Exactly 1 year ago I started this Trident Maple Trunk Fusion project. Now it’s time to remove the part above the tile.

I took the tree to my bonsai club, not for the 15 different pieces of advice I’d get there but because I rather make a mess there then at my place 😀

J/K ofcourse.

Anyway, here’s how the tree looks like after a year in the pot with the tile in it:

Only 4 of the 5 seedlings survived, but they grew well.

I made a growbox that should last the next 3-4 years.

I prepared the growbox with some substrate and wires

Then it was time to remove the tree from it’s plastic container and see how well it rooted… if it rooted at all…

Lots of roots below the tile, that’s already a good thing I guess.

And the most important thing, lots of roots above the tile. Succes!!

Time to remove the tile, I just cut all the roots that were below the tile. But the tree was stuck in the hole in the tile so I had to break this beautiful Italian piece of stoneware.

No re-using this one it seems 🙂

After pruning the remaining roots the result looks very promising.

A nice root-spread coming from all 4 remaining trees.

View from above.

The next picture shows how the trunks have started fusing together.

View from below. Notice the 4 different trees at the base cut section. Also there’s a 5th section on the right of the cut section that is black. That was the seedling that didnt make it. R.I.P.

Time to tie the tree down in it’s new growbox and fill it with bonsai soil.

Here I’m using a mix of 60% akadama and 40% pumice.

There ya go, ready for a year or 2 of growing and trunk thickening.

Since 4 trunks isn’t a standard number in bonsai it might be that 1 of the trunks will get cut in the future so only 3 trunks will remain while they still benefit on the fused root structure of the 4th trunk.