What's your headcount this year?

[GrimLore]

How many plants do you have? How many new ones so far this year? How many have you gotten rid of or killed?

Had to toss all of my plants a few weeks ago and send them to land fill because of a problem with pseudomonas syringae, I forget the total count but it is posted somewhere here. For now I am just playing with a small boxwood and other little plants to keep interest. Hell, I did not even build the benches - seems pointless this year.

Grimmy

 

[PaulH]

Around 70 in bonsai pots. another 30 or so in the ground or growing pots. I would like to downsize.... not less trees but smaller trees. A lot of my trees I can't lift by myself

 

[KennedyMarx]

Man. That really sucks. Sorry to hear that.

I lost

3 JBP seedlings (2yr old)
3 JRP seedlings (2yr old)
4 JWP seedlings (1yr old)
2 potentilla in nursery pots
1 trident maple didn't make it through winter
2 Japanese maples
1 Chinese elm
Another Chinese elm still hasn't leaded out but is green under the bark. Hoping it will throw some growth of i give it time. Also killed a ficus salicaria that had a bunch of health problems over winter.

The only new plant I've acquired this year is a little mugo pine.

I only have one plant (itoigawa Shimpaku) in a bonsai pot now. Everything else is in nursery pots to grow out.

I think my total is around fifty plants now. Mostly shohin.

 

[Littlejoe919]

I have right around 20 tree's. I lost 3 maple saplings and 2 young kingsville's. I've added 3 jbp's, a mugo and a really nice bogi...Been a good year so far. Looking forward to year 3

 

[BrianBay9]

115 for me. I'll be at 200 again soon! Lost 12 over the winter.

Brian

 

[johng]

I can't compete with Walter but I have somewhere around 550 containers with 1 to 70 trees in each and 15o in ground. WAY TOO MANY!!!

30-40 what I classify as decent trees in pots or on stones...another 40-50 in pots...mostly small. Everything else is in the nursery and being developed. After a divorce in 2001 I had about 6 or 7 trees. Divorce sucks but it was a great way for me to weed out the crap and make a second, and more knowledgeable, start....in bonsai and life!

Amazingly enough I don't think I lost anything this past winter but that is certainly not the norm.

 

[Eric Group]

Had to toss all of my plants a few weeks ago and send them to land fill because of a problem with pseudomonas syringae, I forget the total count but it is posted somewhere here. For now I am just playing with a small boxwood and other little plants to keep interest. Hell, I did not even build the benches - seems pointless this year.

Grimmy

Damn man, ALL of them? That is a real kick in the pants! Sorry to hear that!

 

[coh]

Last time I counted in the fall (I always do a thorough count when the trees go in for winter protection) I was around 120-130 in various pots (that includes a bunch of seedlings and a bunch of nursery stock). There are also about 20 trees in the ground that may or may not eventually become bonsai material. Recently I've been culling the herd a bit, some nursery stock that was never going to become good bonsai material has gone into the landscape and there are probably about 10 more that are headed in that direction. Also, a few plants will be offered at the club auction in 2 weeks, and a few more will be put up for sale, probably on the facebook groups. I've got too much stuff that is borderline from my "reckless acquisition phase", which I think I'm coming out of.

Hoping to gradually improve my overall collection over the next couple of years by selling off (or planting) lesser material and maybe buying one decent tree per year.

I know people like to make comments like "if you can count them you don't have enough" in jest, but for me it's when I find that I don't have time to deal with them effectively (start missing repottings, or stylings, too many wire scars, etc) that I realize I have too many...regardless of the actual number.

Chris

Oh, the other part of the question...the apex of a decent trident maple died back quite a bit this winter, and a little sweetgum is only now starting to leaf out. Looks like most of the branches died on that one, which probably means it is going in the ground in the spring if it survives that long.

 

[michaelj]

It depends on what you count. If I include all of the seedlings in my 72 count and 60 count trays, I'm probably way over 1,000 now. Maybe even above 1,200. Including only the ones in bonsai pots or in pots larger than one gallon, it's more like 300. I repotted about 150 trees that were larger than shohin.

This year, I've added about 300 seedlings in 4" pots or smaller, along with maybe 40 or 50 shohin or bigger, and about 20 of those are in bonsai pots.

Body count: 1 JBP (one gallon); 2 sweetgum seedlings in 4" pots...that might be all so far. But ... I also have six California junipers collected out of season that might not make it and I gave up on a large privet, a collected boxwood and 3 or 4 collected escallonias that all actually died last year. I also had plenty of cuttings that didn't take. I've probably given away about 20 to friends, family or club raffles.

My favorite move of the year: taking about 40 seedlings and combining them to start a fused-trunk project. Almost two flats worth of baby trees combined in a single pot not much wider than a 5 gallon.

 

[ABCarve]

The 1 that I'm working on. That one keeps me from killing the rest of them.

 

[Bunjeh]

I actually kept a running inventory. Been at this 11 months. Current total 94 not including seedlings in grow boxes. 19 deaths in the family,..mostly collected material that did not survive the winter.

 

[mcpesq817]

Had to toss all of my plants a few weeks ago and send them to land fill because of a problem with pseudomonas syringae, I forget the total count but it is posted somewhere here. For now I am just playing with a small boxwood and other little plants to keep interest. Hell, I did not even build the benches - seems pointless this year.

Grimmy

Oh man. I feel like we should pass around a collection plate (or trees) to get you back on your feet.

 

[klosi]

I have 7, hoping to get to bottom 10! Maybe one is dead, not sure

 

[mcpesq817]

Started the year with about 30 in bonsai pots.
In March, we bought a "new" house and I dug up everything in the yard. Total in pots went to 115.
Sold about 60.
Down to around 55.
Need to sell/plant 15-20 more to recover some sanity in the garden.
I asked Bjorn to objectively select the "bottom 10" when he was here last month. I get attached to trees for reasons other than quality, and of those 10, I'd probably let 7 go.

This is the mindset that I'm in right now, especially after this weekend at the ABS convention. When you work on good material with a professional, you really don't look at bonsai stock the same. Plus, you spend a lot of time caring for the lower quality stuff -- time which can be better spent on the good stuff. In my first year in the hobby, a club member said that Colin Lewis told him that for every new tree you get, you should get rid of three or more trees. I thought that was crazy talk at the time. Now that I think back on it, that's some of the best advice I've heard.

I can see having 30-40 nice trees for where I am in life now. I've got some interesting stuff in the ground growing out for shohin, as well as a few dozen JBP and JRP seedlings in their second and third years in colanders that I'm playing with. Will probably keep those but whittle down them and other stuff on my benches over time.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

@mcpesq817 : yes indeed.

 

[Eric Group]

This is the mindset that I'm in right now, especially after this weekend at the ABS convention. When you work on good material with a professional, you really don't look at bonsai stock the same. Plus, you spend a lot of time caring for the lower quality stuff -- time which can be better spent on the good stuff. In my first year in the hobby, a club member said that Colin Lewis told him that for every new tree you get, you should get rid of three or more trees. I thought that was crazy talk at the time. Now that I think back on it, that's some of the best advice I've heard.

I can see having 30-40 nice trees for where I am in life now. I've got some interesting stuff in the ground growing out for shohin, as well as a few dozen JBP and JRP seedlings in their second and third years in colanders that I'm playing with. Will probably keep those but whittle down them and other stuff on my benches over time.

I look at it differently regarding time spent on the "junk". Growing "junk" into good trees is the most interesting and appealing part of Bonsai to me! I enjoy the process, I enjoy the steps of developing the stock (which I think is one of the most important parts to learn- DOING every step of the process is the only way to really learn how to make one from scratch, right?).

I also have a raging HABIT of working on trees and found that if I don't have a bunch I am prone to picking at the ones I do have too much which is not good for them.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Give it some time Eric. I think most end up in one of three camps:
1. Agree with Mac and me.
2. Sell to Mac and me.
3. End up with a lot of mediocre stuff priced higher than its worth because of the time/effort spent on it.

I hope you end up in #2...I ended up in #3 and decided to cut bait & focus on fewer trees. It took years to get there.

 

[GrimLore]

Oh man. I feel like we should pass around a collection plate (or trees) to get you back on your feet.

Nah! Honest I am just going to play around with some small stuff from nurseries this year and proceed with official benches in the Spring rather then do it this season. Silly stuff like restocking graft material for future use and such and perhaps things like replace Quince, Crape, and such. There is plenty more to do including grow a large portion of the yard over All will be ok and I will be back into it over my head in a few short months

Grimmy

 

[Paradox]

60+

Many are just growing out waiting for when they are ready for work. A few are long term growing projects. A few are more advanced ready for work.
Probably too many. Lost 2 or 3 from the winter. I have thinned out a few on my own and one is going to be allowed to become a landscape tree.
Need to eventually weed out the newbie learning material and upgrade to fewer, more developed trees. Not easy to do, you get so attached to some of them even if they aren't the best material.

 

[Smoke]

I have read a few people wishing to get down to a more respectable size and take care of fewer and better trees. That is good for a while. I have done that two times in my life and each time I find myself looking for that next best tree. You can weed down to say best ten. After a couple years entering the same five trees in the club show and the overkill on discussion forums with the same trees over and over again, it leaves one looking for something new to work on. One needs to have about 15 good trees (ready to exhibit in good pots). About 15 good trees in training (almost ready for a good pot). About 15 good trees as material being grafted, major wire and developing nebari. Any more than that is not enough time to work on properly. For me I count 4 shohin per medium size tree.