This is one of my attempts to create a prebonsai mango material from a seed.
I planted the seed in the ground around Feb 2013 and it started to sprout early march 2013.
Here's a rough 20 months progression.
The plant grows quickly and even the young green stem is pretty hard to bend. So if anyone else is planning to start to make a mango bonsai from seed, get some wire and shape VERY EARLY.
After the first leaves had hardened off I went ahead and repotted the plant.
The plant had thrown a long tap root with lots of feeder roots throughout the length of the tap root.
^ Long tap root
^ You can see the feeder roots throughout its length.
^ Went ahead an reduced the tap root.
^ Went ahead an reduced the tap root.
^ And back into the ground.
Roughly 20 months later
I repotted into a colander early 2014 and placed back on the ground to allow the roots to escape into the ground.
^ Roughly 20 months later, the first leaves are still present and the trunk is starting to get a bit more stiff.
^ Roots that escaped from the colander
^ Wired and positioned the trunk and the possible first branch
^ Wired and positioned the trunk and the possible first branch. Used a guy to hold the trunk into place.
I don't have anything planned yet for it and it still has a long way to go before its even remotely close to become a pre-bonsai but its a start.
Just experimenting on this material but here are my first initial impressions.
Its not a good learning material for beginners, the trunk is pretty stiff and snappy. Even young green shoots gets quickly rigid and tough to style.
The leaves looks like its going to be a challenge to reduce or harmonize with a small trunk. So future plans would be to allow it to grow much much thicker.
This means NO bonsai pot for the next 3~4 years, full ground growth in the colander and a regular root prune on roots coming out of the colander every 6~12 months or so.
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