Starting Bonsai

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

photo(2).jpga 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.

Originally Posted by 400wattsallday

photo(2).jpga nice small leaf jade bonsi

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

Originally Posted by dc4

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....

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.