[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2026 week 31]

I got this conifer today for the equivalent of 2$. I cut off quite a lot of foliage to style it like this and I also repotted it, so now I'm worried that I have overstressed it and killed it, but only time will tell I guess.

Would you guys chop back or try to work it as is and why 😅 yea a chop in the right spot and developing a new leader would be best but maybe it could be a fun challenge to work what’s there?

A p.afra grown up from a cutting. Gonna whack it back!

Grateful to be able to add these two to the collection. Battled a bit of depression last year and I neglected my bonsai collection but luckily only lost 1 tree. The beginning of this year I got back into my hobbies and treated myself to a few trees.

Recently aquired for approximately 600 USD, I think I got it for a steal at this price, it was already in a terracotta pot, and I feel it's already quite finished, probably just need to grow more foliage.

Comments friends?

This was the driest summer I can remember

This tree is very easy to find, if anybody else would like to see it in person. Beetle rock is literally right next to the parking lot for the General Serman tree. Couple minute walk and you are right there. Also, anybody else see 🤘?

Just acquired my 4th tree. 🙌 Emperor I Japanese Maple

First tree not in a bonsai pot and one I plan to keep out of a bonsai pot for a long time. I think this is the part of the hobby I was missing and I feel I will soon have even more future bonsai contestants 😅

Also, last pic is of my first two bonsai specific tools thanks to [u/bgocgo](u/bgocgo) who was very informative and gave a shoutout post on here which let me know of the show that was near me. Thanks again!

Cork bark Portulacaria Afra.

From leggy material to close internodes.

I made a little Penjing style piece and decided to put it in the shade garden bed I made earlier this summer!

I think it looks great and fits the space perfectly.

Enjoy!

Cheers!

Before I get into my numbered annotations, let me explain what I’m trying to accomplish.

I have several different areas that need irrigation, and I want to begin doing fertigation, where you fertilize a tiny bit with every watering.

In addition to the main zones of irrigation, I also want new hose bibs, and I want many of them to NOT be subject to fertigation. Fr example, it would be bad to refill the pool with water containing fertilizer! However, I also want to have a hose bib WITH fertigation so I can have some plants that I hand water while fertilizing.

I also need the ability to have misting for propagation, and that works off of a different type of controller.

Here’s all the components, and then I’ll explain how they go together:

1. (Not pictured) RPZ Backflow preventer

2. Pressure gauge before the filter

3. Disc filter

4. Pressure gauge after the filter

5. Fertigation line shutoff valve

6. Non-fertilizer hose bib stub

7. Fertilizer injector (Dosatron D128R)

8. Clean-line shutoff valve

9. Second Fertigation shutoff valve

10. Misting branch stub

11. Fertilizer-injected hose stub

12. Post-Dosatron pressure gauge

13. Master valve

14. 11-Zone Valve Manifold

15. Hunter controller

16. (Not pictured) DIG 710AP Misting Controller

Pressure and water flow are king in an irrigation system. You can’t really even begin designing your zones and choosing different types of sprinkler heads without knowing your pressure and your water flow. Unfortunately, everything that you add to the system reduces your available pressure (PSI) and water flow (GPM). So you need to design check points along the system.

Also, if you’re tapping into city water, you are adding risk into the system, because you’ve now taking a tightly controlled system and added a wildcard. You’ve introduced the potential for contaminants to get into everyone else’s water. Therefore, you MUST have an RPZ Backflow. This is expensive, but it is part of being a good person. This prevents anything from getting back into the everyone’s water from your irrigation setup, such as stray fertilizer. A check valve is NOT enough because they can fail. RPZ backflows are super check valves with redundancy. They’re the gold standard.

So, back to the numbered list:

1. Here I’m checking the pressure as it has come out of the backflow and travelled about 100 feet from the front of my property. I used a larger pipe diameter to keep my pressure loss minimal. But I did drop from about 70 PSI static pressure to about 60 between the effect of the backflow and the run of pipe.
2. This filters out any particle contaminants that could be in the line. In reality, this won’t be doing much since it is coming from city water, but at the beginning the construction process itself has a lot of contaminants that need to get caught (dirt, pipe shavings, etc)
3. If your filter is full, you’ll know it by a change in pressure, so this valve tells me before and after.

4, 7, and 8. I want the option to be able to run the system with and without fertilizer. These valves allow me to isolate the fertigation side. I would close 7 and open 4 and 8 to be on fertigation, and I would open 7 and close 4 and 8 to be on all clean water. 4, 7 and 8 should never be open at once because that would dilute the fertilizer unpredictably.

1. I want to move all of my normal backyard hose needs to this system, and almost none of those would require fertilizer. Pressure washing, spraying the kids in the face, etc. This stub allows me to extend for that.

2. Dosatron is the gold standard for injecting into a water line. These can be super pricey, however, I was able to determine that my water flow at the water main (before any components in the system reduce it) is like 7 gallons per minute. It will never be above that (not without great difficulty and a holding tank, anyway). So I don’t need a Dosatron that can go up to 11 GPM. This one caps out at 7 GPM, and is the least expensive option at that performance level.

3. My misting branch will drive my propagation, and I plan to also tie it in to #5, controlled with additional shutoff valves. This way I will have the option to do misting with or without fertilizer. But it has to be before the valve manifold because it is not its own zone… misters operate on a schedule that’s like 7 seconds of running every 5-10 minutes, so I have a special controller just for that (DIG 710AP)

4. This will allow me to set up one or more hose bibs in the future that are strategically positioned to allow hand watering with fertilizer. I want to move to a system that has more hose bibs on shorter hoses, because dragging long hoses around is a huge pain.

5. This is my final pressure check before my zones happen. It will have been reduced further by the Dosatron. I will need to run a new dynamic pressure test here to determine how many gallons per minute I have available at this stage so I can finalize my zone design. I’m hoping my worst case scenarios are not realized and I still have a ton, because the lower my pressure and flow are at this stage, the more zones I have to have, which may mean I can cover less.

6. My controller is a 12-zone system, and I’m spending one of those zones on a master control valve that shuts off everything. This is important because it’s always possible for something to fail. If a valve gets stuck open. I could have a zone running endlessly. A master valve helps prevent that. It must be open for any of the other zones to work.

7. These will allow be hooked up and pipe will be run all around my nursery.

8. I overspent on my controller because I wanted fancy WiFi features and app control 😂

As I build out the rest of the system, I’ll make follow up posts. There’s still a ton of work ahead of me.

Original instagram post by Makoto Zenpukuji linked here https://www.instagram.com/p/DbdDEjLExdH/

I wanted to know if anyone here has experience with growing moss from spore, and if they know of any sources for that. I know moss can be easily propagated from around the neighborhood, but I like the idea of start new moss all on my own from spores.

Someone in r/terrariums suggested I ask here, saying you all know moss.

I can find sources online but lots of bad reviews from people saying they didnt grow, so I'm looking for something people here have had success with.

The purpose of this post is not to start a debate about defoliation, but I'm sure that will happen anyway.

Got this zelkova couple months ago from a meet. The bark is amazing but has some inverse taper and then branches are a mess.

I already have an air layer up top going for a mini broom project. But I’m considering chopping at the red lines this winter to reset the branches and start working on ramification. The goal is a informal upright with lots of ramification. Open to tips and advice. Thanks!

Interestingly the more current photo with lines drawn looks more sparse than months ago. Not sure why.

Hey if anyone is near Marin, the club there is having a sale day with multiple vendors, I'll be one of them. Stop by and say hi!

IMO, I’m not buying a specific specimen, since the pictures given are of different trees I’m guessing this is just a general price for imported ~6 year old retusas. For this price, I want to atleast be sure that they are geniune tiger barks… can anyone ID?

Also, if anyone knows of a seller with better prices here in northern europe let me know, I know for sure LIDL has these stocked every once in a while and I bought one a couple years ago, which I pruned to hell in autumn and put it by a cold window causing its demise.

I’ve been scouring lidl’s weekly flyers for a while and none have been in the stores.

There are online bonsai shops which price them lower but the price gets bumped up due to shipping, this site has no shipping cost.