Making a Bonsai from a Christmas tree
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- Опубликовано: 25 дек 2022
- What to do with your Christmas tree? Can you make a bonsai out of it?
Yes! You can turn a Christmas tree into a bonsai!
When it comes to Christmas there are many things to like. One of them is the Christmas trees. Once Christmas shopping is done, these small trees are often sold for very small prices allowing bonsai artists to get their hands on material cheaply.
In this video I do a first styling, step by step, of 2 Christmas trees. One tree to a cascade, and one tree to a formal upright bonsai.
Ikea christmas tree hack! • IKEA hack. From christ...
I invite everyone who creates a bonsai from a Christmas tree to share the link of their video in the comments so I can add it to the playlist • Merry Christmas-tree .
@BlueJayBonsai and @greenmachinesweden , note the special request on your doorstep!?
Music: Willow and the Light-by-Kevin-Macleod
license: (CC BY 4.0) Kevin MacLeod
Artist link: incompetech.com/
A Christmas Hero by Michael Ramir C.
mixkit.co/free-stock-music/
sooo.. am I the only one, or have others converted christmas trees into bonsai?
I started a conversion 3 years ago and it is slowly getting shorter :)
I've got 4 Picea in different styles that were originally 'Christmas trees', I pretend they are Ezo spruce! I also picked up a small one for £5 recently and ended up with a windswept design very similar to yours!
I've found you can be quite rough with the roots but they then need a season on just leaving them alone to recover. I like them!
Started my first Bonsai 3 days ago also using a small christmas tree. Postet a pic on Bonsai Empire ^^
Guilty...
Now . The tree becomes a bonsai my brother. With your touch .
Thank you so much!
Creating bonsai is an art. Teaching is also an art. Jelle, you have a knack for both. Thank you for making these videos!
So nice of you! I am so glad you think my videos are worth producing-> watching!
Ok - you win. I am going to try and find a bargain basement Picea this week. Great video Jelle. Cheers Xav
You’ve changed Xavier… 😮
Although this video also has me thinking of having a(nother) go… 😂
Good luck! I am looking forward to the outcome of your endeavours!
Changed how?
@@GrowingBonsai I said i would never get caught up in the Picea craze.
@@TheBonsaiGarden I only will If I see something to cheap and interesting at the garden centre. It will be a private affair becasue i am on official bonsai holiday for 2 weeks.
Great job Jelle! My outdoor trees are frozen to the ground and covered under 2 feet of snow. I will have to stick to tropical work until the spring! 🐦💙
Oh no! I guess being jealous is not right, but I would have loved some snow here! Do enjoy it for me!
@BlueJayBonsai You have been called out. Go to Home Depot or Canadian Tire, you can get something for real cheap now and they are not frozen.
Great video as always Jelle. I hope you had a lovely Christmas and all the best for 2023. Fingers crossed for lots of bonsai videos too by the way!
Thank you Dermo! Happy New Year!
Now to leave the wire in place for the next three years while it sets in place 😂😂😂
I really like that smaller tree - at least it doesn’t look like a tv aerial. 😂 These definitely benefit from wiring dramatic movement into the trunk. 👍
Thank you. Yeah, these christmast trees to tend to look a little .. boring maybe?
Thanks for the shout out Jelle. Great vid! I liked the small one best, looking very interesting. Looking forward to see where you can take it given time. I will not get myself another christmas tree project. But I will need to do something with the one I made 5 years ago. Hope that qualifies. The vid is planned and I promise to include telling just why I will not get any more. 🙂👍
:) Very welcome Magnus. Just hope to see an update on that forest :)
Watching here thanks for sharing my dear friend nice vedio very informative
Thanks for visiting fro Lebanon!
Merry Christmas jelle
Thank you so much! Merry Christmas right back!
Bonsai phill very good video yes I have oneits
About 15 years old now
Thanks jelle
Great! Do you have images / video of this one that you have had so long?
This shall be a blast
Hope it was!?
@@GrowingBonsai oh it was. Now to find a clearance tree to design!
@@bobcatbonsai run, quickly!
Hi Jelle, nice trees. 👍 I couldn’t have wait until Christmas to give my tree a little make-over… 😅🙋♀️
You're welcome. Wishin you lots of fun doing a make-over!
Merry Christmas Jelle. Also i've done a couple, the first two years ago and the second last year. Uno formal upright and the second short and slanting. I always love watch your works!
Hey Andreas, Merry Christmas (too late now is it?) to you too! Do you have a video on your christmastree conversions?
@@GrowingBonsai Yes it's lo ate but not too much😅. I don't make video, i only have some pictures .
Sehr gutes Video, lieber Jelle.
Jedes Jahr etwa Mitte Januar gehe ich auf unseren Friedhof. Dort stehen neben den Bioabfallbehälter immer entsorgte mini Weihnachtsbäume zum Teil noch mit Lichterketten. Ich sammel die Tannen alle ein und entwickle sie für ein Bonsai-Tannen-Wald.
Liebe Grüße und frohes Weihnachtsfest!
Hallo Silke, das is interessant! Sehr schone gedanke das du die Baumchen ein neues leben Gunnt! Wurde da gerne mithelfen :)
Hi looks good might have to do one 👍
You should! Let me know how it turned out!
Merry Christmas!
Well, merry christmas to you too!. Thank you.
Happy New Year Jelle! I purchased couples of conifers particularly for this purpose from the Christmas sale and right after that you published this video. How nice. :D However, Picea glauca is a very common potted winter plantation tree here in Finland and some Cypresses and Junipers as well. Just recently, it has become more and more popular to buy some traditional Christmas tree species alive (not like cut ones) as a potted state too. Picea abies and P. omorica are the cold hardiest of all and would like to try bonsai with them. Therefore I now managed to get couples of Picea omoricas (we also have P. abies on sale but I just don't have enough space for them right now) relatively cheap on after christmas sale and planning to make some out of them. The challenge is still to get them alive through the winter though. Here in Finland you have to wait until the spring in order to do anything with the plants since it is so cold outdoors and plants there will be dormant and frozen completely until April. Moreover, the temperatures at indoors are too high for overwintering anything temperate species there either. Unless you have a storage, chellar or winterhouse with some back up heating keeping temperatures just above the freezing, you just have to pause pretty much everything for the winter regarding the horticultural activities. For many months! Nevertheless, I'll get back to this topic if and when I going to get these trees to the spring alive and have any chance to work with them. Wish me luck - there are still so many hard months to go until a safe zone...
Happy 2023!
Great to hear you dabbling into the christmastree area too! Yeah, when it really gets in the deep frost, I avoid working on my trees too, untill temps are around the frostboundary again. I suppose it makes for a relaxed winter though?
Wishing you good luck with the dark long months ahead. (But then again.. At least you get snow. Here we have pretty constant wetness and near-permanent cloud cover from ~mid October to March, typically. Sigh.
Noice! I need more practice with selecting and wiring branches. I have trouble with these types of trees. Looks really good! Thats why you’re a master! Merry Christmas!
You can do it! Just be patient and do it one branch at a time!
@@GrowingBonsai ah, patience… that is what i lack in quite a few things :)
👍👌🙂
:D
I swear, if bonsai wasn't such a niche hobby, your channel would have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Great content.
These are always very well edited, really informative and delivered with great humour.
This is true Markus!
Ohw, thank you so much! I guess one can only hope.
There are however youtube channels on Bonsai with 100k+ subscribers and 1M+ views. Something to strive for in the next year :)
Thank you!
@@GrowingBonsai In that case I'm sure you'll get there. I wanted to ask, do you sell cuttings/prebonsai/bonsai? And if so, where? I don't feel like we have many good options in Europe.
Nice work on the video and nice instructions and insights into the how and why of the design. I think this is great, definitely a good way for newbies to try things with pruning and shaping and not have to worry much about the cost of the material if things go wrong.
Good to hear! Have you ever done one?
@@GrowingBonsai I have not, yet.... hoping to get out to the garden center today to look for some on sale and give it a try! 😃
or tomorrow when they open again after the holiday.
Sorry I couldn't bump up your premiere numbers this morning, but terrific video as usual! I hope you had a good Christmas; I remember you saying you didn't like eggnog, so I drank your portion yesterday after mine. And then some.
Happy holidays! Hope you have recovered from the eggs and noggs. I realized too late that a mid-day premiere is not great for all people!
Merry Christmas Jelle! I started my first Bonsai 3 days ago and it´s also a 'Christmas tree'. Uploaded the video on my RUclips for your Playlist :)
Happy holidays! Do you have a link to the video?
YEah, first check, then ask. Found it fast and added it!
@@GrowingBonsai Thank you!
@@Peekcasso my pleasure!
Don't we all have at least one of these? I got several and actually got one for free at my grocery store this year. It makes beautiful bonsai. Love what you did to that little one.
Hey Bart, great to hear. I am so surprised how many people particularly like the small one!
@@GrowingBonsai I think many like the bendy stuff a lot. For me it reminds me of trees on the border of the treeline in the mountains. Barely holding on with all the terror around them.
Merry Christmas! Those trees look fantastic! I am going to the city today. Although nurseries and greenhouses are not all open today. I will look to see if any of the box stores have trees this year. I have not seen any yet. Hopefully there aren't too many humans. I should bring a stick maybe. I don't feel like dealing with humans today.
Good luck. I suspect there will be many people on the road.
@@GrowingBonsai I have a question, if you have time please. My frozen trees I purchased. Will it harm them to take them indoors and thaw the soil so I am able to dig down to find the root base? Or should I leave them frozen?
@@FrostBiteBonsai Indoors as in living spaces heated to a comfi temp? Or in a shed that is frost-free? I would not bring it in a real heated space for very long, tbh.
@@GrowingBonsai Thank you. I suspect the trees are buried deep. I will leave them frozen. I appreciate your response!
I bought a small spruce like yours recently so that I can turn it into a bonsai this coming summer but it was inside a room temperature store for probably a few weeks (not outside in the elements). Do you think it would die if I put it outside (it's winter here, growing zone 5) as long as I don't do any work on it now? Thanks for all the really helpful videos!
I think I would try to find a place just around frost. Putting it in real winter straight away I would consider too big a risk..
Merry Christmas Jelle I have never bonsai before and thought the price is right for a small 1 gallon blue spruce, When is the best time to trim, and wire a christmas tree? I thought I had to wait until early spring to do any of that. I'm sure climate matters and Southern California does not get to cold but it does freeze here (30F/0C) so I thought i should wait. After doing any work to the tree do you shelter it? Great work very inspiring, I want to get started but don't want to kill the tree by stressing it out.
Hey Stu,
I do this work over winter. Typically, spruce grows in mountainous areas so is used to getting lots of snow in winter. Bending branches in winter therefor is no issue, whereas in summer they are more sensitive it seems. Repotting would be best early in the growing season (But consider skipping it in the year you do massive work on the branches!)
@@GrowingBonsai Thank you, I will
@@Stu.Williams Good luck! And.. Bonsai is marathon, not a sprint!
will these bud from the trunk? in case you need branches in bare locations?
Not really. They might pop a bud in branch crotches but not predictably.
showing off about drawing in addition to bonsai?
😆
Haha, sure, but then I would have to really try. I do think that drawing out what you intent to do helps make a better tree!
Top vid again 🙂
Question... If you look at the natural growing habit of picea, when you wire down the branches, the bottom of the needles are now facing up and the top of the needles are facing down. Did you ever had an issue with this?
Hm.. Not sure what you mean. Needles do adjust themselves to the direction of the sun somewhat if that is what you mean? One new buds open, the needles there are correctly oriented. Not had any issues, but I normally try to keep the top on top.
@@GrowingBonsai The needles that were least exposed to the sun (those growing on the inside of the tree) are the most exposed to the sun after conversion, and the needles that were most exposed get the least sun after conversion. Ryan Neil once noticed this in one of his videos. Does this prolong the recovering period of the tree?
@@kurtdebree263 Aah! Yes, thats true. If you watch my 50e conversion video I think I commented on the risk of sunburn. As it is winter now, I do not see the sun for weeks on end and it should be a non issue!
I had a few for a few years, but it’s too hot at my location. They died once we hit 107F.
Yeah, local climate can matter a lot
do you not have to wait till spring to prune the tree
Not really. spruce can be worked well outside the growing season! Do note, I am pruning to existing buds!
What does it look like after months?
It is in serious need of pruning and wiring!
What are the chances of killing a spruce after removing so many branches, pruning some length and still repot it in a few weeks ?
Honestly I would like to do something similar, but I’m kinda afraid that I’m going to kill the tree, as I would probably need to remove a lot of photosynthetic material + reducing the length of the roots.
There is a little risk. Just the pruning and wiring is OK. But repotting soon after is a little much for most trees, and I would recommend spitting it up. That being said, I do see this going well often