Oh oh it's not really "lifted up", it's holding itself even without straw. Wiring will start when the leaves look out a centimeter or more, and a few hours after a big heap of watering. Kalanchoe stems seem to be a slight bit softer and more bendy after watering, same goes for aerial roots.
The straw is just to guide and bend the air root later on, I want this one facing a bit more forward. Kalanchoe root bending is hella nerve-racking, because even old and knorky brown aerial roots tend to break quite easily. And if something is hard to bend, then you have to start early and go ahead in small steps, veeery small steps.
But I'm thinking of removing the straw and trying to bend it with little stones and a soil heap, removing it afterwards.
At Kalanchoes or Bonsai, you really feel like a bloody noob and even 6 years into the business you experiment more than execute well-established concepts. But a lot of that could also be because I do more unique/unusual stuff with my plants that you can't just look up on the internet because of pretty big differences between species.
It's trial and error, and big errors are only preventable by common sense. And if they happen anyways, with succulents you lost a year for every centimeter of slow and dry growth XD
More "standard" species of bonsai trees are far more forgiving. Take my Larix x marschlinsii, the sacrifice branches grew 35cm last year and even after cutting them off I have 5cm of solid branch growth every year.
For a Kalanchoe it's more like 5cm branch growth per year but it'll take further 5 years to consolidate them in any way, with a ton of things to break and even the trunk could snap just by leaf weight. Repotting is a 5 hour work of building temporary trunk holding contraptions from wood and aluminum wire, carefully wiring the whole beast up and root pruning will take most of the time after that.
Just getting this Fukinagashi out of the shelf and into it again (it grew through the shelf, forming a symbiosis between plant, pot and shelf) will take half an hour and two 360 rotations each for getting it in and out. Every leaf only fits through horizontally. Probably for the next repot into a slightly bigger training pot I will need to wire and bend it a month before repotting just to get it out. And yea, maybe that'll also be the last repot if I move him to the final bonsai pot. Dunno if he can get through that hassle again after the branches got more intricate and sophisticated/less bendy.
I have a long way to go xD
