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I'm planning to get two or three small trees, and grow them slowly to bonsai.
My question is this: if I buy something like this



how do I stop it from becoming something like this



or even taller in the couple of years before I start training it?
Do I pot it in a bonsai pot right away? If not when do i know it's the right moment to do it?

You don't.
I am a believer in baby bending, as explained over and over again by Leatherback. So, I would wire and bend them a lot, and let them grow.
After some years, chop them down when the trunks are thick enough and perhaps grow the ramification from there.

Of course i agree with Clicio, but i think you should first start to do some basic learning about bonsai. There is loads of info on this forum, and some excellent online courses on this site.
You will have to learn some basic horticulture ( seems rediculous but believe me it is very very important).

Hey Zante,
The plants you show there look like they are grafted. Grafted plants are not good for bonsai. SO the first thing you need to learn is layering (air layer / ground layer) so you can get rid of the graft.

The rest.. Welll.. you ware basically asking "tell me the 20 year timeframe to bonsai from seedling". Not something for a simple post here. In short: First you need to get them some mass. EIther by every year cutting back most of the growth of that year, or letting it grow for several years and then making bigger cuts. How you do this .. there are many routes so I would recommend to do a bit of reading on websites.

leatherback wrote: Hey Zante,
The plants you show there look like they are grafted. Grafted plants are not good for bonsai. SO the first thing you need to learn is layering (air layer / ground layer) so you can get rid of the graft.

Don't worry, I used those pictures just to illustrate the size. I have every intention of getting non-grafted ones.

leatherback wrote: The rest.. Welll.. you ware basically asking "tell me the 20 year timeframe to bonsai from seedling". Not something for a simple post here. In short: First you need to get them some mass. EIther by every year cutting back most of the growth of that year, or letting it grow for several years and then making bigger cuts. How you do this .. there are many routes so I would recommend to do a bit of reading on websites.

Ok, I have done plenty of reading at this point, I am rather unclear still on one thing though, which is essentially the crux of this question: once I buy the small sapling it will be in its plastic pot. Do I repot it right away (in the correct season of course) in a shallow bonsai pot, or do I wait a bit? What do I wait for?

This was more of the question, rather than when it can be called a proper bonsai.

There are plenty of guides online on how to choose good starting material, but none that I read mention this particular step, i.e. the transition from "normal" pot to bonsai pot.

You put it in a bonsai pot once it has the desired trunk size if you want to get a decent sized trunk within the next few years. If you want to take decades to develop a reasonable trunk size, you can also grow them out in bonsai pots.

I prefer to use flat trays for growing out, or full ground.


The formative years where you set the nebari basis and trunk line however can happen in pots too:


Ground growing makes the process several times faster.

If you're new to bonsai I'd not grow younger trees like that but go yamadori collecting. So going out in the forests and look for good bonsai material. This way you get a much quicker learning curve and you can use a wider range of skills to work with the trees. Of course, keep and work with the trees you have. But for more results and more fun I'd collect yamadori.

Beiermann wrote: If you're new to bonsai I'd not grow younger trees like that but go yamadori collecting. So going out in the forests and look for good bonsai material. This way you get a much quicker learning curve and you can use a wider range of skills to work with the trees. Of course, keep and work with the trees you have. But for more results and more fun I'd collect yamadori.

SOrry, but to recommend someone who has no clue to collect yamadori is not only bad advice, but also irresponsible. People who have no clue are in no way capable of successfully collecting an ancient tree.

leatherback wrote:

Beiermann wrote: If you're new to bonsai I'd not grow younger trees like that but go yamadori collecting. So going out in the forests and look for good bonsai material. This way you get a much quicker learning curve and you can use a wider range of skills to work with the trees. Of course, keep and work with the trees you have. But for more results and more fun I'd collect yamadori.

SOrry, but to recommend someone who has no clue to collect yamadori is not only bad advice, but also irresponsible. People who have no clue are in no way capable of successfully collecting an ancient tree.

Not only that, it's also quite illegal here to collect trees in the woods.
You can get permissions, but the way red tape works here it'd take less to grow a tree from seed.

leatherback wrote: You put it in a bonsai pot once it has the desired trunk size if you want to get a decent sized trunk within the next few years. If you want to take decades to develop a reasonable trunk size, you can also grow them out in bonsai pots.

Ok, so let's see if I understood what you mean.
I put the tree in a pot, let's say 30cm diameter, 30cm deep and grow it as a "normal" tree until it has the trunk thickness I'm aiming for.
I prune it as if it was a bonsai to not let it grow too tall.
When it's at the size I'm aiming for I start repotting in smaller and smaller pots until it's time to move it to a bonsai pot.
Is my understanding correct?

leatherback wrote: I prefer to use flat trays for growing out, or full ground.

The formative years where you set the nebari basis and trunk line however can happen in pots too:

Ground growing makes the process several times faster.

Sadly I don't have a garden where I can put them in full ground for the moment, so that isn't an option right now.
Your mentioning growing the tree in full ground is what makes me think that during the formative years, as you call them, one wouldn't prune the roots, but if you're forming them in a pot, would you?