In late 2020 I bought 10, 2-year old Alberta Spruce seedlings from Virginia Department of Forestry for about $3 per tree. I put them in some cheap pots and just let them grow. Here are 5 of them. Just pulled out of their winter beds. They’ve been growing in these plastic pots mainly untouched since 2020.
One of them needed a repot so I decided to put it into a bonsai pot. I also decided to hard prune the branches and wire it at the same time. (probably a mistake – more on that later).
Here is the tree in the plastic pot. Actually, it’s 2 trees. I think when I ordered them I screwed up and only had 9 plastic pots so I put two of the smallest ones in this pot. no biggie.
Here is the nice bonsai pot I put it into (I think this one is from Chuck Iker out of Ohio).
Well, I think I should’ve stopped there: a hard trim of the roots and let it recover. But I am impatient (sometimes) and dumb (most of the time) so I decided to also prune and wire the top. (I still have a lot to learn with wiring.) Here it is along with some moss from the garden on the roots.
However, (ugh)….
This morning I watched this video and he says – right up front – NOT to repot and hard prune/wire the top at the same time. I think he says to give it a year between those steps. So….probably my cute twin trunk won’t make it. Fingers crossed. The video is great btw. these things are like crack to me this time of year.
