Cannabis Bonsai Guide: A Step-By-Step Guide That Combines Form And Function
Looking for a way to combine aesthetics and practicality in your cannabis garden? Growing a bonsai mother plant accomplishes both of these tasks. It’s a great way to spice up your garden while also maintaining your favorite genetics. Here, we outline a step-by-step cannabis bonsai guide that will help you achieve just that. Dig in!
What Is Bonsai?
Bonsai is a gardening technique and art form of growing miniature plants that’s over 1,000 years old. There are certain aesthetic principles that bonsai practitioners follow. These include miniaturization, proportionality, asymmetry, poignancy, and leaving no trace of man-made interaction with the plant. Every bonsai grower needs to consider these factors whenever they cultivate a plant. Although associated most commonly with Japan, the tradition actually stems from a Chinese practice. Eventually, Japanese Buddhist monks would develop and refine the process. Bonsai spread into the Western consciousness after World War II, and the practice remains a celebrated past-time in Japan today.
Reasons To Grow Cannabis Bonsai
Growing a cannabis bonsai plant has several benefits for an intrepid grower. First, bonsai trees capture a unique aesthetic, and their distinctive shapes and patterns add a certain atmosphere to a room. They also force a grower to completely reorient themselves and learn a new cultivation technique.
Marijuana bonsai plants have a practical use, too. Because bonsai plants are always kept in the vegetative phase, you can use them as mother plants to keep your favorite genetics alive. That way, you can add form to function in your genetics bank.
How To Grow Cannabis Bonsai
Growing a marijuana bonsai tree requires the gardener to assess a few different factors. You’ll need to consider how to prepare both your pot and your plant, train your trucks and branches, and establish a pruning maintenance routine.
Step One: Pot Preparation
First, you’ll need to drill holes through the sides of the pot you’re going to use. You’ll use these to tie down your bonsai’s branches using either wire or twine. Drill holes throughout the rim, spacing them about an inch (2.5 centimeters) apart. Don’t drill them too close to the lip of the pot. Finally, make sure the holes are large enough to fit the twine or wire you’re going to use.
Step Two: Prep Your Plant
Next, you need to plant your seedling into your pot. You must either make a clone from a mother plant that you already have or grow a fresh plant from seed. Regardless of which choice you make, ensure that the plant is female before choosing it as your mother. Additionally, you’ll want to choose a hearty, healthy plant. That way, every clone that you cut from your mother will share its robust genetics.
Step Three: Trunk Training
Place a stake in your pot close to your plant’s stem. You’ll use this to manipulate the main stalk of your plant. Wrap the main stalk of your plant around the stake to give it a unique appearance. Make sure you do this carefully – if you’re not gentle when you press the stake into your medium, you could end up damaging your plant’s root system. Tie the stem to two holes on opposite sides of your plant using the twine. Don’t tie the main stem too tightly. Instead, make sure you leave enough room for the trunk to thicken.
Step Four: Branch Training
Next, you need to tie your bonsai marijuana plant’s secondary branches to the other holes in your pot. You can use either twine or wire to accomplish this. Just like you did with the main stem, make sure you leave room for the branches to grow. One of the tenants of bonsai is leaving no trace of the grower, so you want to avoid any permanent damage to your plant. You can tie your plants down as firmly or gently as you like. They’re still in the vegetative phase, so they’re pliable and easy to bend.
Step Five: Pruning Maintenance
As your bonsai weed plant grows, you’re going to need to do some pruning. You’ll want to do this for two reasons. First, it’ll help maintain the exotic look you’re going for. Second, you can use these clippings as new clones. Just root them, veg them and flower them out. Only cut off new growth to do this – you don’t want to cut any main branches once they’re established.
The Wrap-Up On Cannabis Bonsai
Learning how to practice the art of bonsai with your cannabis plants is rewarding on multiple levels. It’s a great way to combine aesthetics and practicality in your gardening practices. Additionally, the skills you learn by training a bonsai plant are applicable to the rest of your cannabis plants. Keeping your mother plant as a bonsai will quickly make you the envy of many other growers, and it’ll give your garden great feng shui!
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