Shohin Ponderosa Pine

Here is a little ponderosa that I have had laying around in the front yard for over a year. A year ago I barerooted the little guy and potted it in lava and pumice. There has been an explosion of bew buds since then. This coming spring I will again repot it into a suitable bonsai pot which will change the image quite a bit. This will allow one to see the movement of the trunk coming out of the soil line.

Before I started it was about 8" tall and over 22" wide. Now is the time to give this dog a future and hope to one day be a bonsai

Lookin at the inside you can see a few rather large branches that are almost the same diameter as the trunk. While I can easily bend these it would just look funny and not be a good idea. After a minute a most of them were cut off and the tree changed drastically!

Branch selection has been made and now time to do some cuttting!

Jins have been worked, burned and will now age naturally in the great outdoors. By next fall they will be weathered and a nice grey in color. Tube of cut paste there for size comparison. Now the tree is very small and looks nothing like what it did 2 minutes ago. Maybe a future afterall?

After exposing the roots and seeing what the trunk did below the current soil line I chose to use this as the front. Ponderosa shohin are rare because they tend to have long needles. But there are short needle ponderosa out there, we see them from time to time. Or one could graft Black Pine on them as well. But for now native will work. While this tree will never be a show tree it will fit in nicely with my growing collection of shohin trees.  Next years posts here will show a much improved and filled out tree that will also be in a pot. Isn't bonsai fun? :)

Keep in mind this is an initial styling and the tree will continue to improve over the coming years. It has to start somewhere :)