Hey guys and gals,

You may have noticed I haven’t posted in a couple of months. There’s a good reason for that: I no longer have any trees. Over the past few months I’ve slowly been selling off my collection, partially due to a lack of interest, and partially because of a lack of time to care for the trees. Mites were savage and relentless, and I just watched my trees yellow and fall apart. So I ended up selling them to a couple of local hobbyists who still have that “bonsai passion.”

Fear not, for my love of growing trees is still alive and strong. Instead of growing Ficus bonsai, I’m considering growing Ficus FOR bonsai. My idea is to start growing seeds again, the very thing that got me into the hobby in the first place. What I’d like to do is grow the harder to find species such as ingens, virens, and some others, from seed with the specific purpose of using for bonsai later down the road. Meaning once the seeds sprout and have grown a bit, I’d wire movement into them and do rootwork that will give them great futures as bonsai. I’d then sell them to those who love to grow Ficus.

What say you? Would you be interested in this?

Ryan

I’ve been getting notifications every now and then that I would get a new follower on this blog and I’d think “Oh, that’s neat.” I checked my follower count tonight and I’m up to over 50?! You all are cool, thanks for that!

I gotta be honest with you all, I’ve been doing really well with not buying any trees, but last week I cracked and bought one. Just a small one. A little Willow Leaf Ficus with some nice flaring to the base. I’m currently in talks with the seller on eBay as when it arrived the soil was bone dry. Not an ounce of water to it. The pot was wrapped in plastic, but it’s kinda pointless when there’s nothing actually keeping the soil wet.

Here’s the little guy. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the winter, I have no lights or anything. Should be interesting…

And I am planning on chopping here at this red line IF I can get those bottom branches to come back to life. The shipping without water thing certainly didn’t help them.

It should make for a pretty sweet little shohin one day. But until then, it’s a fun little project. My first in a while….