What are your 2025 bonsai goals?

Throw away bucket of 35 years of wire curls?
What? No! I will buy if they are copper or dead aluminum. I like used crap, and cant find my junk wireball.

My spring goals:
All I think about are apple trees right now, so:
Grow out apple rootstock. See which is the best for my soil.
Get some excess bonsai and tropicals on eBay listed
learn how to graft
make a ficus bridge
buy some 1:12 people miniatures
for rusted through patio table, make a diorama

Summer goals:
Go into hiding from heat and only water minimally :)
 
What are your goals for the growing season?

What are you looking to improve upon?

What steps are you taking to get there?

Do you have milestones you want to hit?
1:What are your goals for the growing season?

As the past two/three years my trees got neglected provide the propper care again.
Probably add some new projects, start ground growing few new projects as i dug up a few also.

2: What are you looking to improve upon?

My trees and my technique...

3: What steps are you taking to get there?

at this point i have read and seen so much that by just doing and practising i get better and if i stumble upon something new for me do research and practice...

4: Do you have milestones you want to hit?
Yes finish my garden and enjoy my trees.
 
  1. Tidy up my ‘bonsai stuff’ (non-plants) and keep everything in one central location— hopefully this will reduce pacing from my garage to the backyard.
  2. Make a better backdrop for photo taking.
  3. Visit some bonsai gardens in SoCal.
 
My 2025 Bonsai Goals for the growing season are to build a grow bed for saplings and figure out my "limit" for working on seedlings so as to not overwhelm myself in the future.

I am looking to improve the "pre-bonsai" quality of my young stock. Additionally, I am looking to improve my analysis over branches and their future growth potential. Taking the leap of faith to cut old boring branches.

The steps that I am taking to further the goals are doing landscape planning for a retaining wall and grow bed locations. As for the limit of work, I am keeping a conscious tally of how much saplings I can work through as well as the amount of supplies it takes to work the saplings to better gage the amount of effort it takes in total. As for the things to improve on, I am taking classes with John Eads to reinforce my learning on how to develop pre-bonsai from seeds and paying attention to how the things I do early on effect the tree the next year and beyond. The old boring branches, I am actively working on quelling my anxiety over "wasting" years of growth in order to have a better tree for the future. If I am currently happy with how a branch looks, I probably won't be happy with it years down the line.

My one milestone is to complete building a garden space. Once I have done that, I will just be continuing my education with class.
 
What are your goals for the growing season?

What are you looking to improve upon?

What steps are you taking to get there?

Do you have milestones you want to hit?
I think I need to get back into better documentation, I used to be better at keeping track of what I did when. Posting trees and development threads here always helped me do that, and I got away from posting for a while. So I may do more of that.
 
- reduce the size and species in my collection. I want to specialize in cedar elm, hinoki, hornbeams, beech and Styrax, in the hope that I'll learn quicker through specialization. I'm working through selling everything that isn't that currently
- better photo documentation. I'm pretty good about writing down what I did to a tree but terrible about taking photos
- better nutrition and growth. I had a terrible time shaking off chlorosis last year, and seeing Andrew Robson's booming growth was inspiring. I bought a Dosatron for that reason and I want to get that nailed down.
- Weed the garden. It's all freshly landscaped but I need to keep up with killing all the fresh weeds while the new stuff grows in. That kind of small cleaning task is something I'm usually bad at
 
I think a common thing with bonsai is you want to try everything and it's easy to have a lot of plants that don't get the care that they need. I keep trying to remember that I need to curate my collection. I get really attached to each tree even though it's going to be a lot of work because I see the potential in the ugliest stick.

This episode of bonsai wire really helped me to think about my five ugliest trees every year and could I sell them to get one nicer tree.
https://www.bonsaiwirepodcast.com/1276571/episodes/15360076-chat-with-richard-wright
That is one of the best interviews I have ever heard. I still think about it months later
 
Keep my collection of display trees at between 40 and 50. Whenever I acquire a nice tree decide which one I should sell. Always look to improve the collection

Move all of my growing material in the ground to net pots or baskets for easier maintenance

Go through my pot collection and sell those that are not display worthy for nice trees
 
Did the big one (do some grafting) so

- finally figure out a sustainable way to organize wire so it doesn’t turn into a rats nest esp when traveling with it
- less exciting trees leave collection
- set up the first stages of beautyberry and trident kabudachi / forest plantings
- cuttings: arakawa, jm, Chinese quince, a specific and unique trident i have, prob more beautyberry for future projects / ground growing

Oh, and figure out how to take a vacation for a week or two without killing my trees
 
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