Brian Van Fleet’s Six Year JBP entry

[Brian Van Fleet]

40 Mikawa JBP seeds arrived today.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

40 huh? Would people describe you as an optimist?

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Optimistically, I may end up with several different varieties before it’s over!

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Scarified and stratified...

 

[Victorim]

You doing cuttings?

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Planted today. A layer of medium akadama, fine akadama, then sand, seeds, sand, and topped with sphagnum moss.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Well, up until today I thought I might have finished the 6 year challenge in 6 months...but they’re alive!

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

I think I’m not supposed to have more trees. I have a buddy who’s helper trashed my 5-gal bucket of shucked Ondae cones last month. Yesterday, chipmunks tried their, uh, hands(?) at Bonsai with what few Mikawa JBP have germinated. Here was the result of their efforts:

So, while it was still a little early, I decided to go the seedling-cutting route, because what’s to lose at this point?
So 40 dropped to maybe 25, and now we’re at 10:

 

[Dav4]

Natural selection, perhaps? Here's to those few cuttings growing some roots.

As an aside, every flat with seedlings in my yard has to have a screen covering it or the chipmunks and birds have a field day.

 

[dirk hoorelbeke]

Survival of the fittest.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Well, 6 survivors.

I root-pruned those that went into the round pot...

and just replanted those in the oval. We’ll see...

 

[my nellie]

Good!

 

[ysrgrathe]

Sorry about the chipmunks. I don't start anything these days that isn't under chicken wire for this reason.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Not growing super hard, but I’m probably not being very aggressive with a coarse mix and heavy feed. I was motivated by Mark’s update today to wire a little wiggle into a few.
Round pot, before and after:

Oval pot, before and after:

Notes to self: in the spring, I should repot individually, arrange roots, and plant into coarser soil...

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Repotted individually (mostly), lightly arranged roots, and planted into slightly coarser soil. Pines seem to do really well in terra cotta pots, so I used what I had. Batch 1, before:


And after separating them:

This starts year 3. I really don’t see how these are going to have much bark by year 6.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Batch 2 was less exciting. I separated out the one in the middle, and left the outside two alone.
before:

after:

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Summer update.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

January ‘21 update. Still have 6 in the running. I don’t see how any will come close to the BT#20 results in 3 more years, but we’ll see.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

I split the two growing in one pot. The one with some potential went into an Anderson flat.


The one that splits low into 4 trunks was planted at a steep angle back into the mica pot, and it will probably be reduced to 2 trunks, 1 a first branch, and the other a second trunk section. Candles are stretching out nicely now.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Here are the other 4: