When it comes to bonsai growing, two of the most important things to consider are choosing the right soil and choosing the right pots for your bonsai tree. Bonsai cultivation requires a unique kind of soil different from what you might already use with your regular house plant and the pots need to be as compact as possible to keep your bonsai tree small and contained.
There are a few things to consider when choosing the right soil for your bonsai tree. You do not want soil that will be wet all the time, for one, as the trees do not do well and it could lead to rotting of the core which nearly always ends in game over for your bonsai tree. Your roots also need to be able to breathe and not get saturated with water. Therefore, choose soil specifically for bonsai growing that lets the water pass through the soil easily and does not soak up too much water. Many specialist stores now let you buy specific bonsai soil, but the true fun lies in coming up with your own compositions!
When it comes to choosing the right pots for your bonsai tree, it’s vital to understand the entire process of choosing a specimen to become a bonsai styled tree. While you may buy a bonsai tree that already lives in its final pot, you should know how it begins and ends. Bonsai seeds are a rare thing, and usually the bonsai trainer takes a plant specimen that they want to train to be a bonsai, and put it in a large pot, allowing its roots to grow large and wild. The reason for this is to let the roots grow free and in great numbers, giving them plenty of room to grow and get strong. After this, the expert bonsai grower will repot the plant in a smaller training pot or box, and allow the roots to grow closer together and even from together to give them greater strength and get used to the smaller space. Finally, when the roots have reaches the desired density and thickness, the plant can be moved in to a bonsai pot where we can then truly begin to call this mass a “bonsai tree.”
So, knowing this, important aspects to consider are the current size of your tree and its root mass. But really, the point of bonsai is to keep the tree small and compact, so you need to get a pot that is as small as possible. Other than that, the choosing the right pot for your bonsai is up to you in regards to the style of pot to use, but make sure your pot is specifically for bonsai trees, as they are engineered specifically for this unique art of plant dwarfing.
