blb110
Seedling
Several years ago I stuck this Douglas Fir in a pot. I was wondering if it could be made into a bonsai
Douglas Fir
- Thread starter blb110
- Start date
Colorado
Masterpiece
Absolutely!
cishepard
Shohin
I have some tall, straight and skinny Doug firs as well, and am trying to figure out how to make them look like believable bonsai. Could definitely use some pointers or inspirational photos/virts…
blb110
Seedling
At least yours are a little shorter. 
can you just cut the tops off?
can you just cut the tops off?
cishepard
Shohin
I have this quote saved from @0soyoung from some other thread:
“They can be treated like a spruce/fir as cut back to a bud. Any stem (internode) without a bud the end will become a dead stem, so one must cut back to a node or a bud. I continue to do this in late summer, after the new foliage has all hardened. With spruce this seems to strongly stimulate back budding, even on the trunk of the spruce, but it doesn't seem to work that way on pseudotsuga. Buds sometimes show up on leafless wood, but for reasons I still cannot decipher. They just do their thing with the only predictable budding being the abundance of budding on the dominant leader. I have read in forestry papers that the crowns of forest Douglas firs spontaneously renew (bud) after 8 or so years which might mean back budding is simply age related, but I know that is not exactly true either.
.Wire it and bend the hell out of it it you want, they are very flexible and readily set up / lignify in position. Let the main trunk be a sacrificial leader, then cut it off and choose a low branch to be the next trunk segment, etc. etc.
“They can be treated like a spruce/fir as cut back to a bud. Any stem (internode) without a bud the end will become a dead stem, so one must cut back to a node or a bud. I continue to do this in late summer, after the new foliage has all hardened. With spruce this seems to strongly stimulate back budding, even on the trunk of the spruce, but it doesn't seem to work that way on pseudotsuga. Buds sometimes show up on leafless wood, but for reasons I still cannot decipher. They just do their thing with the only predictable budding being the abundance of budding on the dominant leader. I have read in forestry papers that the crowns of forest Douglas firs spontaneously renew (bud) after 8 or so years which might mean back budding is simply age related, but I know that is not exactly true either.
.Wire it and bend the hell out of it it you want, they are very flexible and readily set up / lignify in position. Let the main trunk be a sacrificial leader, then cut it off and choose a low branch to be the next trunk segment, etc. etc.
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