Brand new to bonsai, might have gone overboard

[Dutch]

I've always been totally intrigued with bonsai ever since seeing reference to them in movies.
I decided to on a whim buy a Japanese garden juniper from a stand along I5 coming back from a Disneyland trip.
I had no idea what i was getting myself into.
I've since subscribed to about 20 different bonsai channels on youtube and went to the garden center and purchased 2 maples and a cypress.
To play around with since the juniper was already styled and it's basically done until spring next season.
I then started looking up maples and found Mr. Maple. I created a wishlist and convinced the wife we had to buy them now because instead of not knowing what to do with 4 trees.
10+ maples in total was significantly better.

So now i have 9 more maples coming. All of them will be 1 gallon nursery stock.
I'm planning to repot most of these into pond baskets with bonsai soil to start training the roots.
I think I'll keep 1 or 2 in nursery pots and eventually plant them in my yard to provide shade and help me create a space where i can sit and enjoy my bonsai aswell as some nice fall colors with some shade.

Maples needing love:

• Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'
• Acer palmatum 'Sango kaku' (Coral Bark)
• Acer palmatum 'Mikawa yatsubusa' <-- This one i believe is already planted in the front of my house but i have no idea on how to tell if it's this cultivar.
• Acer palmatum 'Waveleaf'
• Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan'
• Acer palmatum 'Patsy'
• Acer palmatum 'Koto maru'
• Acer palmatum 'Geisha Gone Wild'
• Acer palmatum 'Beni shi en'
• Acer palmatum 'Alan's Gold'
• Acer palmatum 'Orangeola'

If anyone could advise me on next steps.
and in particular:
which pond basket size to go for as well as should i be repotting all the nursery stock into better soil regardless?

P.S. The goldcrest cypress is going to be my messing around tree. It's small and pliable it'll help me learn how to wire and if i mess up it didn't cost me tons of money.
Also it smells amazing

Much appreciated,
Bonsai beginner that jumped in with both legs without even checking if the water was deep enough

 

[Dutch]

Also if there are certain cultivars that are better for me to keep in nursery pots to eventually plant I'm open to suggestions.
I basically want to create shade for myself and my dogs to enjoy my backyard all year round as well as enjoy their gorgeous fall colors.
And work on some cool bonsai and get myself more versed in the art.

I have seeds stratifying for some pine also so i can experience the entire process from start to finish.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Before making plans, I'd try to figure out if they are grafted or not. If they are, you have a couple years of air layering ahead of you before you can think about nebari and repotting. Standard A palmatum is good roots, but the graft site can be ugly and might never properly heal. Ideally, you want maples on their own roots.
Why pond baskets? I have a couple maples and they do just fine in regular pots, with regular potting soil even. Sure, bonsai soil is a good alternative, but it's a lot of watering.
In pond baskets they might become difficult to keep alive; those tend to dry fast, and require very frequent watering. To my knowledge, a maple can dry out once or twice, but the third time it will not recover. Unless it's norway maple, they're tough as nails.

Wiring conifers and wiring maples is.. A world of difference let me tell you. I thought I knew how and when to wire, what the limitations were in terms of how thick a branch can be and how much wire and protection is required. Then I snapped basically every branch of my maples. Every single time, even with 10% of the bending and 20% of the force I use on conifers.
A cypress is a conifer, a maple is a maple. Please do not extrapolate the behavior and technique of the cypress to a maple or you'll end up like me ;-)

 

[Dutch]

I was mostly considering pond baskets because they breathe and will stop the roots from growing past the edge.
I was wanting to use them to train the nebari but as pointed out. I need to see the grafts first. Once i receive all the trees i'll take pictures and show.
Only the 'Orangeola' gave me a graft position choice.

 

[MalsRFun in TN]

I buy a lot of trees from Mr Maple. Understand before you get your trees that they will be young and just grafted last year, so you'll immediately call them ugly. If you watch any of the Mr Maple videos or listen to their podcast, you'll learn that if you put your maples in the ground as most of their customers do, it will take 5 or 6 years for the trees to grow into their grafts and look like normal grafted nursery trees. Those guys teach grafting at many of the regional universities (there's a video of at least one of those classes) so they know what they are doing. They do side veneer grafts, which is considered the best way to graft maples.

My point is that you're buying very young fairly newly grafted stock, so don't be surprised when you open the box. You're getting nice maples, but they are far from maturity, especially if you plant them in pots. Have fun!

 

[Dutch]

I buy a lot of trees from Mr Maple. Understand before you get your trees that they will be young and just grafted last year, so you'll immediately call them ugly. If you watch any of the Mr Maple videos or listen to their podcast, you'll learn that if you put your maples in the ground as most of their customers do, it will take 5 or 6 years for the trees to grow into their grafts and look like normal grafted nursery trees. Those guys teach grafting at many of the regional universities (there's a video of at least one of those classes) so they know what they are doing. They do side veneer grafts, which is considered the best way to graft maples.

My point is that you're buying very young fairly newly grafted stock, so don't be surprised when you open the box. You're getting nice maples, but they are far from maturity, especially if you plant them in pots. Have fun!

Yeah that's not a problem i 100% assumed I'd have several years until anyone of them would be even showing anything worth looking at
I'm just trying to do right by the trees as well as learn as fast as i can on the way there.

 

[MalsRFun in TN]

If you are into Japanese maples, bonsai or otherwise, watching Mr Maple videos are a great source of information about care and cultivars, along with the Verheese (?) reference book on Japanese maples (usually available free at the library). Of course the trees themselves will teach you a lot over time.

The bonsai immediate response to air layer away grafts is dangerous if you don't realize that weeping dissectums like Orangeola can't survive on their own roots and some cultivars like Koto Maru are from a witch's broom, which has always been reproduced by grafting. Read the wealth of information here on BNut before you take drastic measures.

Welcome to the addiction! I own way too many...

 

[rockm]

Yeah that's not a problem i 100% assumed I'd have several years until anyone of them would be even showing anything worth looking at
I'm just trying to do right by the trees as well as learn as fast as i can on the way there.

It will much longer than several years. It will be a decade or more depending on what you want as a "final" image (bonsai is never "finished" because they continue to grow, but they do have a goal for initial development purposes. IT's up to you to determine that goal.

Seedlings are the long road to bonsai. Most all of the larger bonsai you see were NOT developed using seedlings and grown up to become bonsai. Most larger bonsai were and are developed by reducing larger established trees, cutting them to stumps about 8-24 inches tall and regrowing the apex and branching completely. Little bonsai generally do NOT become larger bonsai.

Maples are a classic example of a species that this technique is used on.

I'd plant all of the stock you've ordered out in the ground and let them grow. The first step in developing them into bonsai is to grow their trunks, specifically the root crown and first third of the tree. You have to have a vision of where you're going. Do you want a larger bonsai or a smaller one--grow the trunk accordingly. Don't pay too much attention to the top two thirds of the tree. It is a sacrifice to grow out the portions below.

 

[Dutch]

I'll have to see if i can get my wife convinced to dig 10 trees into our yard. we might be up potting the majority of them for several years.
I am thinking of converting 1 or 2 to bonsai directly depending on what the state is of the trees that arrive. and 1 or 2 that probably will never see any Bonsai work done just re-shaping to find a final place in my yard.
I'm aware that Bonsai means the tree is never finished it's an ever evolving tree in both shape, size and character.

 

[The Barber]

Ground growing would be optimal for you with the grafted trees in my opinion as you can ground layer them by running the tree through a hole in a board, then burying it above the board. The roots will grow out nice and flat above the board and create a much more desirable nebari when it gets big enough to choke itself out on the board. the tree will respond by growing roots above the board, . Not to mention they grow exponentially faster in the ground and will thicken into a much better trunk.

All with permission from the wife of course.

 

[Dutch]

Ground growing would be optimal for you with the grafted trees in my opinion as you can ground layer them by running the tree through a hole in a board, then burying it above the board. The roots will grow out nice and flat above the board and create a much more desirable nebari when it gets big enough to choke itself out on the board. the tree will respond by growing roots above the board, . Not to mention they grow exponentially faster in the ground and will thicken into a much better trunk.

All with permission from the wife of course.

Would that be similar to an Airlayering? Do i have to take the bark off at all or is burying the stem/trunk enough and will dormant root nodes root without any help?
Also when would you suggest doing this work to happen? Before the real cold hits here or early spring? We reach freezing here maybe a handful of nights during winters

 

[The Barber]

Would that be similar to an Airlayering? Do i have to take the bark off at all or is burying the stem/trunk enough and will dormant root nodes root without any help?
Also when would you suggest doing this work to happen? Before the real cold hits here or early spring? We reach freezing here maybe a handful of nights during winters

This is ground layering. Basically you drill a hole in a board and pull the tree through the hole. As the tree thickens it will basically tourniquet itself inside the hole of the board and the tree should produce roots around the tree, above where the board is. You dont need to cut the tree this way, and the tree will eventually layer itself. Growing trees over boards, CD's, floor tiles etc with holes drilled in them forces the roots onto a level plane and keeps them shallow. Search topics on growing over tiles or similar, and also ground layering.

 

[Dutch]

This is all the acquired material.
First 2 maples are the coral bark and the blood good from a local nursery.
The other maple without a tag is geisha gone wild.
I've also added all the non maples and the side of the highway bonsai i picked up.

Do i wire these out when all the leaves are falling off on the top branches to start training for when i air / ground layer them off?