Problem With Pyracantha! Need Help!

kvnharv29

i just started bonsai about 5 months ago and the first tree i bought was a gnome pyracantha from nursery stock. Its about 3-4 years old id assume. i bought it in mid summer and repotted into a very large pot. It suffered alittle from transplant shock and lost a few leaves but now (almost 2 months later in mid august) its producing new leaves. I did prune it back quit abit and left it in full sun for about 3 hours a day and kept the soil moist at all times. It reaches about 100 degrees here now so this probably wasnt to smart to do just after transplanting. Now its gotten alot healthier a few leaves or dieing and i got some pics of what they look like. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Im only 16 so i got alot of time to develop some great bonsai if i get the hang of things. Thanks!

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TreeBay

Summer transplanting can be stressful. I hope this one pulls through for you. Not too much to do at this point other than water and wait. Be careful not to keep the soil too moist. There are various ways to assess the moisture level. You can often do it by weight if the container is small like this. Another way is to push a half a chopstick down into the soil and leave it there. Take it out once a day and see how wet it is. Wet is too wet. Slightly damp is okay. Dry is time to water, thoroughly. Of course there is the old standby: poke a finger down there every now and then and if it feels WET it is too wet. Damp is okay. This can disrupt the roots and compress the soil, so try not to do that too often, except as a check!

In the future, you'll probably want to carry out the bulk of your repotting in spring or fall. Watch, water, wait. This baby just needs to grow for a couple of years at least. What's that rubberband or string thing?

Regards,

Matt

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FredL

Kvnharv, your plant does look alive, so that IS a atart. And, Pyracantha is an excellent choice for Bonsai.

It is a little difficult to see the shape of your tree, so I'm a little at a loss to make any suggestions about it. From what I can see, it looks like a farly typical 1 gallon starter and in reasonably good health. Your soil looks quite granular and as though it drains quickly, an absolute must for any potted tree with aspirations of becoming a bonsai, so, well done on that also.

If you have acquired a good basic bonsai reference book or taken some time to look at pictures of bonsai on the internet, you are already aware that your tree is very early in the process of developing into a genuine bonsai. Do not despair, however, every bonsai started as a seed somewhere, sometime. This tree must go through the process of developing a reasonable trunk and rootage before it will be suitable for shaping into a real bonsai. That means a few years in a growbed in your garden or in a large pot such as the one you've put it in or, better still, a growbox, a flatter container specifically made for "growing out" young or collected material in preparation for it becoming good bonsai material. Many real bonsai artists will not work with material like yours because of the time and effort required to develop it into reasonable material suitable for "initial styling" and potting in a real bonsai pot.

What your plant needs more than anything else is time spent developing a thick trunk and good bonsai rootage. This time will probably be something like 3 to 6 years. Many bonsai enthusiasts collect a lot of material like yours which they allow to mature while they work on other projects because generally trees like yours don't require alot of work while they are undergoing the initial, long-term care required to get them to the stage they can be developed into real bonsai. Repotting every one to three years and very occasional pruning is all that is really required. Many people will do some work to give the trunk some character, but wiring the branches doesn't make alot of sense since they will all be replaced before initial styling takes place.

I hope you will find this helpful. If you want to get to a real bonsai more quickly, you must obtain material that is closer to the initial styling point. You can get alot of advice here on how to select material that is further along than this is by asking for it.

Best regards and good luck, Fred

kvnharv29

Thanks for the help guys.
As for the shape/style of the tree, i have no idea. i pruned it heavily in hopes of coming up with something but i cant see anything(heres a pic). Im thinking informal upright maybe?
I did plant it in the big pot to develop the size of the trunk, i didnt plant it in open ground because i dont have a grow bed and i didnt know if it would be ok in the ground in the backyard or something. Thanks for the help with that though fred.
As for the string, its holding a branch in place and keeping the tree in place. The branch grew out and almost around the trunk so i pulled back straight. I dont know if thats the right thing to do or not b/c wiring didnt hold the branch in place(heres a pic of that too)
Thanks agian

kvnharv29

possible front view

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kvnharv29

Heres my branch shaping

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kvnharv29

Another view

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