Will this stick in a pot ever be anything?

[Anthony]

Gmelina, never been in any other pot.
Plcement full sun.
3 mm soil. Watered like the bigger trees.
Trunks thickened in the pot
ages - 20 and over.

 

[JudyB]

Gmelina, never been in any other pot.
Plcement full sun.
3 mm soil. Watered like the bigger trees.
Trunks thickened in the pot
ages - 20 and over.

View attachment 262675

@Gsteil please take note that Anthony lives in a tropical climate. Also these trees are very different in growth habits than your maple. Just a heads up for information from Anthony, what he does works for him in his climate, but does not always translate to what can work for us here with our climate and available plants.

 

[Anthony]

The trident maple and maple in mild climates, grow as fast as the
gmelina [ rated to as low as 0 deg.C - not Tropical ]
Information from Australia.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[JudyB]

The trident maple and maple in mild climates, grow as fast as the
gmelina [ rated to as low as 0 deg.C - not Tropical ]
Information from Australia.
Good Day
Anthony

I am going to say it once more,- Australia, and the tropics are not the same as N.Carolina, and can't be comparative in growth rates. With whatever tree you want to put out there. I'm all for different opinions but your conditions and techniques are far from optimal for our conditions here, and giving this information to newer bonsai enthusiasts can sometimes lead to "misinformation". So I'm just throwing the cautionary flag on this so that the OP understands the reasoning.

 

[WavyGaby]

My beard agrees too! Lol!
View attachment 262664
View attachment 262665

Sorce

Nice looking maples and more

 

[WavyGaby]

@Gsteil ,

a little trick from the Far East,- place pot on a larger pot
with soil.
Let the root escape.
Plant continues to thicken.
Just make sure the drainage hole never clogs.
Good Day
Anthony

Doing the above with this presently.

View attachment 262674

Cool idea, I imagine it looks like a mini pot taking a piggie back ride on a bigger pot. Is that a piece of the big pot that your pine busted through, haha?
Thanks for clarification JudyB

 

[WavyGaby]

Gmelina, never been in any other pot.
Plcement full sun.
3 mm soil. Watered like the bigger trees.
Trunks thickened in the pot
ages - 20 and over.

View attachment 262675

Really awesome trees. Prior to recently learning, I thought that putting a young tree in a small pot was the thing to do to get it to stay small and therefore be a bonsai.
It's nice to learn that this method does work really well for you. Im using large pots on some of my saplings and tiny pots on others. I've been taking photos so I can look back and compare them all in a couple years.

 

[Anthony]

@Gsteil ,

you may find these interesting.

http://www.mini-bonsai.com/indexe.html

https://alchetron.com/Yorinaga-Matsudaira#demo

There is a book on the Count M.

If you are reading around Bnut, on our side we use
a fridge to simuate winter.
So we also grow Celtis , you should have this tree near
you.
For trees like Maples / Celtis, you need 6 weeks to 2 months
to simulate winter. Or they wil die after 4 years without
rest and they are grown under trees down here.

Also Australia has 2 temperate zones, so they can grow
Maples easily. The trunk is supposed to thicken rapidly.

For Mame' [ under 6 inches ] you would use the guideline
of 1 inch trunk to 6 inches of height.

Often trunks thicken when a top or side branch is allowed to
grow to 3 feet, but the first 6 inch of trunk might turn into a broomstick.
So you work with time and keep the small pot.

See also the work of Zeko Nakamura, and his small book.
library or cheap 2nd hand.
https://www.amazon.com/Bonsai-Miniatures-Quick-Nakamura-1989-12-02/dp/B01K3RVE40/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=zeko+nakamura&qid=1568674170&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I have no singlular books for Chinese work, but they also do miniatures.

If you grow to like mame', imagine how many you can sit on a table
top?
Good Day
Anthony

 

[WavyGaby]

Very cool, thanks. Does steady moisture in a tropical climate make it easier to grow at this size because watering is not as difficult? Did you do the "piggie back" method on these trees?
FYI, The Bonsai Miniture book in the link was listed for $297 USD, haha! The next listing had it for $10 though.

 

[WavyGaby]

It looks like she is gone.I didn't protect it well through winter. Keeping the moisture right was too difficult at this size. Lesson learned. Thanks all.

 

[HorseloverFat]

It looks like she is gone.I didn't protect it well through winter. Keeping the moisture right was too difficult at this size. Lesson learned. Thanks all.

Sorry to hear/see this. This situation can never be fun.

Do you have other specimens to fill that gap?

That always seems to help... more! And varying! Other styles! Experiments!!! Creation!!! Growth!!!

My condolences and optimistic hopes extended in your general direction, friend.

 

[Arlithrien]

Thanks everyone. If it survives winter I'll put it in a pint sized pot early spring. I've got a bunch of saplings in the yard that I can mess around with but I think I'm finally to the point where I can spend $50-100 on much better nursery stock.

You can find red maples in the wild fairly easily. They're all over the place. If you want to fill that pot I'd recommend leaving the saplings in the ground to grow for a year or two. Maybe get some wire and contort the remaining saplings in your yard to they develop some interesting movement, then as they mature choose your favorite for that pot.

 

[Mikecheck123]

My advice as a learning aid for your understanding is to use 3 maple seedlings and plant one in the ground, another in progressively increasing pots and keep another in a tiny pot. I did this around 30 years ago and this has fired my love of ground growing.

Learn 3 growth maxims - these simple rules are absolutely essential to any successful grower.

Thickening potential is directly proportional to leaf volume. This goes for trunks and the leaf mass above it as well as branches. A 15ft tree will thicken exponentially faster than a 1ft tree in a growing season. More carbs, greater rate of photosynthesis = more thickening due to leaf mass.

Thickening occurs locally on trunks and branches AT THE POINT OF ATTACHMENT. A low branch on a trunk therefore that is 10ft long will significantly thicken the trunk at its point of attachment to the trunk.

Chopping a tree (and thereby reducing leaf volume) seems counterintuitive but must be done to induce taper & movement. Trunks are grown in sections, using well placed branches to continue the trunk line.

I love the math that's involved sometimes. I wonder if anyone's ever written it down in equation form for extra nerdiness.

I've always understood the size of the leaves to be proportional to the pot size but inversely proportional how many of them you have, which could be expressed as an exponential term that represents the number of branching levels. Or simply as small_pot+bigly_ramification=small_leaves.

 

[WavyGaby]

Sorry to hear/see this. This situation can never be fun.

Do you have other specimens to fill that gap?

That always seems to help... more! And varying! Other styles! Experiments!!! Creation!!! Growth!!!

My condolences and optimistic hopes extended in your general direction, friend.

Thanks for the support, all. Nothing lost, only experience gained! I moved all my other yard collected red maples to an oval group planting. It is doing well.
I've added a bunch of material to my collection since the fall so I have a bunch to keep me going. I'm actually starting to be selective in what I keep, as I am running out room for yard experiments.

 

[Orion_metalhead]

It looks like she is gone.I didn't protect it well through winter. Keeping the moisture right was too difficult at this size. Lesson learned. Thanks all.

How did you overwinter this tree?

 

[WavyGaby]

How did you overwinter this tree?

Very poorly, haha. I basically neglected it by leaving near my southern foundation wall with most other plants and giving it the same care / water as my bigger plants. I brought it in the water heater closet several nights that went below freezing. Other than that I didn't do much. Do you have a method for wintering plants in small pots?

 

[HorseloverFat]

Very poorly, haha. I basically neglected it by leaving near my southern foundation wall with most other plants and giving it the same care / water as my bigger plants. I brought it in the water heater closet several nights that went below freezing. Other than that I didn't do much. Do you have a method for wintering plants in small pots?

I believe, the general idea (for natives) is to keep the root mass of the plant similar to the temperature of the “same hypothetical roots in top soil” that it’s not receiving...so it’s about insulation without strangulation.

If it were me, I’d plan a colder storage area for winter. Garages, basements, poorly insulated tool sheds are ALL viable options. A location cold enough to foster dormancy, but not too cold for your “exposed” pots. Lighting is significantly less important when considering these ventures.

 

[WavyGaby]

You can find red maples in the wild fairly easily. They're all over the place. If you want to fill that pot I'd recommend leaving the saplings in the ground to grow for a year or two. Maybe get some wire and contort the remaining saplings in your yard to they develop some interesting movement, then as they mature choose your favorite for that pot.

I got two more still left in the yard that I am watching. I'll give that a shot.

 

[WavyGaby]

I believe, the general idea (for natives) is to keep the root mass of the plant similar to the temperature of the “same hypothetical roots in top soil” that it’s not receiving...so it’s about insulation without strangulation.

If it were me, I’d plan a colder storage area for winter. Garages, basements, poorly insulated tool sheds are ALL viable options. A location cold enough to foster dormancy, but not too cold for your “exposed” pots. Lighting is significantly less important when considering these ventures.

Thanks. I'll try that with some sort of sand layer below the pot to help control moisture. I tried using a pan below the bottom towards end of winter and I think that actually hurt it more from a couple of big rains that created standing water in the pan.

 

[Lazylightningny]

http://www.mini-bonsai.com/indexe.html

Very cool web site. He has some sweet trees.