Bonsai Starter Kit – pot, tools, and soil mixture included.

An ideal starter kit to quickly get started with your bonsai.

Start with a bush/indoor plant with many branches. Begin by repotting or shaping it through pruning. Ideally, allow some rest between pruning and repotting (and vice versa). Most trees prefer to be repotted in early spring.

The kit includes a pot, mesh for the pot bottom, twig shears, branch pruners, tweezers and rake, a small shovel, five 100g rolls of aluminum wire, and a classic soil mixture with Akadama, Pumice, and Lava Sand. (If you prefer a different mixture, please specify in your order.)

The twig shears are a long and narrow bonsai scissors from the Chinese brand Dingmu. The elongated and pointed shape allows you to reach inside the bonsai crown without accidentally cutting off other branches or leaves. The long handle also provides good leverage for cutting branches and not just simple plastic packaging like kitchen scissors. The cuts are clean and neat without the wound splintering, minimizing liquid loss and the surface area for diseases to attack the pruned tree. The tip is slightly crossed to allow cutting all the way to the tip.

Concave branch cutters are bonsai pliers from the Chinese brand Dingmu, used when cutting slightly larger branches on the tree. The concave cut allows the wound to grow over and heal over time. It is advisable to apply wound sealing paste for larger cuts, both to protect the tree from liquid loss and to guard against viruses and fungi that could otherwise enter the wound.

Aluminum wire is used to give the trunk and branches the desired shape. You wrap the branches with aluminum bonsai wire that is about 1/3 of the thickness of the branch. Thinner wire may have difficulty maintaining the shape of the branch depending on the tree species. However, avoid wrapping with wire that is too thick, as you may accidentally break branches while bending the wire. You can also use thicker wire to bend branches by, for example, creating a hook attached around the trunk or around the base of another branch. Let the wire stay for a few months. Fast-growing plants can quickly develop marks in the bark.

The kit includes:

• Rectangular pot, 16 x 13 cm (KMIS138900)
• Two pieces of mesh for the pot bottom
• Soil mixture of Akadama, Pumice, and Lava Sand
• Twig shears (VMI33746)
• Branch pruners (VMIS133741)
• Rake with tweezers
• Small shovel (VMIS93154)
• Aluminum wire
  1 mm – 100g
  2 mm – 100g
  3 mm – 100 g
  4 mm – 100 g
  5 mm – 100 g

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