The Bonsai Below Me - (Member photo challenge)

Sorry Dan, I was replying to Joe_perry and didn’t post as a reply.
Anyway, The bonsai below me is a Douglas Fir.

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Not really “bonsai” yet as it’s still raw Yamadori… but here’s a Douglas Fir. Pictures are pre-dig in the fall of 2016. This is about as close to a “pre-formed” bonsai as I’ve ever found.

The bonsai below me is a “found” tree (yamadori, urban collect, etc…) in refinement stage. Conifer, deciduous, broadleaf or tropical, I don’t care. :slight_smile:

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You got to be kidding. Did a bear sit on this tree every year for twenty years? I’ll never think about Douglas firs as giant trees ever again.

I’ll get you a tree. Going out to the yard now.

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Common juniper -juniperus communis height 18" x width 20". Collected fall 2004.20180720_152325_1532114661937_resized|281x500

Any tree collected by Todd Schlafer. If none available, a Colorado spruce.

Try again.

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I owe viewers an explanation of the pot. Last year I tried to improve the nebari or area of the surface roots by grafting itoigawa seedlings. One died (at the front, of course). The other(s) appear to be doing well but haven’t dug deep enough to see if they are feeding the common juniper or their own foliage or both. Next year I will try to root graft again.

In the hope of keeping this thread alive with the help of a little shade cloth and good watering practise, the bonsai below me is any newly created bonsai from nursery stock.

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This is a Norway spruce that I bought from a local nursery probably in August of last summer. I got the tree for 15 dollars as it was in their “yard sale” section. “Yard sale” meaning crummy looking and unhealthy looking plants. This was discounted for the obvious fact that the lower 1/4 to 1/3 of the branches had browned and died or were very very weak. For 15 bucks it was worth the gamble, it had a thick trunk and decent taper. This is what the tree looked like when originally purchased last summer, with a PBR for good measure :joy:

I pruned off dead and very weak branches in the lower 1/4 of the trunk, and pruned out the apex this past fall, as well as pulled off old interior needles, nothing too serious. Also in the fall I attached guy wires to many of the lower branches to try to pull them down to at least let more light and air into the interior.

I repotted the tree this spring. ‘Serendipitously’ the same reason why the tree was suffering was the same reason why I was able to get it into such a small bonsai pot on the first repot. The tree was most definitely field grown, and had all of the original field soil still in the container… a very very heavy clay. The vast majority of this clay had almost no roots growing through it and most of the roots had tried to colonize the very edges of the container, where the soil met the nursery container. Presumably searching for air, where they could get none in the interior of the clay mass.

Because this was the case I was able remove tons of soil while pruning very very little root and it fit happily into it’s new bonsai pot.

Removing the soil revealed a very interesting base with great surface roots and an uneven nebari that allowed me to plant it in this slant style angle. Right now you can’t see the surface roots because there are a couple smaller root masses above the nice big roots that I am preserving for the time being. So the final surface roots are still covered. These other roots will be removed probably in a year and a half from now, once the tree has fully recovered from the potting procedure.

The branches are long and leggy and going every which way. There are far too many branches still, but again I was keeping more foliage on to help aid in recovery from the repot.

The next major steps will be to induce backbudding on the interior of the leggy branches, remove uneccessary branches and to give it its first real wire. Here is the tree as of today:

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On a side note, I really don’t think I would have been confident enough or informed enough to pull off this repot without everything I’ve learned from Ryan and Mirai Live. It was definitely the most intense/harrowing repot I’ve done, especially considering I did the operation by myself and the tree is pretty large and heavy.

Before I forget… The tree below me is an apple or crabapple! :crab: :green_apple:

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Ok, I’m going to expand the bonsai below me to any tree in the rosaceae family, so prunus, hawthorn, crabapple, etc…

That’s a really nice find! Please post some pics as this tree evolves.

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This is my grumpy crab apple which looks much better now in full foliage. It did lose the bark off one side of it some years ago.


The bonsai below me is a quince in bloom

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Do you have follow up pics of this Doug fir after collection, in recovery and thriving?

The f@#k?! Are you serious? This is Mother Nature saying here, I’ve done the work over the last 60 years for you. I’ve even kept it separate from other major root systems on your behalf. Please, go ahead, take this ready made specimen tree, by all means. Wow. What a beautiful tree.

Nice find! I’d say a good 50% of my collection is nursery stock that I’ve styled. I’ve got some great nurseries around me that stock amazing species with sometimes quite considerable age. The lack of popularity of bonsai in Canada and specifically my area make for a great variety and almost as many trees as I want. That being said, I’ve definitely been known to clear out a nursery of their more ‘bonsai-able’ material pretty quick. Forcing me to wait for new stock. But I’m a firm believer in the quality of nursery material, it just takes patience and sometimes luck to find the good stuff!

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Yea thanks man, I would say it’s now one of my more promising trees in the works. And for 15 bucks! It’s hard to tell what’s going on in there in the pictures because of all those leggy branches, but it’s got some real potential I think. Trying to imagine what direction I can take it. Since it’s now kind of suggesting itself as a slanting style, i’m wondering do I follow that movement to the right and push for more extrme asymmetry, or do I train a branch back toward the left to be the new leader and go for a more balanced image. Well i’ve got a couple years at least of cultivating interior growth before I get to the styling part.

Let me kick start this thread with a Single Leaf Pinyon collected this last February.

The bonsai below is a Common Hackberry (Celtis Occidentalis) or a Ponderosa.

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So you guys have seen this one before on another post. First year in its pot and as you can see it is growing like crazy. Collected the stump 7 years ago and put it right back in the ground to grow the secondary trunks and thick structural branching. It will receive It’s last hard prune in the spring. The pot seems deep but it is a whiskey barrel liner for flowers 6" deep. It was the only pot I had that was big enough to hold the tree. It is 3’ high and 3’ wide for now. If you are wondering what that purplish brown color is in the soil, it is #2 chicken grit. It is a great sub for lava rock on unfinished bonsai, just heavier.


The bonsai below is a cotoneaster.

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Sorry no Cotoneaster but i thought i could bump this thread with a recent scots pine i styled. This is a worthy thread to keep going in my opinion :slight_smile: image
The tree below is a European Larch

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first styled last year.
spring this year. initially styled five years ago with tanuki.
both larch were collected in Austria.

the tree below me is a quercus rubor

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