A Leg Up On The Buying Game

Jay

Al. WONDERFUL POST The amount of info in this thread is amazing... read and learn. The main thing I see is the amount of stock available to you, and the somewhat reasonable cost!!

I must try and see if I can take a trip out to the area next spring, OK it's only a thought, and meet up with you for a nursery visit!! I could learn alot in a day... and I could take or ship the findings.

I would also love to visit Glenn's growing fields, though I think the spring would find him extremely busy.

OK I should probably wake up from my dream..... but as the saying goes.... make your dreams reality!!!!

I got to get home... this key boards is driving me crazy!!

__________________
A Bonsai student living with his trees at N 44.37 W 77.49...
Think before you act... then think again... no good comes from rushing

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Shambhala

Awesome post!

Wish there were nurserys like that up where I am... although they are large in terms of quantity, you have to really comb through the place for a decent looking, rootbound, tree

Carl_Bergstrom

Wow, Al - you really outdid yourself with this one. Very nice primer on selecting material. Even this old crow learned a few things here and there.

A few comments, just for fun:

• "Only buy healthy trees." What great advice. All too often I buy one with bad color, root problems, whatever, on the grounds that in my care it'll do better. I lose half of these trees - and waste time on the other half. Buying only healthy stock has become one of my new resolutions.
  
• Great idea to compare the a half-dozen trees that you're about to buy with a single tree for the same total price. Especially once your garden fills up with more than a couple of dozen trees, quality is way more important than quantity, and I certainly wish that a few years back I'd bought higher-quality trees and fewer of them.
  
• I really love Rip's Ume. Now there is a piece of material with potential.
  
• Do those S-curve elms move? I assume they must, or he wouldn't have them there. I wonder who buys them.
  
• I'd love to see some of your "twisty-wired seedlings" a few years down the road. Do you have some to show us that you did a few years back?
  

All the best,
OMC

__________________
In love with trees

freakwent

Al,
Thanks for all the time you spent on that great thread. It all comes a day late and 6 dollars short for me though. I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of trees to practice on. I spent about 2 hours picking off dead needles and undergrowth thinking they MAY have potentential if I baby them throughout the winter.

DavidN

Great thread bonsaial. Very important for new people.

Just wanted to add a few things and ask a few questions.

Is this nursery a retail nursery? The prices are pretty much spot on for a retail nursery in comparison to here in Australia.

One piece of advice to people that I believe worked for me on top of all your advice is for new people to have quite a few trees to works on when they are new. I'm sure this has been discussed substantially already but it is vital to learn different techniques on different trees when you are starting out. You can try different species and different styles and this will avoid you babying a tree to death. I started with maybe over 50 trees within the first 6 months I did bonsai. It taught me endless bits of knowledge that have provided me with worthwhile experiences.

Once I became better at looking after trees, 3 years into it, I started to acquire better bonsai material. I also acquired a couple of exceptional, almost "finished" trees. What this does is allow you to concentrate on better bonsai material that can be displayed and shown at bonsai exhibitions and other things like that. These better trees will keep you inspired about bonsai and keep you working vigilantly on your other pre-bonsai trees.

Within a couple more years your collection of better bonsai has increased and now you need to spend quality time on your better trees to keep them looking good. It is now time to get rid of trees that you know personally think will never really make it to the stage that you wanted. Sell these off and you'd be surprised at the value some of them would fetch. With the money you could invest in better tools, more wire, pots or a single better tree.

I hope this makes sense and it is how my experience with bonsai has eventuated and is why I believe I am even more excited today about it then when I first started.

I hope this is making sense.

Another thing is that aligning yourself with a bonsai club is vital to learning and pick out an experienced member that you could learn off and is willing to help you.

Last thing is that down here in Melbourne Australia we don't have to travel long distances to find retail nurseries and wholesale nurseries. Affiliation with bonsai clubs will allow access to select few of wholesale bonsai nurseries and huge savings.
The stalked junipers you showed above cost AUS$8, ~US$4. So if you are lucky you could get even cheap stock to work on.

Anyway thanks for reading if you were able to get through it all.
Hope this helps new people out.

David

gilbycantu

That was a deeply moving experience for me Al! Two thumbs up on this thread!

--Gilbert

Moni

Very inspirational, Al. Now I know what I will be doing over the next few days.
Moni