Beginner Douglas Fir

[LMZ]

Hello all. I am getting into Bonsai; my husband and I have a double dwarf boxwood we are working on from a nursery. It is doing very well. My husband was born and raised in Oregon but moved away for work. I want to get him a Douglas fir to bonsai to remind him of home. Do they do well? Online people seem to think so but there is no Douglas fir option on Bonsai starter websites so I am unsure. I also haven't seen any Douglas fir posts on this site. If they are a good choice, would it be best to buy a seed, a seedling, or an older plant? I think he would enjoy the youngest plant possible to truly devote time and attention to and make it his own. He is well-read on Bonsai but a beginner in practice. I hope you have some advice for me! Thank you for your time.

 

[hardtimes]

they seem to be on the harder end of bonsai-able species

Douglas Fir Bonsai

Learn everything there is to know about Douglas Fir Bonsai, their origin, care information, where you can purchase one of your own, and more.

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but you could bonsai pretty much anything.

how about a coast redwood?

 

[n8]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I appreciate the sentiment, but Doug fir are on the difficult end of the bonsai spectrum and growing one from seed would not produce a respectable bonsai within a lifetime.

Older specimens can be acquired. Whether or not it will thrive your climate is another story. (You can add your location and grow zone in your profile, so we can help with advice.)

 

[MaciekA]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

 

[0soyoung]

Hello all. I am getting into Bonsai; my husband and I have a double dwarf boxwood we are working on from a nursery. It is doing very well. My husband was born and raised in Oregon but moved away for work. I want to get him a Douglas fir to bonsai to remind him of home. Do they do well? Online people seem to think so but there is no Douglas fir option on Bonsai starter websites so I am unsure. I also haven't seen any Douglas fir posts on this site. If they are a good choice, would it be best to buy a seed, a seedling, or an older plant? I think he would enjoy the youngest plant possible to truly devote time and attention to and make it his own. He is well-read on Bonsai but a beginner in practice. I hope you have some advice for me! Thank you for your time.

You can get bare-root seedlings for $9 each from Arbor Day.
Get a bunch of them so that you can eliminate the fear factor and hence get on with quickly building up you bonsai "toolbox" (when to, how to, what to do to make and enjoy)

Search results for query: Douglas fir

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www.bonsainut.com

 

[n8]

Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

Appreciate your input and experience. I'm in Northern California. We have mountains full of Doug fir covering the northern third of the state. I have difficulty growing or collecting the species, probably because I'm trying to do that in the central valley. I'm speaking from my own experience and trying to relate to OP that growing Doug fir outside it's native range might be hard. I probably could have worded that better in my first post.

 

[LMZ]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

Thank you for all of this advice! I am in plant hardiness zone 6b/7a and plan on moving to 6b next year. I was looking at ordering this https://burchbonsai.com/products/douglas-fir-mature-bonsai but it sounds like a better bet may be to go the seed route to avoid the pitfalls you've mentioned. What is the timeline I can expect if I grow the fir from seed?

 

[LMZ]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

I have also found 2-year old firs for purchase, is this past the range of saving it from being leggy?

 

[RKatzin]

I also live in Fir Central, it's our state tree. For me this is one of the easiest trees, but they flourish so easily here it's a no brainer. There's also White Fir and Noble Fir in the vicinity. They all sprout up in my bonsai and it collect them when I do the repot. I put together a nice Doug Fir forest with them last year.
I highly recommend the Jonsteen Co in northern California for buying seedlings or sapling Dougies.

 

[MaciekA]

I have also found 2-year old firs for purchase, is this past the range of saving it from being leggy?

Hard to say without seeing the individuals in question. If they are timber industry whips, they may be quite rocket-y already in their form since they typically grow those whips in a fast-growing configuration (tall skinny containers). But depending on your size goals, perhaps a great option.

Regarding time from seed, I can't speak authoritatively here since while I have dealt with quite a few seedlings, I've never sown doug fir since there are just so many seedlings in my region to collect, and they heavily overlap with permit-legal areas. But from what I've seen of those wild seedlings, I suspect there is a very wide range of growth speeds one could get if they put some planning into it. The timber whips mentioned above grow very quickly in growing operations, but they're standing on the gas pedal with container setup, soil choice, etc. But on the other hand, I know from experience that if I capture a year-1 seedling that manged to not get big before I found it and confine it into a very small (coffee mug sized) container of akadama, it will then inch along at a very controllable rate (same thing for thuja plicata, another ultra-fast grower and "gets leggy fast" species), especially in the first 24 months where it's still recovering from bare rooting and possibly a followup initial trunk wiring.

For doug fir and for thuja plicata, for my own projects if I am trying to start shohin, I try to start with wild seedlings that are in more stunted or challenging conditions. Often the ones you find in permit-legal zones in the "road cut" (right next to forest roads and often in the road gravel itself, hence the permitting) and are somewhat stunted depending on the road gravel conditions, steepness, the site in general. In KY, unless you have some doug fir timber forests that have some collection opportunities, perhaps the only alternative to this may be indeed sowing seeds. Or just a lucky batch of timber whips. Or timber whips, but with the intent being a much larger tree than a shohin.

Good luck hunting! Really fascinating species.

 

[MaciekA]

Also, maybe @RKatzin can help shed light on the dimensions of typical whips from sources like Jonsteen.

 

[RKatzin]

Also, maybe @RKatzin can help shed light on the dimensions of typical whips from sources like Jonsteen.

I wish I could, but I haven't purchased fir whips from them. I have purchased quite a few other native species, coastal live oak and giant Sequoia, but I know the folks down there and they are more than willing to accommodate specific needs. They do offer seed starting kits for many different species. Wish I could be more specific, but I have only seen the sample picture on the site.
I also know they are very involved with the preservation and restoration of our native forests, especially our redwoods, so I support their efforts.

 

[RKatzin]

I can dig up nice chunky little Dougies right off the side of the road here. And I've located a few nice older yamadori on my forested property. Got fir out the wazoo!

 

[August44]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

I like it when this guy responds. Simple, easy, and 1st hand knowledge. Sorry, I copied this for future use. I love Doug fir and planned to collect several this year. Thanks MeciekA

 

[August44]

Thank you for all of this advice! I am in plant hardiness zone 6b/7a and plan on moving to 6b next year. I was looking at ordering this https://burchbonsai.com/products/douglas-fir-mature-bonsai but it sounds like a better bet may be to go the seed route to avoid the pitfalls you've mentioned. What is the timeline I can expect if I grow the fir from seed?

That is one pile of money for that tree. I'll be collecting real quick here and will dig and ship one to you if you want to pay the freight.

 

[TrimmyWhimmy]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

The Mirai website says they're hard to water correctly. Is this your experience?

 

[Bonsai Forest]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

your comments and advice are a wellspring of knowledge and experience

 

[Bonsai Forest]

Opinion from someone who actually grows doug fir and collects doug fir:

- It is an easy species, straight up: Shoots festooned with buds, easy to put bends into branches with wire, easy to collect and recover from the wild. Put it in pure pumice and let it rip. Don’t let Mirai’s “elongating species” jargon scare you off. He just means it grows like a single flush pine.
- It is insanely fast-growing compared to any pine. You can absolutely grow this to a respectable bonsai within a lifetime. Several times over. You can grow black pine to a respectable bonsai in a fraction of a lifetime, doug fir grows much much much faster.

If you want to grow doug fir I urge you to learn (as early and quickly as possible) how to wire, learn what a sacrificial leader is, and learn pine horticulture (closest thing to doug fir in terms of soil / sun / etc). The reason you want to learn the first two things is that a doug fir will need intervention very quickly. If you want to turn one into shohin (for example) you’ll need to simultaneously send a strong leader upwards to keep vigor / thickening going while already wiring down branches and shortening them within a tight window of opportunity (to prevent the leggy growth you may see doug fir beginners struggle with). This is not a “just let it grow” species. You work it every single year from the moment you dig up a roadside seedling or after your seeds produce a whip. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Going via a doug fir seedling is one of the only ways to avoid one that’s already blown past the points of no return years before you’ve found it (as with a nursery doug) — if you want to grow one to shohin size or slightly larger especially.

To get good information on doug fir, listen to people who actually grow it and who wire their conifers.

For any species in bonsai generally, listen to people who grow that species and wire that species. Kinda tired of people who don’t live in the PNW telling others that our native species don’t work for bonsai. Alder, cottonwood, bigleaf maple, and now doug fir. It’s news to me and many others here who are growing these species just fine.

For clarity and a little more insight, would you please explain the purpose and process of growing and creating a sacrificial leader and what it accomplishes in bonsai? I have various DAS, BNS, and Norway Spruces.

 

[MaciekA]

For clarity and a little more insight, would you please explain the purpose and process of growing and creating a sacrificial leader and what it accomplishes in bonsai? I have various DAS, BNS, and Norway Spruces.

The sacrificial leader up top grants me the license to wire, prune, pinch, etc, the parts of the tree I'll be "keeping" (in the parlance of bnut member BVF, the "keep" regions) for the future bonsai design, while also maintaining full vigor in the tree globally.

It's both a source of vigor (after needles have hardened and it's paying back to the tree) and a sink of vigor (gobbles up stored starch faster than anywhere else in the tree) depending on which phase of growth the tree is in. That's useful because sometimes I want to limit vigor of the "keep" regions of the tree while still having a tree that is so globally vigorous, which lets me quickly close wounds, regrow roots, generate lots of new buds all over the tree, and thicken the trunk or some segment of the trunk line (thickening is often goal #1 of sacrificial growth but it's useful for all "expensive" things that trees have to do when grown as bonsai).

The "keep" regions of the tree are more heavily wired, pruned, pinched, and generally manipulated for bonsai purposes. In that case, the sacrificial leader also serves as a very effective "sink" for stored energy to limit the vigor of the "keep" regions, to make sure that response growth isn't crazy (consider that we're often growing in a larger pot during this phase too -- we need that vigor to go somewhere and we dont want it to go to long internodes/big leaves in our "keep" areas). But the sacrificial leader also makes sure that when we work these keep regions more mercilessly, the tree doesn't get the wind knocked out of it vigor-wise. So it's like an enormous vigor dampener, in to put it in engineering terms.

A typical successful result when using sacrificial leaders is that the leader, especially if it is solo'd out to just 1 to 3 shoots, will grow very large needles, huge terminal buds and very long internodes (just what we hoped for). Meanwhile, the "keep" regions will begin to diverge into the direction of bonsai scale features. For example, it's very typical to have a black pine where a singular ("poodle" style) leader shoot has 5 inch needles and gigantic candles, but the future "keep" pads below have already reduced down to sub-inch needles through successive bifurcations (through decandling and such). Recall that the leader has only 1 or 3 shoots at the top, and perhaps nothing between that and the keep region. Meanwhile, the kept pads might have many many small shoots by now, if this is being done right.

In my personal mental model of conifer bonsai, it's sacrificial all the way down, forever. Every tip is "eventually sacrificial" and the above model works for the entire canopy, to a degree, not just the trunk line. I will grow and style extraneous "sacrificial pads" that extend past the silhouette of my pines / spruces / hemlocks (as long as they don't excessively shade anything below them that is), patiently waiting for interior pads to strengthen to a certain threshold, and then I'll cut them back.

 

[Bonsai Forest]

The sacrificial leader up top grants me the license to wire, prune, pinch, etc, the parts of the tree I'll be "keeping" (in the parlance of bnut member BVF, the "keep" regions) for the future bonsai design, while also maintaining full vigor in the tree globally.

It's both a source of vigor (after needles have hardened and it's paying back to the tree) and a sink of vigor (gobbles up stored starch faster than anywhere else in the tree) depending on which phase of growth the tree is in. That's useful because sometimes I want to limit vigor of the "keep" regions of the tree while still having a tree that is so globally vigorous, which lets me quickly close wounds, regrow roots, generate lots of new buds all over the tree, and thicken the trunk or some segment of the trunk line (thickening is often goal #1 of sacrificial growth but it's useful for all "expensive" things that trees have to do when grown as bonsai).

The "keep" regions of the tree are more heavily wired, pruned, pinched, and generally manipulated for bonsai purposes. In that case, the sacrificial leader also serves as a very effective "sink" for stored energy to limit the vigor of the "keep" regions, to make sure that response growth isn't crazy (consider that we're often growing in a larger pot during this phase too -- we need that vigor to go somewhere and we dont want it to go to long internodes/big leaves in our "keep" areas). But the sacrificial leader also makes sure that when we work these keep regions more mercilessly, the tree doesn't get the wind knocked out of it vigor-wise. So it's like an enormous vigor dampener, in to put it in engineering terms.

A typical successful result when using sacrificial leaders is that the leader, especially if it is solo'd out to just 1 to 3 shoots, will grow very large needles, huge terminal buds and very long internodes (just what we hoped for). Meanwhile, the "keep" regions will begin to diverge into the direction of bonsai scale features. For example, it's very typical to have a black pine where a singular ("poodle" style) leader shoot has 5 inch needles and gigantic candles, but the future "keep" pads below have already reduced down to sub-inch needles through successive bifurcations (through decandling and such). Recall that the leader has only 1 or 3 shoots at the top, and perhaps nothing between that and the keep region. Meanwhile, the kept pads might have many many small shoots by now, if this is being done right.

In my personal mental model of conifer bonsai, it's sacrificial all the way down, forever. Every tip is "eventually sacrificial" and the above model works for the entire canopy, to a degree, not just the trunk line. I will grow and style extraneous "sacrificial pads" that extend past the silhouette of my pines / spruces / hemlocks (as long as they don't excessively shade anything below them that is), patiently waiting for interior pads to strengthen to a certain threshold, and then I'll cut them back.

Thank you very, very much for this explanation. Clear and concise. I will apply this to my practice.