How to Make a Bonsai Tool Kit

There are some tools that will help with the potting, care and pruning of your bonsai. The beauty is that many of them can be improvised from ordinary tools and everyday items. Let's put together a minimalist set of tools and you can add to it as you get a better understanding of what you need.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Embroidery Scissors
• Pruning Shears
• Transplant Spades
• Tweezers
• Chopsticks
• Kitchen Forks
• Spatulas
• Water Jug
• No. 2 Pencils
• 14-function Pocketknives
• 5-gallon Plastic Food Grade Buckets
• Copper Wire
• Wire Cutters
• Wire cutters

1. Start your kit with a small, sharp spade; a five-gallon plastic bucket; and a water jug that will hold at least a couple quarts of water if you plan to gather bonsai stock from the wild.

2. Pick up a pair of small, sharp and easily handled trimming shears for the most basic of your shaping and defoliating. These should be almost scissors-sized for ease of handling. The type with ratcheting jaws will add cutting strength while keeping the size to a minimum.

3. Thin and separate roots with a root hook. This is a sharp-bladed tool that has a blade placed at a near-90-degree angle to the blade so that it can be easily pulled through a tangled root ball. An inexpensive pocketknife with a fairly long blade can be used as a handy substitute.

4. Cut wire for branch shaping with a high-quality pair of wire cutters.

5. Trim leaves with a specialized pair of leaf cutters or make do nearly as well with a small pair of scissors from a sewing kit.

6. Use a set of inexpensive chopsticks to tamp dirt into the root bed as you pot the tree. If you don't have chopsticks, a couple of wooden pencils will do the job just fine.

7. Get at delicate work with a pair of inexpensive tweezers. A long-handled pair will serve even better and in more situations.

8. Pack dirt or position ground cover with a small, flat spatula. An old butter knife makes a perfect improvised tool.

9. Put a common dinner fork to work as a rake for your tiny landscapes.

10. Shape and arrange branches using bare copper wire to hold them in place. Copper is easy to bend but holds its shape, comes in many sizes that will match the strength of the limbs you use it on, and weathers nicely against the branches.

11. Order a real bonsai tool kit from a garden center or, in larger metropolitan areas, from a bonsai supplier. There are also several Internet-based bonsai clubs where you can order tools that are bonsai-specific.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember, never gather bonsai stock from natural settings without the express permission of the landowner.