Instant bonsai: Air layering a cedar; newbie with little patience

onlyrey

Hi all,

I am new to bonsais and pretty much to trees, but I am willing to put in the time and effort to take on this hobby . This is in fact my first post.

I recently bought for $25 a Cedar (I believe) and would like to air layer it in two parts to get two different Potensai out of it.

Got the hormones, peat moss, and the tools to do it. I am located in Tampa, FL. The tree has a diameter of 1.25 inches close to the root, and about 0.75 inches in the mid of the trunk. The height from the ground is about 4 feet.

Any suggestions; go ahead, I have thick skin . Thanks in advance.

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cedar_prebonsai_small.jpg (34.5 KB, 354 views)

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Joanie

It seems like not all cedars are good for bonsai. so let's see if someone can come on and give you some advice. Do you know what specific cedar it is? That would help.

Joanie

Will_Heath

Peat moss?

Have a look at these links on layering.


Good luck,


Will

onlyrey

Joanie,

I don't know what type of Cedar it is. It seems I am committing all the newbie mistakes at once . Starting with not knowing exactly what tree I intend to work on.

The person who I bought it from said it was a cedar, but I didn't care to ask exactly what type of cedar it was. I took a picture and attached it to this message for ID.

Thanks

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cedar_leave_small.jpg (35.9 KB, 216 views)

onlyrey

Will,

More potential mistakes on my part . These are excellent links; reading through them and noticing how I was setting myself for frustration.

I will start by buying the right moss: Sphagnum Moss, the long fibrous type.

Two more questions are:
1. Timing of the air-layering (I want to do it as soon as possible, and I am willing to take a big risk by doing it sooner rather than waiting).
2. Where to air-layer to get two good potensai.

Thanks

onlyrey

grampz helped me to ID this tree on the BonsaiTalk chat:

It is a Hollywood Juniper, Juniperus chinensis, or Torulosa.

This means that my fear of it being a Leylandii or Leyland is over, and I will be able to work on it.

My next step will be to Airlayer the tree at the middle of the trunk to try getting two trees out of it. This makes me a also a greedy newbi.

Ralph

FYI, bonsai is an art of patience.

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onlyrey

This January, I couldn't get roots on the top of this tree (from the air layer); just very few small roots. So I just took it off back in January, and yesterday I repotted the bottom part of this tree.

When cleaning the soil from the surface, a very nice nebari spread appeared; it touches the inside of this 11" ceramic pot from side to side. Cannot be really appreciated in this photo.

Right after removing it from the nursery pot, I cut out about 30% of the bottom; after I untangled the roots I noticed that I had removed probably about 60% of the finer roots which were mostly at the bottom of the pot.

I have removed about 50% of the foliage when I took the top off, and about 60% of the finer roots because I thought the roots were distributed more evenly in the nursery pot.

I'm misting about two times a day, and hoping this juniper will make it, because the nebari and taper at the bottom is just very appealing.

When I find out if this tree made it, I'll do the initial styling on it. I like this California Juniper, I'm thinking of styling it similar to it, but without the Jin and Shari (or not yet at least).

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	cedar_prebonsai_small.jpg (34.5 KB, 19 views)

rowan57

I gotta be honest, this perfectly illustrates why there is no such thing as an instant bonsai. The tree in question appears to have next to no taper, a great lack of desirable finer styling branching, I cant tell about the nebari from the photograph. Dont get me wrong, we all have to start somewhere, im not claiming that anything i have is of a wonderful standard, but i think in this case (if the tree survives) i would wait a year or two to give it a break and then put it in the ground to gain some taper and interest to the trunk.

REgards
Rowan

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