Questions on prepping to grow in the ground

Horse manure is an excellent soil amendment and fertilizer, used for thousands of years. But it MUST be aged first. In your climate that should not take long. We're talking at least several months. It needs to be piled up so the heat will kill bugs and weed seeds.
There is a famous Spanish novel, Sangre y Arena, Blood and Sand. I read it in Spanish class. The farmers' prosperity was measured by the size of their manure piles. When they had plenty of livestock, they had plenty of manure and the crops were lush. When there was a drought or depression, they had to sell off the livestock. The manure pile was too small and the crops suffered.
Iris

Jeff,

if you can't get much of anything, compost can be made from almost any organic matter. I use the cuttings from my Chinese Bamboo hedge, Avacado tree, Mango tree, Cherry trees, weeds, sawdust, rabbit mess, and I think you get the idea. The rice hulls should do fine as should the horse manure, just pile it up somewhere and let it age/cure. When it is unrecognizable, it is ready.

You can milk the heap by just digging a small cave at the base, using a hoe pull out the material.

As to pots, you can make them from earthenware clay, and have someone fire them for you, or fire them yourself. Or just cast concrete pots in a two part mould. You can colour them as you wish with iron oxides. Just finished doing a fast job one for a Japanese Black Pine, it is soaking presently to finish the cure, water changed every week to get rid of the excess alkalinity.

Bonsai, is not an expensive hobby.
Great grand mum was the first painter, and the gene passed onto my sister and myself. Don't mind the Indian name, I am also 1/4 Chinese and 1/2 English. So I got the " ancient eastern ways" chuckle and the stiff upper lip - ha ha.

I also have a pemphis from seed, a gift from your side of the world, and my next stage is ground growing.

Love to cook Chinese, my grandfather before he left China was a cook in Canton [ too lazy to look up the spelling of the modern word.]
Just did sweet and sour chicken, yesterday, with long grained rice as fried rice.
Later.
Khaimraj

* My pottery teacher colours the fired earthenware with smoke, as the firing ends.
You get good dark browns and blacks.

Iris
Thank yoU that maybe the solution ill have to check once it arrives to make sure its been aged but hopefully the horse manure will be all set... Otherwise ill just start a compost pile and wait it out. That is very interesting btw... Still amazes me the collected knowledge available in a forum setting i appreciate ur help

Khaimraj
Yes it is true i lack the readily available one stop bonsai shop here but if i think about it, when my interest first started and i thought since my wifes starting a garden i think i want one bonsai. If i could just go to home depot or something pick up a small bag of rdy mixed soil, a small pot a small mallsai fert. And a quick bonsai 101 book... Like with many hobbies in the past im almost sure i would have lost interest in a week. Here i had to soend weeks of research just to find a suitable tree. I went to all the nurserys and all they would show me when i asked for bonsai is topiary. Finally i left the sales lady at the nursery and looked in the back and found a to me at the time was a big neglected ficus(since then its been experimented on so many time its un recognizable, layered 3x plus 2 cuttings that rooted in the future ill make a forest planting with my 1st ever tree). My point is ive had to work hard for EVERY little step ive made in bonsai and im proud of my garden today. Not like just filling up my shopping cart and im done. My soil is not for bonsai the people at the construction store wonder why i inspect the sack of river sand for cement so much. Also bc of my lack of supplies i forsee myself learning pottery or slab making in the near future....

Anyway thanks for all ur help im off to my wifes small town where i walk by trees wider than most peoples houses hehe maybe ill take a few pictures, there are alot of tamarind i know u had a thread a while back khaimraj about pics of old tamarind.

Jeff