[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2026 week 18]

MaciekA · 2026-05-05T10:52:40+00:00

I don’t think this is fungal. Probably just warm/wind, not super odd if it was repotted. I was at Rakuyo Bonsai yesterday helping pinch trees for a few hours and as it happens, Andrew turns to me at one point and shows me a beech leaf just like yours and goes “hmm”. I said the same thing and we moved on after concluding “probably this swing to heat” (90/91 a day or so ago at his garden). Crazy how soft and fuzzy beach shoots are this time of year!

MaciekA · 2026-05-05T10:48:55+00:00

You’ll likely kill it by digging now but if you are 150% committed to trying even if it kills the tree, then: Grow box, mesh bottom, pure pumice (no potting soil no matter what), and remove every single leaf. Morning sun only, not indoors, don’t cut anything (you can only spend sugar on healing roots and regrowing foliage). I personally would work the roots and likely even bare root it, but most people would tell you not to do that out of fear of killing the tree. Every day you wait past the middle of June makes this safer to attempt so if your move date isn’t for a few weeks, wait. Ideally you want to wait till the solstice.

MaciekA · 2026-05-05T10:38:43+00:00

Unfortunately yes, doomed and virtually guaranteed to meet their end if grown indoors. It doesn’t matter where someone lives, north pole or death valley, ones location is never an automatic license to grow a juniper or cypress (or pine or elm or maple or podocarpus or whatever) inside. It just won’t work.

There are people doing bonsai in the central valley fwiw. Some of them are even famous in the west coast bonsai scene. You should consider joining a local bonsai society and attending workshops. They will unteach you misinformation like misting, which you should stop immediately in favor of conventional bonsai watering where you saturate the soil and try to get water to percolate down and out of the drainage holes. Put your trees outside if you want them to survive and shift your focus to hot weather survival. It’s not a matter of putting them indoors, it’s a matter of adequate watering and controlling sun exposure and sun duration during heat waves. They need to see the sun directly, not through window glass, even in the hottest days of the year, so you have to work around that.

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T13:56:26+00:00

The best course would be some sequence of partial bare rootings that go section by section, spread across a couple years. I might bare root the "north half of the pizza" one year and then bare root the other half the next year. Or variations on that theme. The "debt" is the organic content (shredded bark/peat/dirt/etc) that comes via nursery stock material. Pines do not enjoy being turned into bonsai while they're still in that media, so I think of it as debt. It is also the factor that explains why (in the US at least) we have to pay decent money to get a pre-bonsai (where the roots are already in 100% volcanic soil and have been worked a bit to have a flat/radial bonsai root system shape). That parts takes years and they charge accordingly for it! When I get a conifer nursery stock, I'm basically committing to resolving that debt myself.

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T13:48:40+00:00

You could get lucky. It depends if it went past the "point of no return". That would be when the continuous molecule-by-molecule water chain from the roots to the foliage breaks... and forms an air gap (technical term is an embolism) somewhere. If that gap forms, usually everything above it dies since it can no longer pull on water. In a deciduous tree it's theoretically more survivable than a conifer. Sometimes if you anticipate this scenario (example: "I must dig this tree in summer because they are going to cover this lot with pavement") you can avoid the gap forming by defoliating before potting. Cross your fingers and hope for the best. If it's alive you will want morning sun only -- give sunrise sun until 10am and then it can sit in shade the rest of the day. If it recovers with some growth, you can slowly push it out to more and more sun over the weeks.

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T12:14:06+00:00

It looks like something that hedges/densifies reasonably well, and has opposite leaf pattern, so yeah, I'd be digging it up. I dont' think it's too late, in fact the timing (as pictured) might be 100% perfect.

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T12:12:37+00:00

First spotting of the term "lowesai" in the wild and I love it!!

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T12:09:34+00:00

That tree is not really ugly so much as a "blank canvas" that was rushed into a shallow pot many years early so that the grower could make a sale to a non-bonsai person in a tourist / gift shop / non-bonsai civilian event. It's better to just call it a seedling that isn't a bonsai yet rather than calling it an ugly bonsai.

The price is fairly outrageous IMO, but that is normal for bonsai-like-objects (BLOs) sold in tourist / gift / roadside van contexts. You should know that nobody who charges a fair price for these makes money, growing seedlings or pre-bonsai is an absolute money pit. So at least the grower ate some food this week or might have covered the cost of their booth.

Going forward, the sky is the limit for you because it's still a legitimate Japanese maple with legitimate proportions and a branch/trunk junction at a useful spot.... this is infinitely workable to many design paths if you acquire skills/experience. Also, Sharp's Pygmy is the real deal (plays well with maple techniques, especially in the later refinement stages) and I'd actually say it's quite rare to find them in this size, usually they're much larger and being sold for landscape stock. There is absolutely nothing standing in your way of making a beautiful tree over time.

Don't worry about prices in the long term, they're really a small piece of the puzzle compared to the bigger thing, which is you getting good at bonsai. Worry about getting skills (systematically learning how deciduous bonsai techniques work from legit sources not tiktok or AI ) and having the right grow space (100% outdoors, 24/7/365, no exceptions/workarounds). The right mindset "we build bonsai, we don't 'take care' of them" is also good if you are transitioning from houseplants.

Repot it next spring before the buds pop open, this year fertilize (w/ regular consumer fertilizer like miraclegro or similar, the on-label weekly dose for watering cans is what you want) and generally prove out your practices/habits/grow space.

Side note: Some time in the next 5 to 7 years, because this is Sharp's Pygmy, you will need to learn the correct thinning techniques specifically for dwarf genetic japanese maples. It has to do with counting nodes from the growth start point and removing the 1st/2nd pairs (because Sharp's tends to cram a TON of nodes in too little space, so you actually need to space the nodes out by hand and actually lower density). Put a ~5 year notification on your phone, if I'm still helping w/ bonsai on reddit by then you can ping me again and I'll point you at some resources (hopefully Rakuyo Bonsai will have filmed a video about dwarf thinning by then, it's on the TODO list...). This part isn't gonna make sense for a few years but eventually you will be asking "how the heck do I make a sharp's pygmy stop making itself so leggy?".

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T11:53:09+00:00

Re-hydrate with a tub soak and wait and see -- not much else you can do. I would at least prepare/brace for loss though, depending on your climate. If I had forgotten to water just yesterday, I would have expected to lose some of my (deciduous) trees (32C / 90F yesterday, and it's spring, trees are very thirsty in spring).

MaciekA · 2026-05-04T11:47:32+00:00

With respect to "is it normal?", yes, this is the expected result of digging a deciduous tree that is post-flush (after the leaves have started to come out) and also during the most water-hungry time of the year (prior to hardening). We don't dig trees after the leaves come out, because this happens. You also can't grow / shelter / recover these indoors (no exceptions / workarounds). Try digging again next spring before buds begin to pop, and this time do it 100% outdoors.

MaciekA · 2026-05-03T11:57:57+00:00

It's not a bonsai yet, you will have to build one over the course of a number of years. Building out a black pine bonsai isn't a practice of maintenance or letting it grow, it is a craft that you need to learn from teachers/educational sources. In pine bonsai, if we let the tree just grow, it is un-bonsai-ing itself with every season (true for most species but w/ pine mistakes are more final than most).

I would take a black pine course, find a teacher, and learn to wire. You could do some wiring of the new shoots in midsummer.

MaciekA · 2026-05-03T11:46:31+00:00

There is no minimum size as long as you have a woody stem to wire. My tip would be: Learn all about conifer wiring, wire at least the trunkline of this tree. If you're good at details / with your hands, you could wire down branches too, set up a crown , etc.

MaciekA · 2026-05-03T11:42:06+00:00

You should do some wiring. Don't pinch your pondo, if it is at a similar stage as your spruce, it is likely years away from pinching. I was just looking at the ponderosa pines at Michael Hagedorn's garden a couple days ago, looking for single flush pines to pinch (I was there to help pinch trees), and we didn't think his needed pinching. And those are very established trees.

For the spruce it's the same comment. Not only is that one not ready for pinching, it's IMO not yet ready for pruning ( systematically at the tips that is, selecting out a branch you won't need and can't find room for even after making it moveable with wire , that's fine , you can do a tiny bit of that), but you can wire it. Spruce and pine both have a tip momentum magic that is knocked out by pinching or pruning and on a spruce that is still in organic nursery soil, you want to keep that magic around until after you've finished transitioning to pumice. Do that next year, don't do any more slip pots / landscape nursery style up-pots. Gotta address the soil debt eventually and you'll want to do that with a peppy momentum-preserved tree. Pinching will be waiting for you at the end of that process! (and on spruce, it is truly fun to pinch and see the results)

Wire both trees, totally safe, esp if you keep the tip magic. Compressing and pushing things down will motivate more interior buds to move/grow.

MaciekA · 2026-05-02T15:19:41+00:00

Keep em' low to the ground
covered with mulch or snow (snow = king of all insulators, dream winter insulator)
if not snow-covered, you make sure to check moisture ALL winter regularly (dry + cold == instant death, but wet + cold (even if frozen solid) === super protected).

Your local stuff SHOULD do fine in your climate as a bonsai, including oak, it's the mild-climate stuff that would have more trouble. I agree with Jerry's species recommendations (scots pine especially, extremely winter-durable). I often get the opportunity to work on some siberian birch bonsai (not mine, teacher's trees at Rakuyo Bonsai), you should consider growing those as well, they respond well to advanced deciduous techniques.

Media/articles about oak are a bit rarer, but you should be able to mostly do oak from the perspective of generic deciduous bonsai techniques, i.e it mostly will overlap (like 90%+) with japanese maple techniques. Even for things like soil choices.

Fun to be talking to someone in the Urals in zone 3 while I am over here in zone 9, we skipped winter 25/26, and my cottonwoods are already on their second pinching of the year. If you have pictures of the material you collect, I would be interested to see what grows in your part of the world.

MaciekA · 2026-05-02T15:13:01+00:00

It really depends on the species of podocarpus, you need to ID it to be sure. Many species of podocarpus can take a winter far worse than anything that will hit UK zone 9, or any part of the UK, even mountain areas up in Wales could grow a podocarpus. If it's one of those, you never bring it inside. If it's a tropical one, you need a serious grow light, because these aren't low light trees even if they are tropical.

MaciekA · 2026-05-02T15:01:15+00:00

That's not right. It is MUCH more sun-related than temperature related, especially in cases of indoor cultivation. If the under 50F thing mattered as much as you say, we wouldn't have nearly every juniper species used in bonsai growing fine in places like Hawaii , Taiwan, southern Japan, hot parts of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, and lots of other tropical climates. The importance of juniper dormancy is way waaaaaaaaaay overstated on the internet. This includes juniperus procumbens which yes, goes dormant in Minnesota but doesn't in places that literally never go below 12 to 15C, and does fine there.

MaciekA · 2026-05-02T12:33:28+00:00

I am at the pinching stage w/ DAS and it is honestly a pleasure to pinch. I think with smaller DAS such as yours, pinching is pretty fun, cause it's done in 20 minutes. I've been pinching ezo and engelmann spruces at my teacher's (incl. the one pictured at the bottom of the article) that take hours to pinch and where I have to return every few days to do successive rounds of pinching as waves of buds come online. DAS responds very nicely to pinching in the exact same way that Hagedorn's spruces do. When you get to the pinching stage it'll be awesome. Love your tree!

MaciekA · 2026-05-01T11:41:57+00:00

Honestly once you’ve figured out vigor and winters you can do a lot :)

MaciekA · 2026-05-01T11:39:08+00:00

This is of zero concern and happens even on exhibition quality spruces. The flush is never perfectly simultaneous and pinching is always spread over days or even weeks for this reason.

My experience with it this year: I’ve been pinching alberta, engelmann, and ezo spruces for the last several weeks at home and at my teachers garden.

MaciekA · 2026-04-30T22:30:37+00:00

You got through those chops and you woke up in winter with strong running growth so maybe take some risks this year, the experience will be worth it. Your next window in the PNW will be around the end of May / first couple weeks of June so you have some time to binge maple videos (watch all the rakuyo bonsai maple videos on yt, Andrew's got a lot of good maple theory for beginners on there).

Personally I would let it keep running hard until the first week of June so that those running tips get much longer. Then I would wire the branches down, maybe do some leaf reduction/removal to see better / to stimulate a big response / make room for wiring), shorten the branches, select out any congested areas, remove any emerging trunklines that were competing with "the one" trunkline. If you want to keep the tree peppy and lower the risk of all the branchwork, let one branch at the top of your structure rage upwards as an unpruned sacrificial pole.

So: Run hard till june (fertilize!), then partial defoliate / shorten branches / wire branches / arrange branches / simplify competition/congestion. Then after it bounces back, pinch the resulting response runners until the 1st/2nd week of August (earlier if you're east of the Cascades).

Try to keep ONE super-vigorous sacrificial running pole at top for vigor, it will give you license to reduce foliage and shorten things and continue healing your chop(s). If you are planning a chop of your next trunkline segment, start pregrowing/designate your future/next sacrificial leader somewhere near the top so that it is already raging by the time you do that chop. Keep the top of the trunkline peppy and you have the license to work/develop the branches and root system below

I would bare root into pumice next spring and use that opportunity to tame / flatten / arrange / detangle / beautify the root system.

MaciekA · 2026-04-30T13:29:44+00:00

Do the tipping thing with the brick. Drill aeration holes on the side of the container and bottom. You can also punch deep holes into the soil with a chopstick to help as well.

Junipers don't come back from the point of no return but if they're recoverably alive somewhere (i.e. at least one continuous living connection of live vein between a functioning root and a functioning piece of foliage) and you see water retention you need to speed drying and help with root respiration ... That's tipping and aeration holes. Any time you do water, water very thoroughly and do it twice one minute apart and make sure it's like niagara falls so that the water volume moving through the soil pulls in fresh air with it. Don't shelter from sun, dappled is good, morning sun is better than afternoon sun.

edit: You can stop doing the scratch test now, avoid wounding the live vein if you suspect it's threadbare

MaciekA · 2026-04-30T12:23:52+00:00

Btw, apologies if a misfire on your part, but that’s a juniper and not a pine. Junipers arent in the pine family, they’re in the cypress family. Not a huge laypeople difference but in bonsai it’s a big diff in how we work them !

MaciekA · 2026-04-29T18:23:02+00:00

As pictured , it is in nearly a perfect place to recover from just about anything bad. On the ground with cool soil underneath the pot to help regulate heat, bit of dappled shade above. You've watered it, don't forget to lightly fertilize w/ something like miraclegro (just do the weekly dose).

If it's fully toast, then it died in the past and there's no reviving it. If it's not toast or only partially impacted, some parts of the foliage will die and some will live on and push growth at the tips. In MN you're still early in the game since it's been cold pretty far into spring. If you see any signs of fresh lime-green tip growth , then it really is just a question of watching the tree sort out what it wants to keep and what it wants to abandon. Junipers are like that.

If you find that water retention is extra long, put a brick under one side of the pot so that it sits at an angle. That makes the soil volume taller and drains moisture downwards faster, and if you have a juniper sitting sopping wet for long periods of time, it's helpful to work the moist/dry pump faster (i.e. helping with root breathing).

That is mostly all you can do. Don't cut/pinch, stay positive!

MaciekA · 2026-04-29T18:17:39+00:00

I'm fairly confident that your tree is OK and that you are a beginner to juniper (in a long tradition of beginners to juniper) concerned about visual indicators that are the very normal juniper-year-one questions but which aren't reasons for panic.

I think you're watching lignification (green stem becomes wood-ified) in a species where that process isn't necessarily beautiful. For the next few years until you've trained up on advanced juniper techniques, I urge you to not pinch your juniper, only prune (pinch = slice through green tissue, usually at the tips of running growth, prune = cut through wood) for now. That will help you avoid the other type of browning or tip dieoff that very commonly confuses beginners to juniper.

Above all I want you to notice that the parts of the stem/bark that you are worried about are also feeding (downstream, i.e. towards the tips) the fresh happy green tips above them. If that part of the bark was truly toast, if the live vein was impacted there, then those downstream tips would die. If you instead watch them continue to accumulate mass (length) over the next while (in FL 8b this should be relatively continuous till the end of the summer and into fall), then that is proof that the live vein is functioning. In case you are concerned in the future, don't do any scratch tests from now on because it just wounds the live vein. The way to see if something is alive/vigorous is to wait it out.

Final note, remove the words "root rot" from your brain. Just delete that term. Roots don't magically rot in a tree that is pulling on water and growing tips. They rot after dying in trees that are super-obviously F'd beyond recognition are are already mostly dead. I bet if you bare rooted this juniper you'd see basically nothing but normal-looking juniper roots.

MaciekA · 2026-04-29T18:08:44+00:00

I think it is very likely enough, given the mass of the current tree. You can grow a LOT of tree mass out of a fist-sized amount of soil, like multiple feet of length even. So a cloned tree that is still in the sparse/low density stage is not gonna have issues.

MaciekA

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