Hey guys, I dug these specimens from my apartment's backyard slope. I think there is some really interesting material in here. Most of them are maple varieties I think, not quite sure.

This is my first attempt a dug-up material, do you have any recommendations to help them grow healthy? I'm aiming at growing them as bonsai so any advice towards that would be appreciated. I'm aware that they need to keep growing until the real work starts.

They are planted in a basic garden potting soil, nothing complicated here, all pots have drainage, water seems to be draining well and I'm fertilizing once a week.



Thanks!

Most of the saplings you dug up, i would not have dug up. The one in the terracotta pot has some pottentional, but i would have directly cut it back to desired height. And leave those 2 shoots just above the bend.
Some of the small onces you can straight out, and plant them as a forrest together. Then you get some more space for more tree's. That solves also the problem that the pots keeping to much moist. Once a week watering might be to much. If you water because you want to firtilize, but it is still wet, you might want to firtilize with something else that you can put on/in your soil. For example i firtilize my pots with potting soil with cow mannure or some other non-liqued firtilizer. For the onces in good substrate, the frequency of watering is increased, then i use liqued firtilizer. In rainy periods i fill theabags for ontop of the substrate.
Ofcouse you can practice wireing and bending also on those seedlings. Just to get the hang of it, before doing it on your best tree, and snap some branches there.

This is my first attempt, what I’m trying to do now is having the most specimen possible to train and get used to it. Maybe some of them will end up in trash, it’ll depend on how it develop. I prefer to have couple trees half suitable trees that might survive or not, than having only one suitable that might survive or not. Practice is key I guess, and It’ll me see how it develops and where did I go wrong if some dies.

For the terracota one, I assumed that the shoots where best to keep as they would help the tree survive, I might be wrong though. Also assumed that cutting back more would be also harmful for the tree.

I did the same a few years ago. Dug up everything i saw. Many of them is back in the ground now. Some that I think have potential is still in pot. The same goes for garden center materials, I bought everything and most of them is in ground now. I think that the key for a rewarding bonsai collection is to have trees in all phases, not a lot of trees that might be a good tree in 10 or 20 years.

I can't figure out how to say this other than bluntly, I would ignore advice that says something like don't water more than once a week.

It is late April, most people consider this spring, and I water almost every day. Some of the trees with new growth will look wilted at the ends the second day and maybe even on the first day toward sunset.

Look at your trees and water them when they need it.

Highs here right now are around 80F/26C in the day but cooler at night, so the sun lowers the humidity and the trees pump water out of the soil into the air. This summer I will water in the morning without even checking, and sometimes twice a day. Once a week would kill most of them.

Thanks guys for your advices, yeah I am not watering on a schedule, I go out check the soil, it it dry, I water.

Here in eastern canada it’s like 10c/50f it’s varying a lot, we had a day at 20 last week.

I will see how they grow, but as a newbie I just don’t know when to hard prune and stuff ahah

Thank you for this thread. I learned a lot of information.

nboisvert wrote:
I will see how they grow, but as a newbie I just don’t know when to hard prune and stuff ahah

No need to worry about that for at least a year, they need to recover and gain their vigour first.

This looks like young trees in large amounts of organic soil. I dont think that they can take daily watering without root rot.

I always check with an hygrometer before watering, what kind of soil would be the best for those? I heard that it's not worth wasting good bonsai mixture when it's for growing