Herewith we invite all to participate in an online competition in trunk-fusion bonsai! An idea put forward by one of our active members, Leatherback. Thanks!


Trunk fusion?
The starting point of any bonsai is finding material with a suitable trunk and nebari. These plants can be collected from the wild (Yamadori) or backyards, bought at nurseries or grown from young seedlings.
A technique not so often used is trunk fusion. This is a technique in which young plants are planted close enough to each other to effectively “approach-graft” them together. Using this technique a thick well-tapered trunk may be obtained within a few years. In our advanced articles section an expert in this field (Greg Wentzel) explained how this works, and how you can do this yourself.
See: www.bonsaiempire.com/advanced/trunk-fusion

This is what it looks like:





The challenge
The main challenge is to create a ‘potentsai’ trunk by allowing multiple young plants to fuse together. Over the course of one year these plants are to be documented and pictures submitted. A jury consisting of 3 experts in bonsai will judge the trees using following criteria:

• Survival and overall health of the young plants
• Potential of the trunk to become a convincing bonsai
• Amount of fusing during the course of the competition
• Techniques used & innovative nature of these
• Quality of the documentation

Participating & submissions
Participation is open as off this moment, but you are free to start at any point before May 1st 2013. To enter the competition, start a new post in the “Submissions” category with the title “Trunk fusion entry, [your name]”. Inside this topic there are two moments in which you need to update us on your progress:

Deadline #1 (May 1st 2013): Document how you start the process; with pictures of the separate seedlings and the seedlings put together. Include explanation of the process, including the tree species, number of seedlings used, size, date, etc. In the picture of the seedlings put together, please show a written note that says “Bonsai Empire contest” and your name.

Deadline #2 (December 1st 2013): Document the progress you made towards the end of the competition. This includes pictures of the seedlings in full growth (summer 2013) and the seedlings without leaves (November 2013). Include a closeup of the actual fused trunks!



Rules

• A minimum of 10 young plants must be used. Our advise is to use more than 40 plants
• The plants must be deciduous species
• Start of the trunk-fusion project before July 1st 2013
• Reports with images & progress submitted before the deadlines stated above
• All materials submitted for this competition may be used on the BonsaiEmpire website. If pictures and text are used on other pages than the direct competition section, authorship will be clearly annotated, and the owner will be informed of this use.

The jury
The jury consists of the following persons:
Oscar Jonker (bonsaiempire.com)
Harry Harrington (bonsai4me.com)
Gergory Wentzel (fusionbonsai.com)


The prices
For this contest three prizes will be made available.
1st price: For the tree that scores highest overall will be awarded with a copy of Harry Harrington’s book “Bonsai Inspirations 2”.
2nd price: The tree with the second highest score will be awarded with a high quality concave cutter.
3rd price: The tree with the best overall process description will be featured in the advanced techniques section on bonsai fusion methods.


Questions can be posted in this topic. Submissions (as explained above) in the "Submissions" category!


Good luck!

Supah!

Nice one...

YESS! I still have to get around to finding some saplings so work with. I though it might be a good idea for the entry photographs to have a photograph with a newspaper and the date in the backround, that way we know that the person has not started the project before, Ive seen this used on other websites.

can i use seedling from cuting? Like ficus?

@MWid; this is why we request a paper with your name in the first photo. You could never have know we would request this

I'll join as well, but not as official submission as Im organizing the judging as well.

Hope you will all join, this is so interesting, my fingers are itching to try it

awsome!!! now to find 40+ seedlings

I am looking forward in seeing the progress that the entrants are making.
This is something I have not explored yet, but will definitely give a go in the future.

I would like to try and participate, but where does one post an antry. I could not find it.

Hi Neli,

Welcome to BE!

Entries can be posted here: www.bonsaiempire.com/forum/current-competition

As in western europe it is dead of winter, I expect most entries will only start in feb, March, when spring is getting closer. Over Christmas I will start my mold, and order plants for late Jan.