Starting Bonsai

I planted some ficus religiosa, i love the leaves of the full grown tree!! And they make a great Bonsai and I read that there good for beginners to the art.

Here is a picture of my seedling along side my sweet mini pepper seedlings in a "Mini DWC" setup up on my windowsill.

I know I'm a little late on this conversation but bonsai is something that I am very fond of and have about 10 trees. Best plants for a beginer I have found (through my own trial and error) are Junipers & cotoneaster. Both are very hardy plants and do well in most outdoor enviornments...do not grow bonsai indoors unless you have a grow room. The junipers are fun because you will get to learn to wire them and how to pinch new growth and they tend to have more the "traditional" look. The cotoneaster is fun because it will grow pretty fast and you get to learn how to shape a tree through pruning new growth rather than using wire.

My BIGGEST PIECE OF ADVICE.... find a nursery that sells bonsai stock. These are young plants that have been trained to one day become bonsai, not to be confused with trees/ plants that are already shaped and potted. They will already have bends and great begining curves in the trunk which is very hard to do if you start with an already mature tree that you would find in you normal local nursery.

Lastly go check out http://bonsai4me.com/ probably the easiest and most informative website I have found on just about every subject of bonsai from beginning techs to advanced techs. Also YouTube "Ryan Neil" by far the least boring person to listen to and watch about the subject....because there are a lot of painfully boring bonsai video's out there.

i have a few bonsi let me take a pic

a nice small leaf jade bonsi

nice the jade is my fav. mostly just because of the name lol mine only lasted a few months I got excited and over prune and train the tree, bonsai are about taking your time i have alot to learn. Im going to try from seed next any ideas which seeds strains are good to start with?????

I have 4 ficus cuttings that have rooted out of a a 2nd batch of 9 that I took. The first 9 all died and the first 2 died before they had any roots and 3 of them slowly died. I will have to get some pics up when I can.

The root system on them have taken right off. They seem to love the B-1 Thrive that I gave then when I first put them in there.

400wattsallday said:

View attachment 2267094a nice small leaf jade bonsi

Click to expand...

You kind of don't even bonsai it. Where I live, it's called Money tree. It grows like that by default.

dc4 said:

Bump. Anybody got some info about the tehniques? I understand it's not just trimming you kindof do lst too on bonsai right? Enlighten me....

Click to expand...

Should be plenty of info around, I know back 30 years ago, my grandfather used to occasionally read his 'Better homes and garden' book, but being a kid, I didn't pay much attention to his techniques and what not, just know he enjoyed the pine looking ones-that was almost all he grew, some for 6-10 years, he had them as tall as 3' and looked like something from a Japanese movie.

jubae said:

I planted some ficus religiosa, i love the leaves of the full grown tree!! And they make a great Bonsai and I read that there good for beginners to the art.

Here is a picture of my seedling along side my sweet mini pepper seedlings in a "Mini DWC" setup up on my windowsill.
View attachment 2247844View attachment 2247845

Click to expand...

Hey Guys/Gals it has almost been a year since i posted the photos above so i wanted to update you on the Ficus seedlings

here are the ones that made it too day 323!!