Now that summer's heat surrounds us, daily care may be reduced to watering thoroughly, and often on hot, low humidity days and less often on high humidity days. As I look back over the forty plus years I've been growing stock, I feel I've done beginning bonsai fanciers a disservice. How many seedlings, cuttings, grafts ever reached maturity. Just because I had a vision of growing on trees does not mean that every person starting out will succeed in keeping a tree alive until it develops that essential bonsai shape. Such is rarely the case.
Most people forget the tree.
At first I did, but some how the enthusiasm faded and the seasons passed. I suppose my message is to look to larger stock and leave the propagation and growing on to others better suited and better equipped. Also it grows wild throughout the northern tier of the states. Best displayed in fall and winter. Can be collected in early spring.