jme wrote:I read in 1 of the posts that you can get a shohin from scratch to a nice piece of art in under a year. I was wondering if anyone could tell me or give me some tips on how to do this (plant selection, plant size to start with etc)
Howdee Mate,
I'm gonna be a bit controversial here and say that a good tree in one year is not really possible. Sure, you can get a good shape, and one year will allow you to get a good start, but a good tree? Don't think so, and here's why I say this. To get a good tree in a short time (let's work with 2 to 3 years) you need to do a few things. They are:
1.) Find good material.
2.) Find good material.
3.) Find good material.
4.) Find good material.
So, what constitutes good material? Well, for starters something that's gonna grow like stink, because anything slow growing is going to make quick results difficult for pretty obvious reasons. Next up, for quick results you need to have something that has a basic trunk structure in place before you get going. If you want quick results you can't be spending time on growing a trunk! Next up is good root structure, and in particular, good nebari, probably the single most neglected aspect of bonsai. Finally, a bonus is a few good branches in roughly the right spot. The other option is an excess of branches from which you can select ones in the right spot. So in summary:
5.) Find something that is quick growing, has a good basic trunk and nebari structure, and if possible, usable primary branches.
6.) What ever you buy must be healthy and vigorous. Trees with health issues will take time to grow and are unlikely to produce good results in a sort time span.
Now that you have good material, the next step is:
7.) Get it into a good growing mix that will allow optimum growth. A good size plastic or wooden container with good drainage.
8.) Do the basic work as soon as possible. Don't muck around. Be aggressive in defining the shape and design of the tree. Commit and take bold steps to achieve the end goal. Don't dilly daddle about.
9.) Once the basic structure is in place, your main goal is to maintain tree health. A healthy tree will grow well and you will get results in a shorter period of time. This means allowing the tree to recover from design work and allowing a period of regrowth for the tree to establish new vigour. Don't over-work the tree otherwise it will never keep it's vigour.
10.) Water and feed the tree religiously to keep the tree in good condition.
11.) Finally, put the tree into a bonsai pot at the end of the process. A bonsai pot with constrained roots is likely to slow growth unless you are really prepared to water and feed very well. The good side of this is that you are more likely to choose an appropriate pot once the tree is closer to its final design and size than you are when the tree is small and young.
So, the big question - what species are good for this? Well, I find elms and ficus to be particularly good, with the broad-leaf trees generally better than junipers and pines etc, with the exception of junipers that are shaped from what exists. A healthy olive is also a good option. On the indigenous tree list, you'd have to ask the Aussies.
To come back to my first point, I have found that I can get a reasonable primary structure going in about a year or two with very good initial material selection, but remember that a truly good bonsai differs from a passable bonsai in the level of refinement and detailed care. It is all very well creating a pad of foliage, but how does the branch structure look underneath? So you have a primary branch. What about secondary and tertiary structure? What about internode lengths? What about root structure? What about . . . . . the list goes on, and these are all things that take time to do really well. Of course, if you look at very small trees in the smaller range of shohin, the trees will take less time to reach the final design goal, but still, the refinement will take time. If you find a trunk that screams literati, and it has all the right bends and what have you, a tree can be designed and achieved far quicker than a good formal upright style tree, so, again, style choice and the 'closeness' of the tree to the end goal plays a big part in the time to develop.
Moral of my story? You can achieve good results in a short time. To the untrained eye they may look great, but to satisfy the more critical eye, you will need more water through the pot!
That's my opinion for what it's worth.
Cheers,
Andrew
