4 Tips to Pick the Right Species for Your First/Next Bonsai

            How can you learn to keep a bonsai alive to enjoy for generations to come? There's no magic, really, but there are a few bonsai tricks to learn. Some basic skills serve you well when growing any type of plant, but the first thing you should think about is how to pick a plant that can tolerate the conditions you will provide it. I'll share 4 tips here to help you get started for those thinking about entering bonsai or thinking about trying to add new species to your collection, but if you're in Columbus, Ohio, check out my upcoming beginner workshop where you can get your bonsai journey off on a running start! 

In Vivo / Central Ohio Bonsai Announcements:

1. My next beginner indoor bonsai workshop is on Saturday 2/24 at Nocterra Brewing. Full details can be found on Eventbrite! Briefly, we will cover all the basics of caring for indoor bonsai, and basic techniques for bonsai maintenance such as how to prune, wire, and repot to create the miniature tree look. All workshop participants will be gifted 1-year memberships to the Columbus Bonsai Society and the Central Ohio Cactus and Succulent Society - A $55 value! The total price for the workshop is $56 and also includes prebonsai trees and locally made pots for you to take home after our work and a drink from our gracious host.
2. I now sell pots! I received a special shipment to sell on behalf of Blue Nose Trading. See the pieces of her work I have available here or schedule an appointment to visit my nursery in Columbus, OH via the contact form here. These are mainly for local pickup/delivery only.
3. The Bonsai Time Podcast has moved! While I am still heavily involved in producing that podcast, the show notes for it now lives on its own website, its own YouTube channel, and it now has its own TikTok account.

The pots were made by the same person who took pictures of a beginner class we taught together last year - Mark Passerrello of Ancient Art Bonsai. Mark was featured in Bonsai Time Podcast Episode 08.

Plants that Signal an Early Spring in Ohio - Living Alarm Bells

            While seasons come and go the exact when of their coming and going is always an unpredictable and complex question. Predicting these events is important for people who work in natural seasonal cycles with plants and animals such as farmers, hunters, gardeners, bonsai artists, bird watchers, and other sorts of nature enthusiasts. Many people don't know this but within us all there are internal biological clock proteins - this is where circadian rhythm comes from. So this may be one way that critters and plants can tell the progression of time. However, an event like triggering a migration or waking up from hibernation is critical to get at the right time. Migrating too late or waking up from hibernation too early could mean death by cold and lack of food. Migrating too early could mean missing the window with the rest of your species to mate or not maximizing your own energy reserves before migrating. All things in nature are a matter of risk, reward, and natural selection. As these are such critical events for the survival of an individual plant or critter, they use multiple cues to detect when to get moving. One cue can be their internal clock as we discussed. Another could be the temperature. Another could be the day length. This combination of cues is how plants and animals can time their seasonal events according to seasonal variation. Thus, while humans are trying to predict how winter in February 2024 will progress using historical data, the farmer's almanac, and a groundhog's shadow, the plants around us already have a good idea of what is the likely scenario regarding our winter. Once you look around enough to know which plants are the first responders to spring, then you also can get warning signs to get your gardening and bonsai preparations into high gear. In this post, I will share some example species which are plant alarm bells, especially in Ohio, but some ornamentals or invasives we have here also are available and could act similarly across the temperate world.

Blog/Central Ohio Bonsai Announcements:

1. For people in Central Ohio, I will be teaching a beginner indoor bonsai workshop on Saturday 2/24 at Nocterra Brewing. Full details can be found on Eventbrite! Briefly, we will cover all the basics of caring for indoor bonsai, and basic techniques for bonsai maintenance such as how to prune, wire, and repot to create the miniature tree look. All workshop participants will be gifted 1-year memberships to the Columbus Bonsai Society and the Central Ohio Cactus and Succulent Society - A $55 value!  The total price for the workshop is $56 and also includes prebonsai trees and locally made pots for you to take home after our work and a drink from our gracious host.
2. I now sell pots! I received a special shipment to sell on behalf of Blue Nose Trading. See the pieces of her work I have available here or schedule an appointment to visit my nursery in Columbus, OH via the contact form here. These are mainly for local pickup/delivery only.
3. The Bonsai Time Podcast has moved! While I am still heavily involved in producing that podcast, the show notes for it now lives on its own website, its own YouTube channel, and it now has its own TikTok account.

Silver maple flower buds. In fall-mid winter those ball-shaped buds are not visible. Now they are about to release their pollen in the next few weeks.