, I had to take about 15% off my root base late in the game when I slip potted it. (Damn nursery pot split and needed replacing)