AusBonsai

Hi all. I need your opinion on a little project I'm doing. I drilled 13 1/2inch holes in a big floor tile and planted a Trident seedling in each hole. 12 grew and are doing great. You can see in the photo that I bound them together with raffia so they can fuse together. Now I am in two minds whether I should leave them to grow as is, or chop them above the raffia....

Let them grow. More growth equals better fusion.

Height = Girth, so to speak anyway.
The taller they get, the thicker they get, the quicker they fuse.

Is there only one point where you've put raffia? I'm thinking you may need it up higher as well as down lower too.

Just a thought, what would happen if you placed a thick wire around them all, and gave some movement. The bends would surely create more tension in places which would help with fusing, and the movement would also improve the future trunk and help with taper eventually. Would think there needs to be more raffia to hold trunks together as mentioned before, and protect if you decided to try and wire.

Interesting project, remember seeing an article couple years back where a large quantity of maples were wrapped around a wire frame (might have been an article in Bonsai Today), and these ended up fusing and creating a huge trunk with excellent taper.

Good luck...

Why would u want to fuse them together above the Nebari that the plate will create?

and the examples I have seen ( and done myself) is to create a multi trunked tree on a large fused nebari that is created by the trunks spreading out above the plate.

I you want to fuse multiple trunk together to create a thicker trunk faster then no real reason to pull them thru a plate first. to me that is counter intuitive as they are techniques to achieve different objectives.

Ken

Thank you all for your input. At this stage i need to say that English isn't my first language. Forgive me when i stumble to express myself sometimes.....
The idea is to fuse only beneath the raffia. At some time it will be cut above the raffia. The question is when..... I have other 1 year old plants that I'm going to do other projects with, but for now this is the problem I have.
I'm only interested in creating a well tapered base that can be built on later. For now I'm not so much worried about the nebari, although will keep an eye on it. I will work on it later in more detail. For now I only want to fuse the trunks beneath the raffia as fast and efficient as possible, to create the tapered fused trunk. The gaps are a bit bigger than I anticipated but will fill in fast. Hopefully it will create an interesting look.
If I don't chop then it will grow faster upwards, but the growth will be more in the upper sections, that I don't really need...
If I chop them now they will sprout low and fill in the gaps quicker... but it might be set back a bit, grow slower and take longer.

Do you have a photo from the side? The saplings look like they are all in a line at the base, is there a reason for that?

I'd have thought you would want a round tree.

Nah that is just the way it looks like in the photo Jarrad. There is 12 in a "almost" circle. They are about 6mm thick after 1 years growth. It has about 50mm soil on top of the tile. Scrathed around this morning and there is a lot of little roots above the tile which is good. Eventually they will outgrow the 1/2inch hole in the tile, and I will separate it above the tile then. Hopefully the nebari has fused properly by then....

As Ken was eluding to you will have 12 individual trees with reasonable nebari from the tile then 50-100mm above the nebari then fuse. This will not create a believable taper. You need to tie and secure the seedling as low as possible to get them to fuse from the nebari upwards giving you the taper you require and giving the impression of an older single trunk. I think you will end up with something more akin to an exposed root style tree?

The tile method is used for single trees to create good nebari quickly. When trying to fuse trees you can get away with using young seedlings/saplings with poor or one-sided roots and position them so the root are all growing outwards which will in time give you a balanced nebari as the trunk(s) fuse into one.

I hope this makes sense?

Thanks Luke. Makes perfect sense. I saw this done on another site sometime ago but cant remember where. It fused well but the spacings were much closer than mine. I'll just let it grow and see how it goes...

There was a site that showed fused trunk technique really well. It was called http://www.dugzbonsai.com . it is no longer. The best i could find was this link:http://ibonsaiclub.forumotion.com/t4873-dugz-bonsai

He also did flat based olives.

I think this should create a thick, tapered trunk base if all goes well. The tile will add a new layer of radial roots and should encourage the base to flare even more. The trunks being a bit separated below the raffia is good because it will make the base of the trunk even wider down low. The trunks down there will thicken and eventually join together but you might need to wrap them up all the way down to the roots so that they are forced to fuse rater than pushing each other out.

At some stage after the trunks have fused together you will need to cut a few of the trunks above the raffia to get even more taper above. Maybe cut 2 or 3 and then wrap the remaining trunks to fuse them and repeat.

1 thing to watch out for with wrapped trunks like this - As the trunks thicken they tend to bulge out below and above the raffia where they are not constricted. That ends up looking really ugly so watch out for that but not sure what to do about it.

Thanks for that Shibui. That's my thinking exactly. It has no other option but to fuse, both above and below ground. Once they have filled the holes in tile, they will roll over on the tile and start fusing with eachother and the roots eventually... I'll keep an eye on the bulging and adjust the raffia.
I plan to build a square box about 2 inches high to place on top of the tile. Remove the soil and fill it with bonsai mix, so I can control the roots better.
So your thinking is to leave the tops for now to get better growth down below?

I think leaving the tops intact is probably the best until they have fused together.
I don't think there is any need to replace soil with bonsai mix while it is in the ground. roots will grow just as well in soil and moisture is easier to control.

It will be interesting to see how quickly you can achieve this fused trunk. I have found that I can get the same size with better taper just planting a single trunk in the ground.
Please keep posting even if this one does not work out as well as expected.

Thanks mate. I will surely report back in time