Seasonal Indicator-based Task List

[mrnvgtr]

I'm very new to Bonsai, and with most new things, like learn things in an orderly fashion (e.g. calendar of tasks). Kind of a learning deficiency I guess, as it seems most people I know seem to just wing it. However, for bonsai, just a task list without the seasonal cues / indicators for performing particular tasks by species/type will quickly lead to failure.

Has anyone added the necessary seasonal cues / indicators to their calendar of care and maintenance tasks? Obviously there are variances by species (pine, juniper, deciduous, fruiting/flowering, larch, ginkgo, cypress, azalea, cedar, spruce, etc.) to differentiate. I've searched and can't seem to find anything. If that doesn't exist, I'm happy to use this thread to constructively create something. Just starting out, I'm deliberately focusing on deciduous until I sort of get the hang of things, so that would be a good starting point.

Apologies in advance if this has been covered somewhere, as it seems like a necessity to start down the path toward success. I just haven't found it.

 

[Colorado]

Like everything with bonsai, “it depends” ….but here’s what I generally do with my deciduous as a starting point.

When the buds are swelling in the spring, I do repotting. Sometimes I will also wire and/or prune at this time, but usually not if I’m also repotting that particular tree.

When new leaves are emerging and new shoots extending, I don’t really do much to deciduous.

When the new leaves harden off, sometimes I will prune and/or do some defoliation. This is also usually when I start to fertilize. I tend not to fertilize earlier because I think it might make the internodes longer.

Some species I will prune again mid summer.

When the leaves fall off in the fall, I’ll sometimes do some light pruning and/or wiring.

Hands off in the winter, as my trees are outside buried in snow.

Hope this helps!

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

For pines and junipers:
When you can stand outside in a sweater for an hour, and the forecast says that it's going to be warmer the next week, wait one more week to do the repotting. There's a scots pine protocol I did in the resources pages somewhere, it should tell you all the triggers for scots pines (and essentially mugo, and other single flush pines too).

However, for bonsai, just a task list without the seasonal cues / indicators for performing particular tasks by species/type will quickly lead to failure.

I love telling you this, because you're looking at it the wrong way. It was not a failure, at all. You learned what not to do, in a single go. Now think back about math classes and see how many times you had to do a single operation to get the idea of what it meant and did. 10-150 times? Why do you know, without thinking, what 2x3 is?
The death of a plant is not a failure, that's the starting point. That's how we all learn, that's how we all tumbled along until we got it. Most people have to do this once or twice and learn. I do it six times just for good measures.

One of my professors put it like this: The more experienced people fail as much, maybe even more than you do. They learned how to do it graciously and put those experiences to work in their benefit.

I want to suggest that it might be a good idea to ask a couple people if you can tag them in one of your threads if you have any questions. If they agree, just type out their names with the @ sign in front and post your question. It helps to have a thread per 1 or 2 trees so things don't get too crowded and blurry.