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I got 6 chinese elm seed I soaked in water for 24hrs then put them into an old margrine container with wet paper towel in it put my seeds in and cover with more final wetting and put them in the fridge at 40 degrees f. where I bought my seeds they say 30 to 60 day stratification. just wondering if I got everything set up right. ps the first night they froze abit so I turned it to the 40 degree from 38. thawed it just by spraying with a little bit of water. dried it out abit so as to not be to wet via pressing lightly with more paper towel. got more seeds still though just in case.

From what I read the Chinese elm likes warm and cold stratification.
Store the seeds in the refrigerator. Take some out and let them warm up to room temperature. Then soak them in warm water overnight to soften the seed coat. Drain. Put the seeds in a clean zip loc with moistened and wrung out sphagnum peat moss ( long fibered), or moist vermiculite or sterile potting mix. Make sure whatever medium you use, that it is damp but not soggy. If you can use bottled or distilled water to moisten the medium to limit any bacteria or algae that might be in the water. Or you can boil a pot of water and cool it down. I acutally sterilize long fibered sphagnum by pouring boiling water over it in a clean bucket and let it stand overnight, then wring it out wearing gloves. Put the seeds in the bag and make sure it is well mixed in the medium. Put the zip loc in a paper bag to block out light and place it in your vegetable drawer of the frig. It should not be cold enough to freeze your veggies. Date the bag label what is in it. Check the bag every two weeks and make sure it is not moldy or that the medium is not drying out. You can mist with boiled and cooled water if the media needs more moisture. if the bad is sealed well it should not dry out much. If the seeds froze it may still be o.k. as long as the germ is alive.

Growing a bonsai from a seed is a long process. Better to get a starter plant that has "character" already. Most really good bonsai artists actually look for plants that are 40 years old or more already and pot them down.

Elm from seed is fairly quick as far as a tree in a pot goes. Merely a twenty year project.

Back when I routinely started some trees from seed, all went at their earliest convenience to field and spent the next seven to twelve years in the bed, before training started.

Look on free-cycle or Craig's List for a remodel this spring and an orphan boxwood or juniper to prune back.

Beginners like to use really young stock. the stems are very pliable. But the real beauty in bonsai is to see the signs of aging. Accentuating the trees struggle to preservere against the stresses and strains of life. The windswept and the lightening strikes show a lot of 'stress', preserverance and motion. the grooves in the trunk mimic the weathering and forces of nature that had to be resisted to survive.

It is hard when the top breaks when you are wiring. Well you know sometimes that happens when it is forced or the wires ae too big or someone decided the tree was too tall and topped it. Then you have to take the time down to file the cut to make it appear that it was snapped off naturally and not cut and weathered. Thinning the canopy into distinct layers and the basic pyrimidal shape. Using the concave cutters to take out the nubs of the branches that are removed. And carefully brushing away the soil to expose more of the roots. All this to mimic what nature does without even trying. I went to a bonsai club sale to get more wires and maybe pick up another startere tree. There was a bonsai demo where a salvaged tree which was probably 30 or 40 years old was being top worked and the roots reduced to fit into a smaller training pot. There was almost a full canopy when he started and there were maybe 5 branches and it looked rather ravaged but he assured us that he could envision what it was going to look like after it grew back. He had carefully selected and wired the branches that were left to grow in the direction he had in mind. I did not know what style he was training it for, I couldn't really envision it. Too bad he couldn't fast forward so we could see what it would look like later.

If you want to try to sprout your chinese elm seeds, that is a worthy project. But I agree with tom, that is not a way to get to have a bonsai tree in this lifetime. There's a bonsai guideline that says your finished bonsai should not be taller than six times the diameter of the trunk. Once you have reduced the root system and put the tree in a tiny pot, that trunk is not going to thicken up appreciably. So in order to have a six inch tall bonsai, you need to grow your tree in the ground until the trunk is an inch in diameter, at which point it will be a fairly tall tree. Then you dig it up and chop it down and start turning it in to a bonsai. (Shortened version of the process!)

If you want a bonsai now, check nurseries for mark down trees/shrubs. At the end of the season, they practically give away unsold stuff. Look at your own yard for what has bonsai potential. Check construction sites and road edges....

OR buy yourself a bonsai in training or pre-bonsai tree. These are trees that are in nursery pots that have been given just an initial rough shaping. They are a lot cheaper than finished bonsai and it will be your tree, because you will do more of the design and training of it.

Weluma has a nice selection of pre-bonsai trees, mostly in a price range of $10 - $30: https://us.weluma.com/search/?q=Pre%20Bo ... gQodcUUJvQ

Wigert's bonsai also has a big selection of pre-bonsai trees: https://wigertsbonsai.com/store/index.ph ... x&cPath=66 also bonsai of brooklyn: https://wigertsbonsai.com/store/index.ph ... x&cPath=66 and many others