Who knew it would start off with 2 months in the fridge?
Japanese Black Pine Tree Bonsai Kit & Seedling
We received this bonsai kit as a gift recently and got to work on it. It comes with a small clay pot, some soil, a tub with more soil + seeds already mixed in, and a pamphlet to guide you along.
Depending on the type of kit/tree, you either start germinating the seeds right away or start with a process called stratification where you induce winter-like conditions on the seeds before you can start germinating them. In our case, we received a kit for a Japanese Black Pine Tree which does require the stratification process, so the tub of seeds went into the refrigerator for 2 months.
This was the first time we had done this, so it was a bit strange to be putting a little tub of soil/seeds into our fridge, but we followed the directions and just pushed it into the back corner. Nearly forgot about it a few times!
About 3 weeks ago we took the tub out and put it on the kitchen table near a window to receive moderate sunlight. After 2 weeks on the kitchen table we started to see some growth, and the photos below show what they look like in the last couple days.
We had 5 seeds sprout, one of which we moved to the clay pot and two that we moved to another tub, and one that has since died. We'll be trying to grow the remaining 4, with the hopes of keeping one and gifting/selling the other 3.
Japanese Black Pine Tree seedling macro
Japanese Black Pine Tree seedling family
Japanese Black Pine Tree seedling with humidity cover
Hope you enjoyed this first look at our bonsai adventures and stay tuned for future updates as they progress.