Wiring my new Japanese Maple

Karmage

Sapling
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Location
Columbus Ohio
USDA Zone
6a
Hey guys,

So I found this amazing bonsai place today and this guy had everything pretty much. So I picked up a young maple tree and tried my hand with wiring it today. What do you guys think? Also I'm not familiar with lava rock being for the soil what are your guys opinions on it?
 

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It might be a little early for wiring this one. It's in to small of a pot as what that guy needs is to grow. He needs to be planted in your yard and let it get bigger. Let it go a few years. Pick new leader and get yourself some taper. Great things have small beginnings and bonsai is a lot fun. Soil should be more than just lava. I don't have any organic materials in my soil but it is a blend of akadama, pumice, granite, river sand, charcoal, lava. Good luck
 
The pot is deeper than it looks in the pic. Its about 3 inches deep. Is that still not deep enough? And yeah there is more in the soil than just lava rock. I believe the guy said its a mixture of lava rock, some clay rocks, and compost.
 
Karmage the problem is that in a Bonsai pot that tree will never get a trunk that looks like a tree. The yard would be best as this is a very immature maple, probably a year old sapling at best. You could put it in a 5 gallon nursery container and get some decent growth if it has to be mobile for you. In that pot it will never amount to much more than a stick in a pot. If you do decide to plant it, plant it atop a tile or piece of plywood and spread the roots out over it so that the roots grow out and when they get past the edge down into either the ground or the very large pot. That way when several years go by you will not have a mass of tangled roots at the surface they will plane out over the tile and past the edges into the soil beneath. You can then trim the ones underneath off and have a good start to your nebari to boot. Good luck with it.

ed
 
Hey guys,

So I found this amazing bonsai place today and this guy had everything pretty much. So I picked up a young maple tree and tried my hand with wiring it today. What do you guys think? Also I'm not familiar with lava rock being for the soil what are your guys opinions on it?
That's a pretty good overall so well done. I think there is a good, even spacing of coils and I particularly like the way you've given foresight to the fact that this is a young seedling and therefore left the wire loose enough in parts to allow for growth. A word of advice would be though, unless you are wanting to grow a small bonsai such as 'mame' size for example, it is often a good idea to allow a seeding to grow in open ground or an oversized pots for a few years to allow it to develop a thick, tapering truck, good root system and abundant foliage. This does not necessarily mean that you can't do some pruning, especially when shaping the trees direction of growth in this way, and likewise if growing in an oversized plant or or tub, you should be fine to wire too. A tree grown in open ground will take half the time to develop than one in a small pot (although I appreciate that it's not in a bonsai pot).
 
It definitely needs to come out of the bonsai pot. Grow it out in the ground or nursery container.
 
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