Hello,

My name is Carl Exter and I am brand new to bonsai. I've been doing a lot of research on the art and what I need to know to grow a beautiful tree. This site is one of the more informative ones that I found so I decided to join the forum. Help and guidance would be greatly appreciated, and judging from the threads that I've seen, is generously given in this forum.

I recently purchased acer rubrum and acer palmatum seeds. Today is their first day out of the stratification period. Any words of wisdom from other Maple-lovers out there?

Thanks

Happy to see another nOOb here. I am waiting for my seeds to come. I have a Juniper - not sure of the age. Thinking 2 years.

I am going to try Japanese Pagoda, Chinese Elm, Blue Japanese Wisteria and Bamboo-Leaf Japanese Red Maple. They will all grow in zone 5.

I am looking forward to the enjoyment and the impatient waiting. I can handle the growing -- not to good at the germination period.

My friend gave me some Jack Pine .. who knows how long they were in her car. Followed the stratification directions, been 10 days planted -- I am giving them more time.

welcome Carl. Where do you live?
Here many people live in countries or regions very different and location is very important to answer questions of growing.
It does not grow trees in the same way as UDSA areas in which we live

@daniele I live in USDA zone 5a

Carl: in your profile you can add your USDA zone.

Hey Carl, nice to have you on the forum, the thing about seeds are that they take such a long time to grow into nice trees. What you should do is grow them, but also buy nursery stock or get people to give you trees that they dont want so that you can get the basics like watering, pruning and wiring down. This is important because imagine if you have an awesome tree and you kill it? The whole thing is you are going to kill trees and stuff what its a learning curve. I have been doing bonsai for just over a year and i have killed 2 trees haha Rather kill an average tree than a nice expensive one!!

Anyway i have drifted abit, the main thing is get involved in going nursery crawling because you need to keep yourself stimulated or you will drift off track. It happend to me

Hi Carl,

Welcome to the forum! So glad you decided to join us!

I am primarily an indoor bonsai-er however I will add some links here that hopefully will help you with your questions. There are others on the forum who are Maple growers and, I am sure, will be only too happy to contribute their knowledge as well.

Here is a link from our site on sowing seeds: www.bonsaiempire.com/grow/from-seeds

This one has info on the Acer Palmatum: www.bonsaiempire.com/tree-species/maple

And here is the Acer Rubrum: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_rubrum

Hope this helps. If you need more specifics or have more questions, don't hesitate to ask! That's what this forum is all about.