Advice for starting a small Mugo

[eferguson1974]

Almost all trees are left to grow until the trunk is where you want it before going into a bonsai pot. I think by setting it on the ground and letting roots escape would give you the roots you really need in the pot, but make it much easier to lift later, without digging or damaging the roots you need. If you want to put it in the ground, put a tile or upside down plate underneath so the roots dont grow down. That way they grow horizontal and shallow. That helps dig it later and helps make the roots needed for a bonsai pot. Ive read that lots of times. Im going to use the pot on the ground method to fatten up some trees. Probably with a tile too, so tap roots dont turn into problems later for lifting.

 

[sorce]

Thanks Mike.

Why wouldn't you just replant them into the ground without the pot? Are the potbound roots preferable to "free running" roots for bonsai?

Modified "colander in the ground".....

What a dick!
Lol!

Sorce

 

[M. Frary]

Modified "colander in the ground".....

What a dick!

A colander itself would be a mess. This way I only have to cut 4 or 5 large roots that grow out of the holes. Not 60 or so I would get with a colander. And the mass inside the pot will be intact. That means little shock when I pull it from the ground. Then do the Vance rootball method of cutting half off and slicing it in toward the trunk. Then into a colander for a couple years.
That's why it's best to get these trees with a trunk of good size to start out with. That way you don't need to spend years watching one grow to thickness.

 

[Adair M]

May I suggest an alternative method for fattening the trunk?

The things that contribute most to pine trunk thickening are really healthy roots, and a single terminal apex.

Let's start at the bottom, the roots. They like an open well draining soil. This allows them to grow uninhibited, and quickly. A medium like pumice and lava is wonderful! Pine roots love it.

Building the trunk: a single terminal tip. The growing tips each produce a chemical called auxin. Auxin is the signal that tells the roots there's growth happening, so get busy and send nutrients up! The tree sends the nutrients up towards the strongest auxin source.

Here's an analogy: if there is only one auxin source up top, the tree focuses all its energy there. It builds a superhighway (the trunk) between that apex tip and the roots. If, on the other hand, there are lots and lots of auxin sources the energy gets spent all over! The tree builds a bit of a highway, the trunk, but then has to build saw lot of off ramps. Then secondary highways, then two lane roads, and subdivision streets, then maybe even dirt roads...

You see where I'm getting.

What we need is a place somewhere in the middle where we have a single sacrifice auxin generator, and keeping a few branches that we will develop later once the trunk is built.

Unfortunately, the Mugos sold at Lowe's and Home Depot have been grown in the exact opposite way! The remove any fast growing trunk and shear them back to the "dirt roads"!

You see, Mugo naturally tends to be more like a bush than other pines. So, the commercial growers take advantage of that and prune them like a bush.

For bonsai, we want them to be like a tree, not a bush. So, you have to find the single trunk line you want, and start to remove the "secondary roads" that compete with it. You can't remove them all at once, you have to give the tree a chance to adjust.

So at each whorl, remove one or two heavy secondary branches. It might take a couple years to remove all the excess secondaries. Keep any tiny "dirt road" branches that may be at the whorls! Those may very well be your long term keeper branches!

Let's revisit the soil... The soil they use at the nursery is cheap, and it holds water. It's not the best medium for growing roots. The best way to build a good root system would be to get rid of that soil and replace it with the pumice and lava mix. Pines generally don't like to be completely bare rooted, so do a "half bare root" to get rid of the nursery soil on one side if the rootball. A couple years later, do the other side.

I plant it in a raised bed of lava and pumice, or in a large grow Box.

Here are some JBP growing in raised beds;

 

[Bart99]

Thanks Adair, that's fantastic information! I love the road analogy.

 

[Vance Wood]

The trunk will thicken in a colander or a pond basket and more slowly in a standard nursery p0ot or bonsai pot. However; I think by looking at the tree you are probably aware that there is no easy way to get this tree to look like a bonsai quickly. No matter what you want to do, no matter what you do, or how large you want the tree to be you are still looking at five years or maybe three if you are lucky, to achieve your goal. The advantage with doing it in a growing container is that you will produce nice bark quicker. Mughos have a nice bark, maybe not as nice as Japanese Black Pine, but it is not kicking out of bed for eating crackers time. Growing in the ground has never been proven to me concerning Mugo Pines.

 

[Bart99]

Thanks Vance! In all honesty, I'm slightly terrified to put anything I have into a real bonsai pot for fear of quickly killing it. I like the idea of big pots, and/or ground planting because it's much more forgiving!!