raft style bonsai

mako_3eleven

can anyone tell me the best type of trees to form a raft style bonsai besides a juniper?

i would love to try to create this style of bonsai.

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mgodbee

Azaleas are cake supposedly. I have never done it, but I had a "casade" branch on a crappy one sprout roots all over and it was peeled back or even under the soil so I believe it. In Fred Galle's masterpiece book on azaleas, he says it is common place for people to bury branches to have 1 shrub go on and on.

nsmar4211

Portulacaria afra (baby jade, elephant bush, etc) do well as rafts as they throw roots pretty quickly from buried internodes. I tried a couple, found out they grow out of proportion if you start with the branches too close together (on the original branch you use to do the raft from) oops. I just nicked along the bottom of the branch (at each internode) I was using for a raft and buried the whole thing in the ground. I used a u shaped piece of wire like ahair pin to stablize it until it rooted (the smaller one I did).

I've not done it yet, but I bet a ficus would do a good raft (again, "easy" to root).....