How to choose good material?

[rockm]

Stating this way has struck a chord in me actually. I went "over the hill" a couple years ago, and looking back on my life, this has become an issue for my psyche.
Maybe subconsciously that's why I started this discussion.


This also gets me thinking.
Where does nebari (aesthetics) end and roots (health/vigor) begin?
You can have healthy roots (and therefore a healthy tree) without pretty nebari, right? Can you have aesthetically pleasing nebari but the roots otherwise be awful?
I must now admit, that the nebari/root relationship, and horticulture as it applies to roots in general, is something I've neglected to dig into sufficiently.

Trees don't care about nebari. They grow as they can. Nebari is a human esthetic. Good nebari implies stability and naturalness in the surface roots. That observation, however, is drawn from and experience with nature in seeing roots.

and 60 is the new 50 and so on...

 

[TimIAm]

As far as seeing the bonsai in the material, this is an assumption that that is what made it catch your eye in the first place.

Attempting to clarify this point and what I think can be a mistake when buying material....

You can sometimes waste money on stock which has "caught your eye" because it has a stand out feature, only to take it back home and realise that working that eye-catching feature into a finished design will be difficult.

Sometimes you can see a bonsai in the material, but it has been helpful for me to actually take 10 minutes to think of a few directions I might take the tree in and critically assess the tree. This helps avoid buying mediocre material.

This is where the value of the stand-out feature surpasses the potential of the tree to be turned into a great overall design. It may require an exceptional amount of work, time, technique (e.g. grafting a new branch and waiting 5 years for it to thicken) to become decent.

This is why I think it is important to have a few design options on the table before you take a tree home. It allows you to visualize what is necessary to achieve a design, and weigh up your options, consider what work needs to be done. It allows you to evaluate the shortcomings. I think this also flows well into my 2nd principle.

So they would be:

1. Ensure you have a tree that is suitable for a workable design
2. Understand what you are in for in terms of commitment (time/effort/technique) to achieve your design
3. How is the health of the tree to be able to undertake the work that needs to be done? You may need to re-assess your commitment

 

[Cajunrider]

Stating this way has struck a chord in me actually. I went "over the hill" a couple years ago, and looking back on my life, this has become an issue for my psyche.
Maybe subconsciously that's why I started this discussion.


This also gets me thinking.
Where does nebari (aesthetics) end and roots (health/vigor) begin?
You can have healthy roots (and therefore a healthy tree) without pretty nebari, right? Can you have aesthetically pleasing nebari but the roots otherwise be awful?
I must now admit, that the nebari/root relationship, and horticulture as it applies to roots in general, is something I've neglected to dig into sufficiently.

I see them as related but not entirely tied together. For my bonsai, I want to have good nebari for aesthetics and enough feeder roots to keep the tree healthy within bonsai requirement at the stage of development. If the tree is at the mature stage, I don't want it to be so vigorous and send shoots with long internodes left and right.

 

[ShadyStump]

Attempting to clarify this point and what I think can be a mistake when buying material....

You can sometimes waste money on stock which has "caught your eye" because it has a stand out feature, only to take it back home and realise that working that eye-catching feature into a finished design will be difficult.

Sometimes you can see a bonsai in the material, but it has been helpful for me to actually take 10 minutes to think of a few directions I might take the tree in and critically assess the tree. This helps avoid buying mediocre material.

This is where the value of the stand-out feature surpasses the potential of the tree to be turned into a great overall design. It may require an exceptional amount of work, time, technique (e.g. grafting a new branch and waiting 5 years for it to thicken) to become decent.

This is why I think it is important to have a few design options on the table before you take a tree home. It allows you to visualize what is necessary to achieve a design, and weigh up your options, consider what work needs to be done. It allows you to evaluate the shortcomings. I think this also flows well into my 2nd principle.

So they would be:

1. Ensure you have a tree that is suitable for a workable design
2. Understand what you are in for in terms of commitment (time/effort/technique) to achieve your design
3. How is the health of the tree to be able to undertake the work that needs to be done? You may need to re-assess your commitment

This gets me thinking on something I've done in the past.
I'd be thinking of stage one in development, which I know I can handle. I assumed that the skills to accomplish stage two would come to me by the time I get there, but then what have I done to practice them? I may know the theory, may have read up and studied and researched, but applying the technique is still new and risky to me.
We must remember that just because we know a thing CAN be done that doesn't necessarily mean WE can do it. Not yet anyways.

Of course, there's only one way to get past that - just do it - but do we really want to be doing it out first time on a great tree?
So, all this talk about finding good material, but it's still good to keep some garbage around too.

I guess my point here is keep your capabilities in mind.

 

[Cajunrider]

This gets me thinking on something I've done in the past.
I'd be thinking of stage one in development, which I know I can handle. I assumed that the skills to accomplish stage two would come to me by the time I get there, but then what have I done to practice them? I may know the theory, may have read up and studied and researched, but applying the technique is still new and risky to me.
We must remember that just because we know a thing CAN be done that doesn't necessarily mean WE can do it. Not yet anyways.

Of course, there's only one way to get past that - just do it - but do we really want to be doing it out first time on a great tree?
So, all this talk about finding good material, but it's still good to keep some garbage around too.

I guess my point here is keep your capabilities in mind.

For me I have keepsake trees that I carefully develop and enough of training material to hone my skills before I work on my keepsake trees. I won't keep a thousand training material trees that take away my time. However, a couple dozens that allow me to try different methods and work out the kinks are all good. Of course the training material must also meet certain requirements. I can't do root splitting to improve nebari on seedlings but a cheap tree of the same species with hopeless roots on clearance at the big box stores or collected from landscape trash will serve the purpose.

 

[pandacular]

I assumed that the skills to accomplish stage two would come to me by the time I get there, but then what have I done to practice them? I may know the theory, may have read up and studied and researched, but applying the technique is still new and risky to me.

This is why I’ve been trying to limit my new acquisitions to trees that have already been trained by someone and are in/entering a later stage. I’ve got tons of early development trees, but only a few that look remotely like a bonsai. These latter will require different skills than the others. I believe this is also why many teachers, like Michael Hagedorn, teach you techniques on their OWN trees—if you want to learn refinement you need refined trees, which you won’t have unless you know refinement techniques (or splash some cash!)