AusBonsai

I have been a long time reader on the forum but i have never posted up anything my self.
I have had a liking of bonsai and Japanese gardens for years and tried my hands at bonsai about 10 years ago only to kill my first maple. so gave up on it until i started to develop a green thumb last year and decided to take it back up again.
the only education on bonsai i have had until now has been through reading this forum and a couple of books and trial and error on my own plants, but still felt like i needed some guidance, so last weekend took my first class down at bonsai south nursery at caringbah. and after feeling a little out of place at first think i came away with quite a good little ficus Retusa (tiger fig) so thought i would post up some pics and see what you all thought and get a bit of constructive criticism?
cheers
Dwayne

Nice work Dwayne, I think you have the beginnings of a great bonsai there! Not too much to critisise really, the tree is still young, but in a few more years I think it'll turn out quite nicely

I also spent a while on the net and in books when I started, however it wasn't until I went and joined a club that everything really started to sink in. Honestly, if you are keen to learn more, then that is the best and fastest way to learn Don't get me wrong though, those beginner courses are a great way to learn, I did two or three myself and loved every one of them

Welcome to the forums!!

cheers Jason and thanks for the welcome, was good to finally get the monkey off my back haha.

yeah your so right. when someone explained it to me in person and gave me a bit of guidance all the stuff i had read all comes back to me and starts to sink in more it was a good day and left me inspired so came home and attacked a few of my other trees that were in need

can't wait to see what i come up with this saturday.... doing windswept / slanted

Update on my first fig.

I should start a different post for this tree.

Tree has gone through a couple of different changes since this post.
Was getting some bad taper, so off came the top.
was trying to develop a formal up right but never really got there.
So today another change, I had two options was to cut down low for movement and better taper or wait till next summer and remove everything bar the trunk and try to develop new branches.
Decided that was better to cut low for movement.
As the last chop was going no where (sorry no photos of in between) I feel this has a lot more direction.

Angle of the photo is not quite right


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Movement and taper of the trunk looks the goods.
Now to get those branches fatter and to ramify.
Nice one

Cheers benbonsai, Can’t wait to defoliate this one and get that ramification on its way. Could be a great little tree if it turns out how I hope it will


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Update on this little fig...
Finally starting to get a better understanding of developing figs.
I really like how this one is coming along.



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Coming along very nicely!

Well done Dwanye a very good start, Tiger figs (Ficus Microcarpa Var. Kimmen) make very smart figs.

cheers Anthony

Fig after removing summers wire.


Have definitely improved this guy over the last year or so

Mid summers prune


Early summer defoliation


Last years change



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Perhaps more movement in the branches, they look very straight at the moment. Wish i could grow a fig down here also wondering if/when the branches do fatten will they cause you to loose the trunk taper you had 2 years ago, also, will they also start to give you reverse taper? It seems the sacrifice branch isn't really doing any fattening of the trunk base

Hi max, the branches do have movement but probably need a over head shot to show you.
Will bring them down more with next summer defoliation which will give some front view movement to the branches.
As for the taper well the was 2 sacrifice branches, just cut one off as it was starting to get quite fat. As that heals and other sacrifice branch develops I think the taper will be fine but we will see what happens. If reverse taper starts to form again we’ll just lop it off and start again.


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Another years growth for this little tiger grrr


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New pot for the fig today



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That's an excellent looking ficus there pebble, you've done a great job with putting some nice bends in it and I love the density of foliage you have.

I know with ficus if you get the humidity very high almost 100% you can get some really nice aerial roots developing which could look pretty nice on your tree.