Hiya Bonsainautical engineers, let’s try a forum experiment - the Mega Micro-learnings Thread!
Each week, post one thing you learned about bonsai over the course of caring, designing, or preparing to care/design your trees. The smaller the better. Add a photo.
I was once taking a sailing lesson. At least 50% of the full day was spent on the dock and working around the boat. I learned a lot. By the time we got out on the water, the instructor said, “Well I’m not going to teach you how to sail. You learn how to sail by sailing.”
Bonsai is like that. There are a million things you only learn in the practice. So what are you learning in your practice?
I learned how impractical it is to wire trees that you’re trying to let grow to rehab or pump up.
I partially wired a few key branches on this juniperus I’ve been nursing back to health since last year. It wasn’t worth it. I can barely find the wires in the tree with all of the new foliage and the result has been scaring.
I’ve heard a few field growers talk about how detrimental it can be to wire junipers when field growing, because you have to wire every single branch or the tree is most likely to just drop the damaged branches (wired) in favor of the healthy ones (unwired).
I learned that when making pads its better to let the branchlets follow the natural flow of the primary branch instead of crisscrossing and making spaghetti lines just to fill up the pad with green.
Recently I learned not to keep my elms on too low of a shelf because my border collie likes to help “prune” some of the longer runners I’m trying to grow out.
Happy Week of learning. Anyone gearing up for extra tree care over the long Memorial Day weekend?
This week I learned a bit about the growing habit of my own trees. Trees in a rapid development phase like these boxwoods, seem to need wire removed earlier than a typical June post-flush hardening window. I did a repotting and styling on a chuhin boxwood early spring. Wires are digging in. Next time I’ll start keeping an eye on my early-Srping styled fast growing broadleafs well before June, as soon as the leaves turn hunter green (as a sign of cuticle formation).
This week I learned that even when you’re about to lose hope, deciduous trees can still surprise you. I have a Nishiki Willow that was the prize of my young collection in my first season, last year. It rocked out all year long and overwintered well - I’m in Fargo, ND. This spring has been a weird one here and cold nights held on a really long time. Despite looking great and having buds set by mid April, it’s experienced dieback ever since and nothing has moved. Now, finally, in the heat over Memorial Day weekend, it’s starting to bud all over, back on old wood.
The big lesson was that it just didn’t need water like everything else because it had no leaves and as such, was not transpiring. After a heavy rain that kept the pot wet for a few days, I tilted the pot, poked a few aeration holes and disturbed the top dressing a bit. I should have paid more attention to one of the first of Mirai’s videos I ever watched, which was a BSOP video in which he discussed cleaning top dressing off the surface for better aeration, shame on me!
I’m excited to see it start drinking like a beast soon, like it did all last year. Styling may have to start from scratch, but fortunately, that might be the next lesson to learn on this species - don’t get too committed to specific branches!
Yeah, I started in the spring of 2025. Raided all the nurseries around and did some yamadori hunting. I’ve got about 80-ish trees all in pre-bonsai staging. Just trying to get my reps in and grow! The forum has been a great resource.
Been doing this for quite awhile. It is hard to learn to let go.
I will never get accustomed to an established healthy bonsai just F…G dying…
Older established Alpine Fir, 5 years into a bonsai journey. Beautiful healthy last summer, second year in designing. Did not do anything new. Easy winter. Early spring. Buds forming, green, happy tree. Even the apex had a good bud.
First of May…Started at top and browned out… in two weeks…
This week, I learned that not all junipers crank out flaky bark, and bark flakiness can be super variable across the tree. I haven’t cleaned live vein on this shimpaku in years. It’s been weak. But still…In some spots I merely needed to touch the grey bark spots with 320grit sandpaper and even then it would go down to cambium of if I wasn’t careful.
Ryan recommends 100grit as anything lighter, even 160, he says, gets clogged up too fast with dust. But this was a smallish tree and I guarantee anything higher grit and 220 would have hit cambium too quickly.
As Kurt said above we had a very mild winter (we live 5 miles apart). Most winters are a bit cold for Japanese black pine so I keep them in the green house that I maintain at just above freezing on cold nights. I lost a bunch of 4-5 year old seedlings this spring and it appears to have been root rot. I use a mix of bark and pumice for trees in development which was a bit wet this year. Everything else in the mix did well. I guess I will need to move JPB into 1-1-1 a bit earlier than I had planned.
That’s such a cool tree I would save it to add as a dead tree in a forest planting if you’re into them. Would add a unique aesthetic I don’t see many doing.
this week I learned that it takes about 2.5 months to get about 60-70% moss coverage from the Mirai top dressing and shredding strategy.
i also learned that I like keeping the shoagnum white rather than sumi ink staining. It’s a less natural look but makes a good early indicator when then soil may be drying out. Bone white, time to check.
I ordered my sumi ink from Mirai this winter and used it this season, it looks nice, but I’ve not seen the moss develop quite as rapidly as I was expecting. Last year I did not use sumi ink, but also didn’t take note of how long it took to develop moss.
I’m curious to see if others have notes on top dressing, as Andrew Robson recently posted a top-dressing creation video on the Rakuyo youtube channel and the key difference between his method and the Mirai method was foregoing sumi-ink. He claimed that his experience is that the moss grows faster when the sphagnum is not dyed.
