Rising vegetation for bonsai tends to imagine time in a big coaching container, or the bottom. The objective is to develop a giant trunk.
Usually, that is precisely the best concept. A proportionally bigger quantity soil grows the massive root system that pushes biomass upstairs in trunk girth and massive branches.
The goldfish analogy is beneficial. You probably have a standard, 2” goldfish, and you place it in a giant tank, the fish will develop massive. If you happen to maintain the two” goldfish in a tiny bowl, it isn’t going to develop in any respect. Regardless of how a lot meals you throw at it (apologies to Dr. Seuss, who was proper about every little thing else).
However as soon as we have a look at species, there are actual variations in those who trunk up properly in a bonsai pot.
Right here’s a Wisteria, already not a younger plant. (A Warren Hill bonsai, by the way.)
Right here the trunk has doubled in a pair a long time. It’s at all times been grown in a pot. The bottom growth is quick even for a deciduous tree, however for a vine it’s extraordinary.
Vegetation fatten at totally different charges in pots. Listed here are some observations:
- in a really small pot, nothing fattens
- as soon as a pot holds a few quart of soil, some vegetation start to bulk up
- Spruce, particularly Ezo spruce, appears the least keen to placed on trunk measurement in a proportional bonsai pot, additionally, Hinoki
- Juniper is famously gradual in a small or modest pot
- Black Pine has modest trunk beneficial properties in a pot
- Larch is quick
- Wisteria will trunk up in a pot, which is odd as its a vine (usually among the many most immune to trunk up)
- Hornbeam and Beech are gradual
- Trident is quick to trunk up
- Styrax is about the identical as Trident Maple
- Stewartia is gradual, half the velocity of a Trident Maple
- Atlas cedar can be gradual to trunk up
That is all to say one container measurement for rising all species of plant is probably not optimum, in case you are into rising younger vegetation, or growing vegetation in appropriate-sized bonsai pots. Some species do get trunky in a pot over time. For others, that caliper price is glacial.
Footnote: One associated level is pot upsizing. In Bonsai Heresy I wrote a chapter concerning the apply of incessantly upsizing pots containing very younger inventory, to construct biomass. Nurseries with sufficient staff typically do that, and meta-studies present this apply brings probably the most beneficial properties in biomass. Bother is, few of us have the time to maintain up on upsizing pots on the optimum time for the younger vegetation. That half I didn’t say, and may have. For many of us, placing a plant in a bigger pot goes to deliver higher beneficial properties, even when that bigger pot is just not optimally bigger. Bigger remains to be a great factor.
Jonas Dupuich lately identified to me the confusion in that chapter. Talking of Jonas, he’s writing one other e book, which you all ought to prepare to purchase. And everybody ought to get off their buns and tune their automobiles or get on a airplane or hovercraft to the Pacific Bonsai Expo in Oakland, CA, October 26-27, 2024, which will probably be a terrific bonsai social gathering. Hope to see you all there.