Last year I air-layered this Japanese maple and it has developed like a charm. In the attached video you will see how I go from a layered branch to a first styled bonsai. Naturally, over the years to come it will take a lot of work to get this to become a fully refined bonsai but I am quite happy with the first outcome! The post Japanese maple early development appeared first on Growing Bonsai ..read more

Often people that grow bonsai and in particular, maples, will wonder whether it is possible to grow them from cuttings. And the first question of course is then: Rooting the cuttings. I have made a little video on rooting Japanese Maple cuttings. Please take a look and let me know what you think! In short, the steps are: Trim the maple Collect branches with 2 nodes of semi-hardened material, leaving only the top 2 branches Dip the lower node in rooting hormones Place the cutting in a suitable media (See video!) Shield the container & cuttings from wind and keep moist (Special trick in th ..read more

In my collection I have this little leaf lilac bonsai (Syringa microphylla). This tree was found on a local biowaste disposal unit, and when I got it, it was little more than a little stump. It has taken a few years to get some branches on it, but 3 years ago I for the first time had a decent show of flowers. Lilac trunk for bonsai Fast-forward and I have developed a bonsai with a pleasing canopy and loads of flower buds. With lilac however, the flowers grow in clusters. If you just let them grow freely, they will overwhelm the tree and all you see is flowers. Therefor I do a few things. I wir ..read more

A few years ago, I was not sure what the best substrate for bonsai would be. As the global consensus is that Akadama is the best substrate for bonsai and root development, I decided to do a little trial. Naturally, not a scientific study, but just for fun. I decided it might be of interest to others what I found so, here goes. Bonsai substrate test setup Bonsai substrate experiment Bonsai substrate experiment For this trial I used 6 Malus seedlings. In early spring, a few weeks after they had started growing, I bare-rooted the seedlings. After sorting them by size, I allocated them to my reg ..read more

In order to create good bonsai, often it is needed to perform some type of wiring on your tree. After all, we are working with trees that would like to grow up, into a large tree, and do not always agree with our ideal placement of branches which is more out than upwards. Guy wires for bonsai development A downside of wiring the bonsai by coiling the wire around a branch is that within a fairly short amount of time (Typically a few months to a year) the branch has started to grow around the wire (The wire is biting in) and the wire needs to be removed to avoid long-term visible scarring. Espec ..read more

My friend Wolfgang Egbert, a talented bonsai artist from Germany, created this little rock planting and kindly allowed me to republish his work as a mini-tutorial. (On facebook he regularly posts his work, if interested) Materials needed to create a small bonsai juniper rock planting A young juniper (Here: a 3 year old itoigawa cutting) An interesting rock (Ideally with some crevices and taper) Keto (A special substrate, consisting of a mix of peat and loam) Wire in different thicknesses Moss Akadama Preparing the rock To get started, prepare “bonsai muck”, a mixture of up to 40% Akada ..read more

As you may have noticed, I like Larch, and I like working on them in the middle of winter. It is one of the species which I regularly buy and style, to eventually sell off again. I often come across larches which, with a little wire and pruning, can be made even more impact full. A good reason to explain a little how I go about styling larches About growing Larch as bonsai First and foremost: For Japanese and European Larch it is important to realize that there is no back budding. The living buds that are there, is what you have to work with. Very seldom do buds pop up on older branches so whe ..read more

In some cases, one would like to adjust the foliage on a juniper. The original foliage of the species might be very loose, or prone to diseases. In that case, grafting better suited foliage might be an option. Naturally, it is also a route to get branches at places where there are none. Grafting in a process in which you take a part of one plant, and combine it with another. This works only when combining plants of very closely related species. In general, most junipers can be grafted on other junipers for instance. But not on pines. The process works by allowing the cambium layers of the don ..read more

Fig trees, or Ficus spp, are often encountered in commercial trade. Vilified as mallsai (e.g., the ginseng ficus), most of these are mass produced. As such, many people believe ficus to be unsuitable for bonsai practice. Nothing is less true. Well-trained and cared for properly the species make for excellent tropical bonsai. Ficus benjamina (left) and microcarpa Note that most of the ficus ‘bonsai’ sold in large furniture chains and supermarkets are often the combination of two varieties or even species of fig. The main trunk is often a regular Ficus macrocarpa. This is a fast-growing species ..read more

It is springtime. So time to repot your trees. All trees? No. Not all trees. Repot with a reason! One reason could be that the tree has been in the pot so long, that it is filled with roots. Or, as in the case of this trident, because you are working on building a good nebari. Then more frequent repotting can help build the base you are looking for. The post Repotting a big trident maple bonsai appeared first on Growing Bonsai ..read more