From September 25, 2018.

Here’s another thrifty experiment. A family that was moving soon posted on Facebook Marketplace that they had leftovers from their garage sale, and that it was all free to take (less for them to take to Goodwill). I saw some pots and foliage in the photos and practically hopped in the car five minutes later.

When I arrived, they were both friendly and hustling to clean out their house. I found a great big pomegranate bush? Plant? Tree? It was 10-15 trunks with many more thin shoots coming out. The thick plastic pot was about two feet high, two feet in diameter. I wish I had taken a picture of it, to show to before and after transformation. They had long handle trimmers, so I chopped off the tall trunks to be about two feet tall. I also took some lovely terra cotta pots, a tin basket, a wooden stool (that I use as a plant stand), a root rake, and those long handled trimmers. It was a total score.

They help me load this massive pomegranate plant to me to my car. It wasn’t until I parked near my dorm when I tried to pick it up for the first time. It was heavy. So so heavy. Like, so heavy that I don’t think my suitemate and I could have carried it to my dorm. So, I did what any dedicated plant mom would do and I got to work, in the parking garage.

Sometimes when people ask what I do for exercise, I say that I garden. This is one of those times that I had a massive plant work out. I spent 2-3 hours crouched over, detangling the compact roots and soil. This plant was old. It seemed to be one plant, one root system with many branches. I had to do a lot of chopping, breaking, and cracking to separate the trunks. I did my best to keep a good amount of roots on each trunk though, knowing that this wasn’t an ideal circumstance. I figured some might live, some might die. It was worth a try. I got many odd looks from other students passing by. One even asked if I needed help, which I graciously denied.

By the end, I had seven pomegranate trunks with nice, thick roots, a ton of soil, and a huge plastic pot. I carried the trunks and pot up and left the soil in my car to bring up at a later time. This was a manageable weight to carry. I have desperately tried to sell that pot, as it is very nice yet not practical for me. It is still under my bed.

This is the only picture I took from this event. I wish I had taken more, but little did I know that I would want to start a blog. Oh well. You can see the various stumps inside and a few that I planted on the right.

Four of the seven have produce foliage, and I discarded the other three. They might have still been alive and would have eventually grown, but I needed the space and four was already plenty.

There are advantages and disadvantages to making bonsai this way. I already have thick trunks, which is a major component of bonsai. However, the trunks lack a taper. A taper helps with the illusion of a tiny tree being big. Because the trunks are already so thick, there is no chance of the altering their shape. Most of them are pretty straight, and straightness is a bad quality for bonsai. But, since I will be growing all of the branches, I can style the branches as they grow. I will have much more control over that design aspect.