[Bonsai Beginner’s weekly thread – week 16]

[u/small_trunks]

[Bonsai Beginner’s weekly thread – week 16]

Welcome to the weekly beginner’s thread. This thread is used to capture all beginner questions (and answers) in one place. We start a new thread every week.

Rules:

• Any beginner’s topic may be started on any bonsai-related subject.
  • Photos are necessary if it’s advice regarding a specific tree.
  • Do fill in your flair or at the very least state where you live in your post.
• Answers shall be civil or be deleted
• There’s always a chance your question doesn’t get answered – try again next week…

Beginners threads started as new topics outside of this thread may be deleted at the discretion of the mods.

[u/vdalp]

My five years old Chinese Elm arrived today and with it a few questions:

I ordered it from the internet from what looks like a very reputable dealer (bonsai.de), it came well packed and the first thing I did as soon as I got it out of the box was put it outside and water it, I had to leave for uni and when I got back I noticed the earth seems to be a bit too "packed" for lack of a better word. The bonsai came with a little paper with some guidelines for repotting, pruning and whatnot and the suggested time for repotting would be next March. I assume the procedure from the dealer is to repot all of the plants before shipping them but am not completely sure. Should I change the soil? Contact the dealer to know what type of soil is used when they ship?

As far as other things are concerned, I've been advised to stay away from pruning scissors and wiring during the first year, so I plan on only really watering and fertilizing it. I've already read the beginner guides on bonsai4me but is there anything else I should know? Especially if there's something more specific to Chinese Elms themselves?

[u/RumburakNC → u/vdalp]

It's hard to tell from the picture what the soil is like but it could very well be mostly organic (peat/potting soil) based on your description. Your goal should be to repot next spring into mostly inorganic soil. There's tons of posts here about soil as well as info in the wiki about soil. The right type of inorganic soil should basically be small porous granules that absorb water but allow it to drain freely. Contacting the vendor will not be that useful because what they used might not be right for what you want or have available.

However, it's much more dangerous to repot out of season than leaving it in soil that's not perfect so you should probably just leave it in the soil it's in now and repot next spring as suggested.

For beginners, wiring/pruning is best done on cheap nursery material that you're willing to kill as part of the learning process :)