What did you do today? Show us Pic Required

[ShadyStump]

Sorted some lilac sucker I MAY choose to sell...


And my 8yo helped me clean up the grass patch in the backyard, and reseed...
Again.
Sprang for the good stuff this time. The native low maintenance mix: buffalo grass and blue gramba. It's the wild prairie grass of the region. Between that and what's coming back from last year, should be decent play area for the kids this year.

 

[NateDyk47]

Took a photo of this guy chilling about 200 ft off the road eating breakfast.

Awesome! I saw my first wild bald eagle in December... somehow, I've seen 2 more since then

 

[NateDyk47]

Signed up for Mauro's 3 year program starting in 2025:
View attachment 531094

Starts next year here in Michigan near our location. Doing four other classes before that to prepare...

Taking my game up a few notches!

Wow! I didn't know he offered his school in Michigan. I may have to look into that...

 

[ShadyStump]

Awesome! I saw my first wild bald eagle in December... somehow, I've seen 2 more since then

Likely there's been a local boom in some sort of food source for them.
Some time ago we had the mildest winter in 50 years, meaning prairiedogs were doing WAAAAAAY better than anyone could stand. Eagles came down from the mountains in squadrons for the easy buffet. The balds out-competed everything else in short order.
When the prairiedogs started dwindling after a couple years, the balds returned to the mountains, and goldens moved in. Now days it's osprey in the rotation.

 

[PerryB]

More repotting!
I've been planning for over a year to twin these 2 hornbeams to mimic what I see in our neighborhood wetlands. They are 3 year old saplings that I got 2 years ago and foolishly put into bonsai pots.
I removed bark where they actually kiss, applied cut paste at the borders, bound them with Transpore medical tape, and closed the gap with some cinched down aluminum wire.
Planted in a 16"x16"x 5-1/2" grow box with APL plus coco coir.

 

[19Mateo83]

I repotted a kiyohime I air layered off its rootstock last year into a sweeeet @BrightsideB pot and did some real tree work in the back yard. I managed to get that big hanging leader down from over my nursery area without breaking anything.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Built a cheap soil sifter to sift pine bark mulch. 1/2" mesh to get rid of the big chunks.

 

[PerryB]

Also, dug out the Schoodic pine that arrived in late November and spent the winter in the nursery pot buried in my grow bed.
The bending clamp and some pruning of unwanted branches took place in November. Today I removed about 60% of soil and the bottom 4" of root mass to get it into a pumice: pine fines mix (90:10 ). 16"x16"x5-1/2" grow box.

 

[August]

Well I didn't want to be repotting in March but this honeysuckle was budding out early and I desperately needed to get it into a small manageable container. I think I went a little smaller than I needed to but, this is the punishment for making me repot before I'm ready...

ignore the top, its a mess. The win today was sorting through the trunk and finding a decent nebari.

 

[ERClover]

Did several repots and a volunteer collection event to compose a Virginia native forest I’ve been planning as I identified volunteer trees around my property throughout last year.

We are rocking 3 Wild Black Cherry on the periphery and rear, a Silver Maple rear left, Black Walnut fore left, Sweetgum large left center, ERC large right center, what I believe is a Loblolly Pine right rear, 2 Willow Oaks fore right and fore central (very small), a very tiny Red Maple foremost left and an even smaller itty bitty American Elm foremost right. First forest composition and for the most part just hoping everything settles in, a lot of what was pulled from around my property didn’t have many roots but hoping their hardiness to my climate as natives will help them pull through. Everything I pulled last year even well into the year had absolutely no problem.

Shouting out this little Azalea cutting from the repots. This guy was put into 100% Fuller’s earth around late June of last year. It filled its little pot with some of the finest roots I’ve ever seen. The whole mass was like this. The picture was after having already removed a significant amount and before finally finding the lower end of the cutting to remove.

 

[shohin_branches]

My black cherry was leafing out already so I repotted it. This was accidentally dug up with a grape vine two years ago. When I repotted the grapevine last year I noticed this cherry had okay roots so I threw it in a half gallon pot (cut down gallon) with some old bonsai soil I hadn't re-sifted yet. The soil it was in was pretty bad so now it's in pure bonsai soil with no organics, but topdressed with moss.

This is an accidental bonsai and I'm not excited about this one yet. It's only alive because I compulsively put plants in pots. Maybe I'll wire the top back up and go for a very tall and skinny bunjin. Maybe I'll sell it. Maybe I'll stare at it for ten years.

 

[bwaynef]

This Ume got its first real pot. Still needs to develop but thought the 8” cutdown plastic pot could use an upgrade. (I think it was in a ceramic before the plastic, but nothing approaching even decent.)

 

[Sage_bonsai]

Two mame powis castle artemisia (wormwood)

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Made some repairs on my old repotting bench. Should be good for another 10 years.

 

[Scorpius]

Made some repairs on my old repotting bench. Should be good for another 10 years.
View attachment 531721

I need to do this.

 

[Kievnstavick]

One of the two repots I did today. This is a crop cherry I got from my Dad's yard as a root sucker. I did a moderate root pruning focusing on cleaning up the radial roots and removed large roots from the bottom to get it to sit flat in a future pot.

As an example, I took a picture of what the root system looked like after removing the substrate. It was in a pond basket for two years. I have yet to see what a root system is like from a rootmaker II pot, but I rather like how the roots turned out from a pond basket.

I liked the front I had picked out before the repot and only realized after reviewing the photos that I am not so happy with the new front I put it at. Since it is still in the grow out stage, I will just leave it where it is at.



As a bonus pic: Here is what the root system looked like two years ago. The large horizontal root is the remains of the original root from the parent tree.

 

[BrightsideB]

My little JBP in new home. A little bigger than the last. Going to let it grow out this year and then do branch selection for it’s future. It is going on 4 years old. Wanting to keep it as small as possible.

 

[ZombieNick]

Got this Trident Maple into a grow box to start the root work. Had to change the angle quite a bit to get a workable base, which means this will need another cut back in the future to accommodate the new angle (and also to get rid of the straight upper trunk). Huge shoutout to @Ruddigger for building me the box and coming over and helping me repot it yesterday, otherwise I would have missed the repotting window.

 

[shohin_branches]

I was so excited to chop and repot this mullberry I forgot to take a before photo so pretend this is the before photo.



This was a volunteer from my veggie garden that I dug up last spring. Mulberry hold a special place in my heart because they were the most readily available tree in my yard as a kid so I've spent a lot of time bonsai-ing them over the years. Controlling the roots helps with shaping the tree without getting coarse growth.

 

[hampton]

Finally separated a Sharps Pygmy ground layer I’ve had going for two years. I had no luck getting roots on one side of the trunk - I’ll likely have to come in with grafts after it’s had a year or so to recover.