by Sean McGoldrick

Created on: August 01, 2007

My fridge contains nothing now except seeds for trees to grow as bonsai, bottles of beer and expired smoothies.

My interest in bonsai began with The Karate Kid and ended pretty quickly afterwards. I did make an attempt to grow a bonsai from a tree clipping as a child after I had seen the film. Clipping might be too grand a word for it. It was a little twig but my mother was big into gardening and I used some type of solution that she had to encourage clippings to develop roots. I had some success with that and planted it in a wooden pot which would have made a very fine bonsai container. The clipping survived for a couple of weeks. I thought I was getting somewhere when it sprouted a leaf but this in fact seemed to take all its strength and it died soon afterwards.

My career as a bonsai gardener ended there and show no sign of resumption until a few weeks ago when I was strolling around the shops in town with my girlfriend and we wandered into the Bonsai Shop in the Powerscourt centre. I impulse-bought a pack to grow bonsai from seed. I've since been back to the shop to buy more seeds and a book on what to do with them.

The first thing you have to do with these particular seeds is put them in a fridge for six to eight weeks before you start to germinate them in a dark warm cupboard. This is to create the movement from cold to heat that they experience during winter and spring.

I bought the seeds initially in the belief that bonsai could easily be grown indoors. It seems that this isn't the case for most species and they should only really be kept indoors for short periods. I live in a flat and don't have any outdoor space. In six to eight weeks my seeds will begin to germinate and then I'll have only a few more months to go before I need to get a garden. Time is running out!

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