#BonsaiNews: (Pot)s come in different varieties, but all can be bonsai - shohin, potsai and bonsai

SUPER surprised I was when only one Steemian was able to call me out on the 'potsai' reference I made in a recent post of mine - it's not every day that people 'accurately' read your posts so I thought that I'd give it a whirl to see just who reads properly and, although only one (@creativetruth) person caught on, some clearly did take note. (You'd have to know about bonsai to have caught that though).

Pots, pots, pots, pots, and more 'pot' - 'sai'. Well, as we all should know what pot just so happens to be, 'sai' in short, means to plant. So why not plant a pot plant and see what happens? Cannabis was recently legalised for personal growth and use - the exact amount is still to be identified - in South Africa and, with that in mind, I've opted to try and grow one as a bonsai - uhrm.... potsai.

Stoner 1: 'Check the grill on that thing, man.'
Stoner 2: 'That's the tiniest bud ever dude, it's probably so much denser because it's so small.'
Stoner 3: 'We have to smash that up and blaze that thing bruh.'
Bonsai Grower: 'Touch my tree and I'll grill something.'

As unbelievable as it may sound, some of us simply want to grow cannabis trees for the fun of it and, it will of course make for an interesting tree, that is, if it will actually work.

The little bit I know of these trees, aside of the near comatose-inducing laughter it can cause, when puffed of course, is that repotting is going to be a pain in the (gr)ass. They tend to die when removed from the ground, or from the pot.

Wiring will also end up being severely tricky since the stems are rather fragile. There are countless images of cannabis bonsai trees on Google, but what inexperienced people tend to not realise, is that these images are in actual fact fakes. PhotoShop and a pot head, when combined, are a dangerous combination of sheer genius, however.

Here are two images, one is a chinese elm, and the other a 'cannabis' bonsai. Please note the identical pots and environment. If you are very clued up, pay close attention to the branch structure of the cannabis tree. Very intricate work though.

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I recall a pothead joke: Give a bunch of potheads a bunch of weed but nothing to smoke it out of - they all somehow become engineers.

This, at least for me, was severely true although I was much younger and far more experimental. Apples....... I'm not going to say more for fear of incrimination. So, let's move on.

The project has already commenced and it seems as though the baby tree is growing rather rapidly. Now, I would love to wire the cannabis tree that I am growing, but apparently wiring it would cut off much-need nutrient flow and, it may end up killing the plant. If it were to survive, it is said that it would only bud once and then never again - I'm kind of fine with that.

What I was not fine about, was the fact that these plants take countless years to produce anything resembling bark. It is a weed after all.

So, for the time being, Jefferey, as I've spontaneously named my pot plant, will remain a pot plant until such a time that he starts to harden up a little more.

Now, onto what I was actually, intentionally, mis-terming in my last post. When referencing 'potsai' recently, I was actually referring to 'Shohin', another art form of bonsai except, on a much smaller scale. Consider it an easter egg in the game of bonsai I am playing.

Below is an example of 'Shohin':

(IMAGE SOURCE: bonsaiempire.com)

'Shohin', in my opinion, has got to be one of the most difficult practice variations of bonsai. The whole idea behind trees in pots, is that the growth-rate is reduced to the size of the pot, and thus, to scale. ('As above, so below' comes to mind but not quite accurate).

Yesterday, I set about stealing some company time and rushed off to the local nursery where I purchased some tiny pots, suitable for shohin. I also purchased two new junipers, both small, and a num num tree, again, also small. I've never worked with num nums but they are quite nice as bonsai.

I was unfortunately not able to plant them all yesterday and opted to get started on one of my black monkey thorns first, followed by a lemon tree and a coral tree. I also finished up some desert plants in pumpkin sea shells. Something I believe @romanolsamuels shared with me quite some time ago.

Below are the three completed 'shohin' so far, although they are not quite the desired size, this can be fixed over the next few months. A good practice to follow is to never re-pot, prune or wire all in one go. Stick with one at a time in my opinion.

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Now, the reason why I say that Shohin is more difficult than the practice of general bonsai is that the ground is not able to retain moisture for the same period as larger bonsai pots. In fact, they dry out much faster. In order to avoid having the trees die, they need to be watered twice, sometimes three times, per day. This can be done with a mister to avoid losing soil.

Further efforts to help keep the trees alive include placing them in a tray filled with river sand. The river sand is kept moist at all times so as to create a humid environment. You may also cover the river sand with damp sphagnum moss to aid efforts further. If you want to go overboard, consider a hot house or greenhouse.

Unfortunately, the lemon tree will have to be cut somewhat so as to bring it down to the requirements for it to be considered shohin, as currently, it exceeds the scale size requirement in height. An alternative would be to wire it into an appropriate shape which I am considering. (Cascade would look good).

Note the previous reference of desert plants in pumpkin sea shells - one is visible in the photo of the black monkey thorn (dark blue circular pot).

Yesterday also brought about a rather unique idea I had, initially it was reserved for a Chinese Redbud I had tried to grow but unfortunately, it seems our climate is not suitable for these trees. So, instead, as can be seen below, I used another desert plant which I had planted into an ocean rock. The rock has a marvelous network of tunnels running throughout it and, with some time, this plant will look amazing. They also require almost no water.

It definitely is going to look amazing some day.

And finally, I have figured out just what species of tree the one I pinched from the local courthouse was.

I only raid people's gardens when trees are dying or doing poorly. so it is ethical thievery. China Berry Tree, it seems, and they do make for splendid bonsai. In fact, I think the best shape this tree would fit into would be windswept since it already has that type of style going on.

Now, it is simply a matter of killing some time while I wait for upper branches to form, and then, start wiring those into place as well. PS. This tree was nearly a victim of Hadida as well. Read the post before this one to find out just what I mean by that.

Here is an image of a China Berry bonsai courtesy of Amazon.com

Up next we have another baby tree, Wild Laburnum, which I see not too many people utilise as bonsai, which is rather unfortunate. Again, it'll be years before I can do much with this tree but I look forward to it nonetheless.

Looks just like a baby black monkey thorn - this tree is only five months old.

I've got quite a few of these busy growing but I enjoy putting them in pots like this, especially with less growing medium so as to allow their roots to grow sideways more than downward. It really makes transplanting them that much easier - the Wild Laburnum has taken over my last baby monkey thorn's pot as that now has the dark blue pot mentioned earlier as it's new home.

Here is what a Wild Laburnum, from what I managed to find, looks like as a bonsai. Image again, courtesy of Amazon.com.

Please excuse the low quality image, it was the only one I could find that looked decent.

PS. I really wasn't kidding when I said that I was growing a few more Wild Laburnums, there are also a few other babies in here (below), such as Jacaranda, Acacia, and even a palm tree which I am going to try and bonsai.

One other tree that I am really excited about, even though it is frowned upon to use them for bonsai, is my sacred bamboo. This tree has huge potential in my opinion.

Now, back to the juniper that I got from the nursery, below is one of them and I think, if I can trim enough of the roots hiding in the packet, that I could perhaps turn this into a shohin as well. My concern here is that I'll have to remove a large amount of the roots and may end up killing it by doing so.

Other options include finding a suitable rock and mounting it on the rock, most like a tall rock with good features. Not too sure just yet and replanting it now may end up only doing more damage with the excessive heat at the moment. Maybe just leave it standing until next year Spring?

I was beginning to think that I should simply buy a bunch of older bonsai but that would take all of the fun out of everything.

Happy Steeming and thanks for reading.

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