Root over Rock tridents

Winter is a great time of year at Shibui Bonsai. I get to dig up the trees in the grow beds and see what has been achieved over the past year or 2.

The root over rock tridents are the most exciting because I can’t even get a glimpse of the rock/root arrangement until I dig them and unwrap the rock. It is almost like opening Christmas presents. You never know what you’ll find.

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Developing young tridents further

This time the trees are another year older. You may find starter stock like these in the bonsai section of nurseries. If you are intending to grow larger bonsai or really fat trunks your trees should be planted in the ground or large grow pots by now. I’m aiming at smaller sized bonsai with these. At this stage the possibilities start to magnify and different growers will take different routs to produce bonsai from this point.

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Developing younger stock

It is no wonder that newer bonsai growers are a bit confused and have to post so many online questions about dealing with relatively undeveloped stock. That’s what you have to work with but experienced growers only ever post and talk about techniques for working with well established bonsai.

So here’s some ideas and technique that I use on much younger trident maples. Please be aware that young trees like these can be developed into almost anything and different techniques could be used depending on the desired outcome.

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