How to be a successful bonsai beginner

[Michigan Tree Murderer]

Great advice. I live in the Deep South. I’ve tried several times to grow Japanese larches and to no avail…EVER! Why is this such a problem?

Larch are hardy trees that can adapt to climates with cool summers and cold winters, but they don't tolerate hot climates, especially when combined with high humidity. Cool trees for sure. For the record I should be following "the species that will grow in your climate rule", and I will learn the hard way.

 

[Joe Dupre']

I was looking at a video about maples. It seems the USDA zones are skewed towards cold hardiness, not heat tolerance. That gets kind of dicey around zones 9 and 10. Some trees need a certain number of chill hours to flourish. Not too many apple trees in South Louisiana.

 

[Deleted member 47471]

You'd think that now that I know it all I wouldn't have any more failures. Actually, I still try to grow things that I should be smart enough to avoid, and the outcomes are pretty predictable. It's like being told to marry the plain girl that can cook and clean give you healthy kids.
And then looking for her hanging out in bar?

The fig family includes all the tropical figs all of which are bulletproof and there are many different leaf shapes for good plants to overwinter as houseplants. Mulberry is in the same family and is a bulletproof hardy tree. The whole family grows fast, takes drastic work without pouting too much and are available nearly everywhere. Mulberry is native to NA and they are seeded by birds regularly, so just look around the yard. Don't be fooled by the big leaves which are shaped like the state of Michigan because they reduce and get frilly at the same time. You are lucky to live where you can have a Tamarack forest of trees you can collect anywhere up north from Midland north. Just drive up M31, M37 or US 131, watch the skyline and look for low areas. Take your boots. I'll let others offer other trees for beginners, except @sorce who has already blown it with Mugo Pine, which is not easy to keep alive unless you never work on them.

See you at Meijer Gardens in May!

“If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life”

 

[Gabler]

I was looking at a video about maples. It seems the USDA zones are skewed towards cold hardiness, not heat tolerance. That gets kind of dicey around zones 9 and 10. Some trees need a certain number of chill hours to flourish. Not too many apple trees in South Louisiana.

That's all they ever were to begin with. The zones have nothing to do with heat. It's just a rating that corresponds to the average lowest temperature each winter. In zone 7, the lowest temperature each winter tends to dip as low as 0°F. In zone 8, it's 10°F, etc.

 

[Mad Tabby]

That's all they ever were to begin with. The zones have nothing to do with heat. It's just a rating that corresponds to the average lowest temperature each winter. In zone 7, the lowest temperature each winter tends to dip as low as 0°F. In zone 8, it's 10°F, etc.

Okay, but usually when I look at the plants itself, I get a range. For example apples are generally 4-8 meaning 9 is too warm.

That being said it’s just a start. There’s a lot of plants that cannot take the Chinooks off the Rockies because they’ll take that warm week in January as time to start growing only to be killed by the -40 the next week. So all the plants we grow have to be light triggered for growing as opposed to warmth.

 

[xray]

While you are on the topic of zones and heat.
When reading about maples need partial shade and be careful with afternoon sun.
Do that also apply to zone 5a where I live as well? I Imagine sun is stronger closer to equator, but I might be totally wrong here.

 

[dbonsaiw]

I have become a big believer in keeping some sort of a journal for each of my trees so I know what I have done and when, and can also see what my intentions are for the tree in the next five or so years. There's a good deal of down time in bonsai where we are basically just watering and, being impetuous, I get tempted to do something and will rationalize doing dumb stuff. Since keeping a journal, I know almost exactly (almost) what I will be doing in a given year with a given tree and am less tempted to jump the gun on projects I see are scheduled for a later year.

 

[BillMcEnaney]

Hi, Everyone,

Since I'm a beginner, I hope you'll teach me a lot. Though I can grow a tree, I'm no artist. So, I hope to make my new Japanese cherry tree look like one in a photo when that plant arrives. How many years must it stay wired to adopt its new shape? Sadly, at 63, I've lived too long to watch the tree become "venerable."

An acquaintance wired a tree for me after we attended a Bonsai show. An impatient brat, I unwired and planted the sapling, only to hear that Dad's lawn tractor dwarfed it.

By the way, I long to visit Japan because I love it and its culture. It's the loveliest place I've seen in a YouTube video.

Thanks for everything.

All the best,
Bill

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Welcome Aboard @BillMcEnaney !

Since I'm a beginner, I hope you'll teach me a lot. Though I can grow a tree, I'm no artist. So, I hope to make my new Japanese cherry tree look like one in a photo when that plant arrives. How many years must it stay wired to adopt its new shape? Sadly, at 63, I've lived too long to watch the tree become "venerable."

…The very best Cherries grown from young stock are created by clip and grow with a bit of wire tossed on occasionally. One may start off wiring a trunk, but wire is a secondary means to achieve the best bends.

An acquaintance wired a tree for me after we attended a Bonsai show. An impatient brat, I unwired and planted the sapling, only to hear that Dad's lawn tractor dwarfed it.

… Thank your Dad’s wayward tractor! If the tree survives it saved you the anguish of making your first hard chop! Dig the tree up at an appropriate time and repot it

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[BillMcEnaney]

Thanks, DSD. I fear Dad's tractor murdered the little guy. Now that another family owns the home where I grew up, I'll never know what happened to the tree decades ago.

Yummy cherries would delight me. But I ordered the tree mostly because I want others to admire it after I'm gone. If you're like me and people in Japan, you want to reflect on your garden's beauty. That's why I'll take your advice. Still, my brother Michael's best friend should wire the tree for me because her paintings fetch thousands of dollars.

 

[e~b]

Didnt want to create an individual thread for this... but where did I go wrong with this nursery stock cutback? Do I just need to reduce the length of the shoots and then re-wire? You can see that the shoots have turned upside down from my twisting/bending of the wire, so a lot of my foliage is now on the underside... perhaps a lesson in the steps/considerations when planning to both prune and wire at once.

I have watched plenty of youtube videos on this exact topic, but struggling to replicate.

A few other notes - jin will probably be done away with but leaving it for now. I know my wiring job is a mess, looking to clean that up. And I still cannot visualize a front or apex for this tree. The only consolation is that I only want to learn as much as I can with this tree, instead of striving for an even halfway presentable bonsai (but hopefully that still happens!)

Pre prune


Post prune/initial styling

 

[BillMcEnaney]

Wiring intimidates me, so I should ask my brother's professional artist friend to wire my cherry tree. If I learn how to wire one, I hope that'll happen before my tree keeps its new shape.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Didnt want to create an individual thread for this... but where did I go wrong with this nursery stock cutback? Do I just need to reduce the length of the shoots and then re-wire? You can see that the shoots have turned upside down from my twisting/bending of the wire, so a lot of my foliage is now on the underside... perhaps a lesson in the steps/considerations when planning to both prune and wire at once.

I have watched plenty of youtube videos on this exact topic, but struggling to replicate.

A few other notes - jin will probably be done away with but leaving it for now. I know my wiring job is a mess, looking to clean that up. And I still cannot visualize a front or apex for this tree. The only consolation is that I only want to learn as much as I can with this tree, instead of striving for an even halfway presentable bonsai (but hopefully that still happens!)

Pre prune


Post prune/initial styling

The purpose of this particular thread is for beginners to have a place to read tips about getting started. For example, understanding basic tree growth tendencies, timing of techniques to elicit the right response or to avoid damaging the tree. Other pointers might include the necessity of learning how to wire properly (because it does matter).

Might be best to start a new thread for your tree and ask your questions there.

 

[e~b]

The purpose of this particular thread is for beginners to have a place to read tips about getting started. For example, understanding basic tree growth tendencies, timing of techniques to elicit the right response or to avoid damaging the tree. Other pointers might include the necessity of learning how to wire properly (because it does matter).

Might be best to start a new thread for your tree and ask your questions there.

I thought my butchering above allowed for pointers on all of those things but understood, will create my own thread

 

[Amy1022]

After reading a lot of beginner threads on this site over the years, I am going to create a thread of advice about how to get the best start on your bonsai journey.

Simply put - take advantage of all of the people who have gone before you!

At some level there is a bit of skeptic in all of us, and we need to fight the urge to dive in and just start doing stuff because we are excited and we want to start growing trees NOW! And plus we are pretty smart, and self-confident and think "how hard can it be?" And so we fail. A lot. Meanwhile we are surrounded by people with a lot of experience who can look at what we just did and say "well I could have told you that wasn't going to work, because I made the same mistake 30 years ago!"

So focus on repeating other peoples' successes, instead of other peoples' failures.

Find someone with experience, and use their experience as your starting point. Try to learn everything they know - and master it, even if it takes you five or ten years. Don't be the person who spends 25 years learning what other people already know doesn't work - repeating all the mistakes they have already made. Once you become experienced, you can always try to improve upon processes, or techniques, or designs. But you are starting from a position of knowledge, instead of a position of ignorance.

This site can be an amazing resource. There are people here with decades of experience, including professionals who make a living in bonsai who come here to interact with people without asking for anything in return (except perhaps a little respect). Many members here have participated in national shows and won significant recognition for their work. Wouldn't it be better to start by trying to replicate their success, instead of striking out on your own?

Listen. Ask questions. Listen some more. And then try to do what they tell you... exactly. Only when you can replicate their success should you try to improve upon it. Don't try to run before you can walk. You waste years and years of time... and get frustrated along the way.

Hello! I am new here. I would like to know how can I take care of a juniper bonsai I just bought. It is about 4 inches in length and is in a small bonsai tray. I will post a picture. Also, I began to try and create a bonsai from a kit I bought. So far, 4 Colorado spruce have sprouted and also, a Brazilian Rosewood. The first Rosewood plant died on me. It requires a lot of warmth, but one day I let it out I'm the hot sun and it slowly died. SO I'm asking about that as well--if anyone has tried from seed to cultivate that tree.
Forgive me but I don't know how to start a new thread here. Please feel free to send this to the correct thread here. Thanks.

 

[Amy1022]

Enclosed are photos of the plants I mentioned.

 

[badatusernames]

I think my biggest challenge as a 5 year or so “beginner” is that I want to do initial stylings over and over and over until I get it down

Maintaining a tree is a separate skill

To MAKE a bonsai, I need to watch someone skilled many times and try it many times

But there are only so many quality trees you can do that with and maintain, and you want to respect the tree, so you can’t just go crazy. And sticks in pots won’t help you in this regard, so much for that.

So maybe this is stage 2 of beginnerdom

 

[Cajunrider]

I think my biggest challenge as a 5 year or so “beginner” is that I want to do initial stylings over and over and over until I get it down

Maintaining a tree is a separate skill

To MAKE a bonsai, I need to watch someone skilled many times and try it many times

But there are only so many quality trees you can do that with and maintain, and you want to respect the tree, so you can’t just go crazy. And sticks in pots won’t help you in this regard, so much for that.

So maybe this is stage 2 of beginnerdom

My biggest challenge is to transform my thorough bred noob that get discouraged after a few furlongs into a mule that carries out 10 millions steps in the bonsai steppes.

 

[BillMcEnaney]

Is my three-foot Red Dragon Maple too tall for bonsai? If it is that big, I'll plant it in my yard. Thanks.

 

[damiano68]

Non faccio bonsai ma alberi da balcone