How Can You Speed Up Growing A Bonsai?

I’m often asked by beginners how they can hurry their seedlings or young trees along so that they stop looking like little sticks and start looking like bonsai. The truth is bonsai trees need time to develop.

There is no shortcut or quick hack to speed up growing a bonsai tree.

I will discuss some ways you can optimise the growth of your tree, so they will start to develop a bit faster, but it is still going to be a long slow journey lasting several years.  

Can You Make “Instant” Bonsai Trees?

There is plenty of information and videos online about making an “instant” bonsai. Although this seems like a way to speed up growing a bonsai, it simply isn’t true.

I talk about this topic in a lot more depth in this article – Can You Make An Instant Bonsai.

Basically these types of trees are often pushed too far in one sitting and die from overwork. To develop a bonsai, you need to work at the trees naturally slower pace and the only way you can sort of speed them up is to try the tactics I will discuss below, which will just optimise their growth.   

How To Speed Up Growing A Bonsai

The only way to speed up growing a bonsai, is to just optimise its growth. The faster it grows, the faster you can start developing the tree into a bonsai.

Grow Lights Can Make A Bonsai Grow Faster

Grow lights can help optimise your bonsai trees growth. Having the ability to control the amount of light a tree gets each day can drastically improve its growth rate.

I would still say that natural light is best for your tree. If you can grow your trees outside, I would always recommend that. However, I do own grow lights and keep some trees inside. These are mainly tropical trees, but I have had native trees under the lights before.

Where I live is pretty notorious for grey skies. Being able to use the grow lights means I can get full direct light all day long, no clouds and no shadows cast by anything, which might happen with the sun moving across the sky in your garden.

I can also extend the day light hours. Here I might only get 10 hours of light every day, there is nothing stopping me having my grow lights on for 15 hours if I want. So, after 2 days in my grow tent, it’s the equivalent to having spent 3 days outside. You can see how this can start to speed things up over time. Basically I can drastically extend my growing season and in turn, speed up my trees development.    

However, like I said, you’re better off keeping your trees outside. Managing a grow light can take a lot of effort and the overall benefits of growing outside will outweigh using grow light in the long run.

The option to use one is always there and I absolutely love mine, just be aware its not as straight forward as turning the light on and walking away.  

(If you really want to use them, then you should read – How To Grow Bonsai With Grow Lights)

Fertiliser Can Speed Up Bonsai Growth

Fertiliser should be an important part of any bonsai growers’ regime.

Fertiliser provides the tree with important nutrients and minerals that help with its overall health and can increase growth rates.

Many people wrongly believe that to get more growth, you just need to add more fertiliser. This is true up until a point. Basically the tree will reach a point where it cannot use everything you are giving it.

Like most things in life, too much of a good thing can be bad. If you constantly over feed a tree with fertiliser the excess will build up in the pot and start to negatively affect the tree. The extra fertiliser starts to interfere with the trees ability to absorb water from the soil and can actually end up making the tree unwell. 

So, always fertilise in moderation and follow the guidelines on the packaging.

Fertiliser Can Make A Bonsai Get Out Of Control

There is also the problem that heavy fertilising can produce too much rapid growth.

This can increase the internode length along the branches. This rapid long growth may seem initially good, but once you want to reduce the size of your tree and build ramification it will be a problem.

To make a tree look miniature you want really small internode lengths between the leaves, so it’s small and compact.

Over fertilising can make your tree look stretched out and not very miniature.

Using a Bigger Pot/ Ground Growing Can Grow A Bonsai Faster

This is one of the best ways to speed up the development of your bonsai tree. A large thick trunk is one of the most desirable traits to have on a bonsai; however, it is one of the hardest things to obtain.

If a bonsai tree is grown in a pot its whole life, it will take a very long time to thicken up. Probably several decades. One of the quickest ways to get around this is plant the tree in the ground and let it grow for a few years.

If the ground is not an option for you, try using the biggest pot you can find. This extra space will allow the tree to really stretch out and grow freely.

The goal is to get a good thickness and then remove it from the ground before it gets too out of control.

This process can still take a couple of years but it is significantly faster than growing a bonsai tree in a small pot.

(You can read more about – How and Why To Grow A Bonsai In The Ground)

The Problem With Ground Growing Bonsai

The main issue with this technique is that the tree will have to be cut back to reduce it in size to start its bonsai training.

This can result in large scars being left. These scars may never fully heal. This is why growing in a pot is the preferred option, although it is much slower …there will be no large scars.

It is up to you to decide how to grow your tree and decide if living the with scars is worth the reduction of time to get the thickness.   

Let Your Bonsai Grow Unchecked To Get It To Grow Faster

Letting your tree grow unchecked is going to be one of the best ways to speed up its development especially when it’s in combination with growing your tree in a large pot or the ground.

Growing it unchecked allows the trunk and branches to thicken up. Doing this for a few growing seasons will really develop the trunk and primary branch structure. Once you’re happy with this you can cut everything back and begin to focus on building the ramification of tree.

This will still take a few years and there is potentially going to be some big cut backs needed, which may result in scars, but this is the most effective way to speed up your trees development.

I personally like to do this by letting a tree grow untouched for one full season. In the winter, just before the new growing season I will cut everything back. This method will take slightly longer than leaving a branch for several years, but the size of the scars left are not as large.

A branch can only grow so much in one year, so pruning it at this point is going to leave a smaller scar than if you let the same branch grow for another few years before cutting back.

I’m happy to wait a few extra years and grow my trees this way as I should have less drastic scaring to deal with in the long run. However, how you decide to do this is totally up to you.    

Start With A Tree That Is Already Close To A Finished Bonsai

Maybe this is cheating, but really if you want to speed up growing a bonsai, then start with something that is almost a bonsai. If the material you start with is nearly there, then it will not take long to refine it into a bonsai.

Start A Bonsai From An Air Layer

Using air layers to get a bonsai tree is very good way of speeding up the development of a tree.

(I have an article fully explaining – What Is Air Layering)

Basically you can select a section of an already establish tree, and force this section to grow roots. You are then able to remove the section, along with the new roots from the original tree. As this removed section now has its own roots it will become its own separate tree, which will potentially already have a good primary structure if you have chosen a good section to air layer.

This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a full season to perform. Once the new tree is separated you can then potentially start focusing on developing its ramification meaning that in only a few growing seasons you could end up with a pretty good looking bonsai.  

Find Yamadori To Start As Bonsai

Yamadori is also an excellent way to go from nothing to a developed tree rather quickly.

Yamadori is the process of collecting a tree from the wild. You basically dig it up, take it home and plant it in a pot. The process is a bit more complex than this, but in general terms this is what happens.

You can not just pick any tree to do this to. The goal is to pick a tree which has been stunted by nature, with a great trunk. Hopefully it will also have been growing somewhere where it has a very small and shallow root system.  This means that its already a small compact tree with small roots and should be able to fit into a pot relatively easily.

This means a yamadori can be taken from the wild and within a few seasons start to look like a well developed bonsai. You are basically bypassing the development of thickening the trunk when you collect trees like this. Some yamadori can be an almost show worthy tree in about 10 years. This may seem like a long time, but in the bonsai world, this is quick.

However, taking a tree from its natural environment is actually illegal in many areas, so always ask the land owner if you can take the tree (especially if it’s the governments land).

Trees like this also need a lot of care and time to acclimatise and readjust from the change in living conditions, so you should only really do this if you know what you are doing as its very easy to kill a tree when removing it from the wild.

Buy A Bonsai Tree

If for any reason, you really can’t wait and you have zero patience, just buy a developed bonsai tree.

The only real way to speed up that 10, 20, 50? years of developing a tree is just to just go out and buy one that is already at that stage of development. Here you are paying for the time someone else has spent developing the tree, so you don’t have to.

Let me just get this clear. I have no problem with people going out and buying developed trees. If I could afford, I’d be the first in the queue at the nursery. I think they are great and if you can, you should definitely get some.

I just also think it’s important you understand the work and effort that goes into a tree like this and the only way to truly appreciate that is by starting trees yourself from humble beginnings, such as seeds, cuttings and things like that. 

Maybe I feel that starting trees from humble beginnings is an exercise in patience, as well as basic bonsai skill development. Either way I do feel like we should all be growing some of our own trees in this way.  

You Need Patience To Grow Bonsai

Patience is the main ingredient you will need for making your bonsai tree develop faster. This is one of the most important skills you can have when growing bonsai. Knowing how to wire and prune is technically important, but patience is the overriding skill that keeps everything moving forward.

The temptation to work on a tree that doesn’t really need worked can be really strong at times. You try and tell yourself the tree is ready, but it would probably be better left alone.

This is really noticeable at the end of winter. So many people have all their trees repotted on March 1^st because it’s now “spring”. The tree might not be fully budding out; there might be more frost on the way, the tree might not even actually need a repot but the lack of patience gets to them and they repot.

This can slow the development of a tree down, maybe even kill it. If they just had a little bit of patience and waited a few more weeks until it was a bit safer their tree wouldn’t miss a beat and could be repotted and be growing vigorously without any problems in between.

I get it though, growing trees can be frustrating and waiting for something to happen can be a real killer. I feel like I have had my patience stretched to the limit now I am making YouTube videos. Some of my trees have just sat with no work done to them. The urge to do some sort of work on them, just for the video content is intensely strong at times, but I have to exercise my patience. If nothing happens during a 12 month period, well, that’s what I will show.

That’s the reality of bonsai. It can be slow and tormenting at times, but with patience the tree will get to where it needs to be. Time and patience will develop your tree.

Conclusion

So as you can see, there is no magic way to speed up growing a tree. It takes time. If you use some of these techniques, you might get there slightly quicker, but it’s still going to take a number of years for your tree to develop.

My main advice would be trying to have trees in different states of development. Grow from seed, take cutting, take air layers, get yamadori and also buy trees in different states of development.

The more trees you have the more you can practice and the more trees you have in different stages of development the more you can enjoy the different parts of the development journey.