Did my first forest today. Commits or help welcome
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Advice would be appreciated. Thanks
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Looks good, naturalistic =good size, spacing and randomness without chaos!
Any reason in particular you didn’t top dress or were you just looking for a few patches of isolated moss to highlight the “path”?
Looks great! Keep us posted! My suggestion would to give yourself a little more lip around the edge! I think the library suggests 1/8th-1/4in for depth?
I didn’t have enough plan on gathering more and remove some of the akadama and replace with moss
Below the lip of the pot?
Good first forest. My only critique is that it looks like the larger trees in the front are in a line. Mya just be an artifact of the viewing angle.
I may have, I was trying to leave space in the front with two main trees just off center. I originally had taller tree a little more forward and after tying it in it moved back. I should have drilled another hole to hold it forward a bit.
I am putting together a larch forest in the next couple of day and am using a piece of 4x4 per inch wire cloth in the bottom of the pot to hold the wires that will support the trees. That allows the wires to be just about anywhere.
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Sounds like a remarkable idea. I have some wish I had that idea before I started mine.
Here is a picture of the pot with the wire mesh, the design, and the stock trees that I started from seed in 2019 (with my finger in the upper left!). I have also included a picture of the as assembled forest. It ended up further back in the pot and a bit more linear (I was hoping for more of a comma top view) than I planned. Thing that will be adjusted in 2 years. It is currently rather messy (the it needs the foliage to get established) and I will be putting some more subtle curves into the straighter trunks since my inspiration for this is the cover of Bonsai Focus 187/210.
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If possible would you mind showing a picture of the bottom. I dont seem to understand how this works based on what you mentioned:“using a piece of 4x4 per inch wire cloth in the bottom of the pot to hold the wires that will support the trees”.
thanks
Here is a cropped image of just the pot with the wire mesh and the wires to anchor the trees. I cut a piece of 4 wires per inch (often known as 1/4" wire mesh) that is the size of the bottom of the pot. I then attached 2 mm aluminum wires about 8" long at all of the locations where I wanted to place a tree. The wires placed across the corner where two wires intersect for strength. The completed wire mesh and wires assembly was then wired into the pot through the drainage holes using the same method I use to put individual pieces of mesh over drainage holes. The vertical wires are then wrapped around the trunk to hold it in place.
I wish I had also included wires up through the drainage holes like we use to tie a tree into a pot so I could have used them up over the roots to hold them just a bit tighter using some bamboo skewers over the roots. They are secure enough, but a little more would have been good.
The biggest advantages of the preplaced wires are that the tree locations are defined and the trees stay in place while placing additional trees. The downside is that you have wires up along the trunks that are not the most attractive and they can scar the trunk if not removed in time.
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The front has many trees in the same plane, at least it looks two dimensional. Having a few smaller trees in front of the biggest is also helpful for scale and depth.
However better than my first attempt so well done.
I love the wire mesh idea. I’m going to steal idea. Your forest looks great.
Well I decided to make some changes to my Trident maple forest. I added 6 more trees to fill in some spots, going from 19 to 25 trees. I think it gives it more depth, and fills in some negative space. One in front left, a clump of two left rear, and a clump of three in rear right. Original picture will be in commits.
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Nice additions to the forest. I know I picked up the wire mesh idea somewhere else. It is really just a modification of using bamboo skewers to similar to make a grid in the bottom of the pot. Biggest issue is cutting the roots free of the mesh during the first repotting.
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I would imagine it would be tough to get it out. Would a smaller grid mesh help with that, not sure just wondering.
It is more tedious than hard to get the roots out of the mesh. First you cut off the roots that grew through the mesh on the bottom. Then you peel the mesh from the bottom of the root pad and cut off any roots that are stuck. Having some help to hold the forest while you peel it off is good.
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