Just like the ancient Japanese bonsai trees we all love, cannabis can also be grown in miniature to be aesthetically pleasing through pruning and trimming. Here, we look at how to get started with this cannabonsai trend. Best seeds online? Check out tropicana cookie seeds, kush mints seeds and white russian seeds.
Bonsai Cannabis: what is it?
Bonsai cannabis, or cannabonsai, is a popular trend among weed aficionados and aesthetic gardeners. It’s the art of planting and sustaining a simple cannabis strain in a pot and pruning it into pleasing shapes and sizes.
As the goal of bonsai in Japan (or Penjing in China) is to grow a gorgeous looking tree to maturity in a tiny container, so too cannabonsai sustains cannabis plants through clone clippings.
Where cannabonsai really comes into its own is in maintaining genetic variation for a cannabis garden. You can utilize the small potted format to generate diversity through mother plants without having to sow seeds. However, there’s no denying that there’s an aesthetic art to bonsai. This is where the trend comes in.
The idea behind Cannabonsai
More than just generating clone clippings for cultivation, cannabonsai is about training your plant to grow in spectacular ways. That means you can just keep it simple with miniature Christmas tree-like shapes, but the more fun route means aiming for more experimental appearances with off-shoots.
Bonsai Cannabis, a new trend?
The first cannabonsai tree is hard to pinpoint. People have been keeping mother plants for decades. Seasoned cannabis growers gravitate towards strong plants, which they keep in the vegetative state to produce clone clippings for future crops. These, however, tend to grow big, not small. Trimming them for aesthetic and compact purposes, however, can be traced back several decades or so ago, when images began to circulate on internet forums.
At first, people thought it was a hoax. Many fake photoshopped images were indeed distributed with cannabis in impossible shapes and sizes. But some were real. The trend hit off and has been perfected among aficionados over the years.
Given that bonsai simply refers to growing a plant in a small container, a simple potted cannabis plant surely fits the bill as well. Whatever style you go for and for whatever ends, the cannabonsai has become a solid talking point in the online community and has swept across Instagram with clever tags like #budzai, #cannabonsai and #bonshigh.
With some training and patient pruning, you can achieve the same iconic twisted branches and miniaturized aesthetics of the iconic Japanese bonsai trees. Get started with this subtle art by following these handy tips.
How to make a bonsai weed plant?
- Gather materials
- Prepare pot
- Secure trunk
- Training
- Pruning
- Harvest, dry and cure
1. Gather materials
To grow your cannabis bonsai tree, you’ll first need a young cannabis plant or seedling that’s ready to pot. You’ll also need a few materials for both preparing your new pot and sustaining the plant. These include an electric drill (see stage 2), wire or twine for training and a growth stick or wooden stake to reinforce the main stem. You’ll also need adequate soil nutrients and growing equipment, as you would any other potted cannabis plant.
However, as the end goal here is an aesthetic plant rather than a harvest, you’ll also need plenty of patience and a keen eye for details. Once you’ve prepared all these, it’s time to get started.
2. Prepare pot
To get started, you have to prepare your pot for planting. A small pot is crucial to keep to the bonsai tradition. The shape and size, however, is entirely up to you. You can opt for circular, rectangular, deep or shallow pots.
In the tradition of bonsai, your plant shouldn’t dwarf its surrounded or be dwarfed by its pot. Many growers have opted to drill holes in their pot before they plant their cannabis cutting or young plant. This gives robust, permanent space to affix twine and wire for training your compact cannabis plant when it begins to grow and take shape. Without this, your plant will grow in its natural, bushy way and can be difficult to “bonsai”.
Just be sure not to use an ornamental pot that will be ruined by drill holes. You can always re-pot your plant when it’s sufficiently trained if you’d like it to be more aesthetically pleasing.
3. Secure trunk
Once you’ve potted your chosen mother plant clipping, place a wooden stake or grow stick into the soil vertical with the stem. This is the best way to help position your plant as it grows, ensuring that it remains firmly upright and secure. However, you have to be extra careful when placing it in the soil so as not to disrupt or damage any of your plant’s roots.
Place your stake in slowly and gently. You can then attach string, bands or wire to this stake to train and promote your plant’s shape. A stake is one of the most fool-proof methods of reinforcing your stem, but there are other options too. Some have used plastic hooks and climbing frames that are more typically used for ivy.
4. Training
This is where the fun begins. To encourage unique tree-like growth, you’ll have to train your plant to grow in certain positions. Simply put, you train your stems and branches by tying them down and promoting growth in chosen directions.
Want your branches to take on a horizontal shape like a classic bonsai tree? Tie them down with more force with your wire through your pot’s holes. Don’t be too rigorous, though; some space is required for natural growth. Enclose the branches too tightly with wire and your branch won’t be able to grow properly.
This is a low-stress methodLinks to an external site. because it doesn’t involve actually cutting your bonsai – but that comes next. Training can be implemented at any stage but is best done when your plant is vegetative as this is when it does the majority of its growth.
5. Pruning
Pruning is an essential part of all cannabis cultivation, but it’s crucial to cannabonsai. As your cannabis grows, it will begin to take on classic genetic shapes – either bushy like an Indica or tall like a Sativa.
Offshoot branches can be pruned off to retain a pleasing aesthetic, and canopies can be kept in check. Just be careful not to damage any of the main branches, as this can seriously hurt the plant itself and slow the growing cycle down considerably.
Another key element to pruning is allowing air and light to reach the stems – preventing mold, pests and mildew. Bonsai plants aim to mimic in miniature the natural formation of trees as they appear in real life, so there are plenty of ideas out there to choose from.
6. Harvest, dry and cure
Once your cannabis plant has reached the peak flowering stage, it’s time to harvest. You’ll recognize the harvesting stage from the more pungent aroma and delightful, frosty-white buds which develop during flowering. Follow these links for more details on determining when and how to harvest cannabis.
Once you’ve plucked your precious resinous buds from your bonsai plant, you should dry and cure them to perfection. This stage is among the most important for imparting a mature and developed flavor to your cannabis and preserving it for future use. An airtight glass jar and dry, dark storage space are all you really need to achieve this.
After you’ve harvested, there’s some debate on how long to keep a cannabis bonsai plant for. Some can consistently revert their plants back to the vegetative stage repeatedly, essentially keeping their mother plant alive and productive for years.
No comments:
Post a Comment