I am a beginner at bonsai, and like another person who wrote asking questions, I bought a kit which contained Japanese Black Pine seeds which I have already planted.

I realize this is the lengthy way to begin.

The questions:

• 1. What kind of nursery-type plant would be a good place to start while I am waiting for the seedlings to mature?

• 2. I still don't understand about the soil.

• 3. Books. What do you reccomend for a beginner?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Phillip.

In concern as to what plant would be good to use when starting at bonsai - almost all plants can be adapted to at least one bonsai style. What I recommend is that you look at the native flora growing around your area and determine some species suitable for bonsai out of those. This will give you the advantage of having ample supply to the species you need at little or no cost and the added advantage that the plants will not have to work very hard to familiarize themselves with the climate that you supply for them. You also of course don't need to rely on nurseries. Alternatively you could use plants such as maples - which are easily propagated and work well as bonsai.

As for the soil, most beginners use a general potting mix until they get the hang of things - and I recommend that you do this too - just until you familiarize yourself with the other processes involved in bonsai. As long as the mix is open and well-draining you should not have a problem and it wont impact negatively on the plant. If you wish to however, you can make up your own soil mix - it isn't as hard as you think, but I do agree that a lot of bonsai growers make a bit of an unnecessary fuss about it. A basic bonsai soil mix that you could use - and one that would apply to almost all species growing in your region is :

• one part loam,
• two parts sphagnum peat moss,
• two parts granite grit.

All of these ingredients should be easy enough to obtain.

In relation to books, I have put a section on a few of my highly recommended bonsai books that you may care to check out. Out of these however, the book that I would probably most recommend to you is Harry Tomlinson's "Bonsai Pocket Encyclopedia". It is an excellent publication which I still refer to quite often. It has helpful descriptions of over 40 species suitable for bonsai and covers bonsai maintenance, techniques and more in great detail. I do recommend you get your hands on as much bonsai information as possible as the books normally found in libraries on bonsai are second-rate and not that helpful. Buying a good bonsai book can really help you a lot and also serves as quite a good source of inspiration for future projects.

Regards,

Dan