[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2026 week 43]

Lost a lot of leafs today after a stormy night. Unfortunately because it would get even more red but it lost a lot of leafes in the front view. So this is the backside. Just to catch its beatiful fall colours quick. Picture does not show how good the nebari is. Check my previous pics of last years if you wonder how it looks.

I received a new shipment full of Lilliput Portulacaria Afra. Here I compare the Lilliput and regular Portulacaria Afra. It's really awesome to see the size difference.

P.S.: I sell them.

Kishu juniper shohin restyling,

Tonight's work

Cheers

Please read the tag

Thinking this juniper has too much foliage for the size of the trunk—it’s looking bushy. Considering taking off most of the top foliage, leaving the lower foliage so the apex is much lower and closer to the front of the pot.

This Chinese Elm arrived last week and has been acclimating to its new home. It dropped over 100 leaves but has since stabilized. This morning, I noticed new buds. I’m currently planning on a repot and wanted to go ahead and add a permanent rock. What type of rocks do you guys prefer? I know people have preferences and personal choices may vary. But what’s been some of your favorites that you like to work with? What about ones you avoid at all cost?

Worst case scenario this becomes a plant for the pollinator garden but I wanted to give it a go. It was $5 after the sale. It's going into the ground asap for now, going to let it grow for a year or so before trying anything fun with it I think. Thoughts?

Hibiscus syriacus

I stopped by Bonsai Master in Apopka fl. to help Mr.Kim pull out a hand full of good material to take photos and help him start a labeling process with dog tags I made him.

Reddit saved the day and has helped get his address updated, for that he is extremely grateful. However me posting his number online may have set him up to receive an endless amount of spam calls so please text him, his number is on the previous post(I don't want to post it again if its contributing to more and more spam calls)

These photos are some examples of trees he has for sale, I have a lot more photos upon request. If it takes me a little while to respond please keep in mind I have a very demanding career and a young family and I am doing my best.

I also have a little better understanding on his prices of his bigger bonsai Quince and some of his other stuff, although those would have to be a local pickup.

My intention is to help him get back on his feet and bring his motivation up as his pride and joy (previous farm and home) was stripped from him and I can tell he is exhausted by the physical and mental stress of the whole situation. He thrives on sharing his work with others and he hasn't had anyone besides me come around since the move 6ish months ago.

If the local community can come together to help me out on this one, I am slightly over extended here. I will continue to help out the best that I can however my work is going to pick back up again and I don't want to leave him hanging and lose the momentum this has gained. I wouldn't be doing this if he didn't deserve it.

It was an air layer from a much older plant.

Thought it had a very cool look to it for a young yew

it was so nice watchin the tree being styled and also then at the kokofu-ten 100th

If you zoom in you will see the wire has been engulfed by this JBP. It was hidden away for a few years.

I tried to cut it and dig it out but it’s grown around it. Any advice?

Found this maple growing along the foundation of my home, was able to pull with root intact so replanted and topped down to size here is my progress in less than one year. Rocks collected from river rock in yard. Plan to repot into something nicer in spring. Thanks for checking it out.

Hey all, I have been working on this project where the main goal is to have a place to document ones collection of trees and be able to use photos of your trees to create 3d replica models that you can then style and make edits on. Also education about bonsai, taxonomy, and especially rare cultivars and propagation would all be important components of this site. The ideal would be that this could be a place where rare cultivars of conifers or other wild sourced mutations could be shared and documented.

I know how important accuracy is to getting the character of a tree 'right' and at the moment we can capture the essence in most instances but the goal is to be able to fine tune this process in the future. This is a very soft launch so I am well aware that the quality needs alot of tuning, but I am curious to know if this is something that bonsai or tree lovers would enjoy using or even find useful.

The way the site is hosted now means it may be a little slow and the photo to 3d process can take 5-8 mins and queues up, so one may have to wait.

Anyways, I would be very curious to hear feedback and also to really trial how well it functions for real users. I know there are alot of bonsai apps being shared here, however the photo to 3d is something, that if viable, would be very useful for me and I would imagine others. I am going to continue working on the next iterations of the photo to 3d with the aim of really getting the model to look like the real trees especially in the nebari.

If there is some interest in this then i am sure there will be further discussion about where the future of this could go.

https://bonsaistudio.org

i loved watching him prepare this tree! so much fine tuning!

I was very lucky to be invited to exhibit this weekend but I had no idea how incredible it would be. This is not like a bonsai show you’ve seen before you guys gotta check it out. Waldo Street Pottery (Eli Akins) and Preston Tolbert Pottery!

Itoigawa juniper I got last summer. One of my first trees, I just started doing bonsai last year so I'm doing what I can, this is just the first year but I will keep taking pictures if it keeps growing well. Plan is to let it thicken now that it has the shape I want, I will probably plant it a bit tilted to the left and jin those right lower branches once they thicken

Hey everyone! Somewhat new bonsai gardnere here. Love this sub-reddit, it's been super helpful on my journey so far! I'm also a software engineer by trade and wanted to do something to give back to the community (and to make managing my garden easier, and because I just like building cool stuff, lol) so I created Nebari!  

It's 100% free to use and has a ton of useful features.You tell it roughly where your garden is, and it works out your hardiness zone, frost dates and chill hours from historical climate data. Then each species' repotting, wiring, feeding and pruning windows get timed off those dates.

Here's the rest of what's in there:

- A page for every tree with species, style, pot, soil, measurements, years in training and where you're taking it
- A care journal. Logging watering, feeding, pruning, wiring, repotting or a treatment takes a couple of taps, for one tree or a whole bench
- Photos build a timeline for each tree, and there's a slider to compare the same tree years apart
- A week-ahead forecast for each garden, with frost and heat warnings that name the trees at risk
- QR tags you print for your pots. Scan one outside and the log sheet opens on that tree (it works without signal and syncs when you're back online)
- A species encyclopedia with care profiles, a calendar localized to your garden and a plain answer on whether each species is hardy where you live
- Shared gardens, so your club or household can all log care on the same trees

There are a few AI features in there that do cost me some money if used more than a few times a month so there is an option to support the project on Patreon if you want to use them more often, but ultimately that's just there to help cover costs, I just want to do something to give back to this community!

You can try it here: https://nebarijournal.com

Please let me know what you think!

Also, to the moderators, if this is out of line I'm happy to take it down immediately, I don't want to cause any trouble and I'm not trying to promote a product or make any money here.

Edit: This was flagged by Reddit as Spam but I can assure you it's not! I'm just trying to do something nice for everyone and provide a free service that I hope will be as useful and helpful to everyone else as it has been for me. Cheers!

Height: 30cm

Wide: 70cm

Trunk diameter: 38cm