About Bonsai

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hiya packn! Yes, that red maple is a favorite. I think I have to bite the bullet next year though and plant her in a big pot - the graft is very obvious, I think I need to grow the trunk width to hide it a bit more...

The myrtle - ah yes, one of my frankensteins.... No, this season I'm going to let her go au naturale, she seems to like that after a transplant, and give her a good haircut in the fall.

The dog maple is also a favorite, I've been training it's roots / legs up out of the soil for a while now. Lost about half the height - but she's a fast grower - I have to step on her to keep her in line, so she should recover quickly...

Hiya Latitude!
Ahh yes, Superthrive. Good stuff. But it isn't the mystical horticultural miracle the marketing guys would have us believe. Despite the other stuff they put in it, the active ingredient is a deriviative of the plants own rooting hormone indoleacetic acid. All the other stuff about it's fertilizer properties, sparing the environment from nitrates etc is pure hype IMHO. It's a very good rooting hormone, that's it. Definitely not a replacement for h202, which I haven't had the need to use yet...

It can have very strong effects - I burnt some 420 last year giving them "full strenth" recommended dilution at the wrong time. For watering plants in the soil, I don't use more than 1-2 drops per gallon, and then usually only after the first or second transplant - I find once the roots have a good sized established root ball to sustain them, there's less need for the rooting hormone. To soak cuttings while I'm working on them I use 2 drops in 8-12 oz water. Personally I don't use them on seed, just cuttings. Like with many hormones, it works like a catalyst, so a little goes a long way, and lots more may not work lots better...

I was rooting bonsai cuttings in a cup of water with a drop of ST, but after working with bubbler cloners I'm thinking of switching to that for bonsai too.

No problem on the pics - I understand how things can get misplaced over time, 1300 miles away? Sounds like you had a good sized move in the recent past!

Thanks for the questions, always welcome!

 

[Latitude18]

Thank you for the info.... I was doing fine till I read the directions ...

As for Bonsai's , I didn't find anything with "small Leaves" around. everything here is big leaf. Add usually has thorns on it. But I did get a few cuts off the lime tree in the "backyard". Three diff size , it needed prune'n bad, the guys just came and tore a whole lot of vines and overgrowth out of all the trees. Prob'ly won't work out too good , but if they do I'll be Lucky. And a cut off a flowering something or other from the front of the house.

heres a few crpy pix


backyard













To get anything to Bonsai here I'll prob'ly just buy something and work with it. But I won't stop looking.

 

[Latitude18]

bump.. Bump ... BUMP it up

bump.. Bump ... BUMP it up

here's a few 'tings' I picked up on the mountain

Ever see aloe this big?
Bigger then me

these things , i have no idea what they are yet , grow on trees . This one here is a lil tweak'd , I found it falling off a tree

in the glass , just something that caught my eye . got small leaves and it was snaped out at one time and started to bud again , figured it was strong and easy

these are the same as the first , i believe ( as larry the cable guy would say ) , here you see 3 , big one is on the big stick , left lower is on a lil stick , and top is just alone . guess these thing get airborn and find a lil spot on a tree and stay for a while . people climb in the woods for these all the time . good ones sell for big money in wall planters.

and last but not least , In the glass next to the cut branch is just a lil guy tree , small leaves and looks like it's impossible to kill.

well thats all i have for now , chk out my links to see my green stuff

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hiya Latitude!
hey man, I apologize I missed your 06/02 post...

I've had difficulties finding small leafed plants too - when I don't need any my impression is that they're all around, until I go to look

You found some interesting stuff. Aloe could nake a real nice medium sized planting, like a plant in a field, and in fact would look neat on a mound of soil on a flat rock planting.

The thrid and fourth pictures, plant shape wise looks related to a spider plant, looks like the same kind of propagation of baby plants. Very interesting!

The small leafed tree - at your convenience could you take a closeup shot of a few of the leaves - the general shape looks familiar to me, either way that one looks like a choice selection!

You did good bro!

 

[Latitude18]

no worries...

no worries...

... sorry the pix suck so bad , I only have a sony handi cam with digi built in , to take macros i have to hold my 5-10-15X mag glass up to the lens. No Flash, no light. got it in 2000. It does have super night shot which is great, every other one I have is film. so i pop'd a few more shots , hope these are better. And sorry if I'm getting off the bonsai topic , cause some of these won't be bonsai , but some may, if they want to be.

Ok , remember my lil friend ? he found his way back home , and is quite happy


















it's a lil dark and windy out, but these look a lil better

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Glad your friend found his way home!

Hmm those leaves almost look like a chinese sweet plum, it's subtropical... if you live near lat 18 it's possible it could be growing wild / cultivated outside. If it is should be easy to root and grow.

The pics work fine - that is a great camera from back them.

Next step...

 

[GMT]

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hey GMT!!!! Strong show!!!

Looks like you've found yourself a beautiful Japanese Trident Maple!

Absolutely fabulous bonsai material!!!

Where did you find it, and how did you root it?

Man, great job!!

 

[GMT]

hehehehe, I think its a standard 5 doodah maple. It was growing naturally next to a really big one. I just yanked it up and there were still some roots attached. So I dropped the whole thing into that pot and filled with the natural soil it was growing in. A really weak ass no nutes left top soil pale as anything kinda soil. Once it has grown a few more leaves, and that second branch kicks in, I think I'll find a more suitable pot, trim up the roots a little, and give it some nice compost. I just want to replicate where I found it for now, so that it settles into growing in a pot rather than the ground. If that main branch gets to out of control and the smaller one kicks in well, I might remove the main stem and let the smaller one become the main stem, but it would be nice to have both going. There are lots of sites that had leaves on them up that stem, but I took a few off as they were the big type of leaves and looked silly on such a small plant. Hoping to get a few shoots out of the sites at some point though. I'll let it get going and try topping it first. Its in quite a deep pot for now, I should have started it in a shallow pot I think, but didnt want the roots to spread out too far and thought that letting them grow down at first then cutting them back to allow them to go out later would prevent strong out roots from developing too soon. Trees sure do grow slowly though compared to weeds.

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hey man, strong work!

You've got the right general idea. I wouldn't worry about keep her roots corraled the first season or two, you will need a good amount of sap flow to get a decent width main trunk sometime this century :wink: I'd do a rough shaping and let her go to town to develop some wood. If it is a large leafed maple there are tricks to do to shrink up the leaves - none that we would ever dream doing to our hobby plant Be right back, gonna snap a pic...

OK, some examples of bonsai starvation...
First my starving pines. I received these two in that tray, in that soil, in 1994, and haven't repotted it yet!!! It gets water only occasionally and NO feeding - trying to reproduce conditions if pines growing in a rocky niche with a bit of soil... I'm amazed they're still alive...


The next are 2 of the rose plantings I took from the last rose trim, immediate post transplant pics above. The rose mothers had been in the same soil for 5 years, no transplant, and now they're taking off... Will let them feed well this year, then back to Lean Cuisine for them...


Next up a maple I left without repotting for 4 years - it was one year too long - whoops. You can see the dead top on each side, I'm re-growing main branches and then will decide if I should strip and bleach the dead branches or just trim them off...

I've been devloping an impressionistic dog shape for the lower trunk, and the taller tops didn't quite fit, so the plant did me a favor and made my decision for me! Love it when they do that!!!

Anyway, once your maple starts throwing new buds, you know she's rooting fine. Let her do her thing for a while, get beefy roots, and then we can throw her on the rack

 

[GMT]

Thanks MGJ, I'll leave her roots alone this year then. Never would have thought you could leave something in poor soil for so long, I am used to treating plants well. When mine starts to recover from being kidnapped from its home, I'll post up the pics for instructions on what to do. Every time I see a pic of yours in this thread, its a different plant. What ya doing, saving up for when the rain forest is finally gone?
When you say a rough shaping, you mean tie it up with wire? Can I just let it decide how it wants to grow itself, or will that just make it grow untidily?

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Poor soil - man, I hear ya. I'm still surprised at how they can survive with very little attention and food. Just experimenting, how to keep them small once developed...

Saving up for the Rain Forest Thanks my friend! Well, I do have a few plants around here , they just seem to accumulate over time

My favorite is to let the plant decide how it wants to grow - so we're on the same wavelenght... However if you get a load of lower branchlets, you might want to trim them back so you have only one or two main trunks to develop. Or you could just let it go Medusa Head style and have a trim fest later. I'm a proponent of the Chinese cut and grow school - let them go a whole season, and then just before winter dormancy decide what to keep or not, and snip snip snip. Just seems easier and less work for me, and the less I muck with the plants the less chance I have of knocking them off!

 

[Space Ghost]

could someone suggest a good plant for me? I live at 43*N with cold winters and quite hot summers

thanks

great thread by the way

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hi Space Ghost!

Welcome to the midget garden!

Are you thinking of an inside / outside location for your bonsai? If you grow indoors, you can select any subtropical plant and it will do well - eg Serissa, Sweet Plum, micro boxwood. If you can winter the plant outdoors or in a garage in the winter, then one of the smaller pines - even juniper - would do fine. Temperate climate trees need to get near freezing for a couple months every winter, it's when they sleep.

You can also check out plants that grow in your area. If you can find one with fairly small leaves - say 1" or smaller - then you have a good local bonsai specimen. You can either take a branch for cuttings or see if you can find a sucker that has some roots in the soil and snag that. This is my favorite way to get material, and it allows me to get plants rarely gets bonsai treatment.

Any ideas???

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Usually I start another few bonsai trimming projects in mid August after the yearly family vacation, so today I was out inspecting. Snapped a few pics of whats doing from the last update...

First - the vegetatively challenged star jasmine bonsai that for years has looked like this from alkaline soil ( first shot from last summer ):


Now the same girl after feeding acid ferts, plus top dressing with some peat moss and acidic compost:


Finally she's growing enough to do something with her this fall...

Next up the japanese maple I transplanted earlier this summer - had to put a shade umbrella over her the last few weeks - she's a delicate girl and gets sunburn easily This demonstrates one of the secrets of small leaves on maples - plant in little soil, and don't fert. Now that she's in a huge pot with lots of compost the size of new leaves has tripled.


And one of this summers transplants followed by one that needs new soil this fall.


Next up later this summer - 3 serissa that have been growing without trimming get a haircut!

 

[Keefhead]

MGJ - This is a very interesting thread, and I've got a few questions, having to do with bonsai trimming MJ plants. I want to make a few bonsai mothers, and I'm not sure how to trim the mothers right. Does the chinese way work, or is a more forceful technique better? And do I top the plants, and at what point?

Do the cuttings taken from these plants behave any differently than regular cuttings? Smaller, healthier, anything? Any precautions I should know about?

Thanks for your response in advance. Yes, I've read some other info on it, but I'd like to know how YOU prefer to do it, since you obviously have great skills.

PS - I'm getting hungry for that deli sandwich.....

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Hiya KH :friends:

Thanks for the compliments! I'm just an old guy who likes to play in the mud

For a mother I like to start with a newly rooted cutting. I let it get say 4-5" high, and then I bend it like with LST so it has maybe a 1-2" vertical stem and the rest horizontal. If another very low branch starts up I bend that one the other way to make a T shape. I let the branches coming up from that get a few inches tall or taller and to trim I cut them back to only 1-2 nodes above the main trunk. Ever so many months I clean out the space along the main trunk ( they can tend to get overgrown and bushy ) to one branch every .5-1" or so and let them start again.

Alternatively I top the cutting at the 3rd node, and keep her close cropped once she gets to what i think is a reasonable size. Letting her bush out I trim her branches like above, trying to keep reasonable spacing between new branches.

As long as I give the mom a good feed prior to growing cuttings, no difference that i can tell. The main difference is the smaller amount of space the mother takes, and of course you can't get 2 dozen cuttings from a bonsai mom in one shot...

I also don't give them much light unless I want to take cuttings - they sit on the periphery of the lit area maybe an extra foot or so away compared to "normal" plants.

I'm ready for that deli sandwich whenever you are!

 

[GMT]

Any tips on wintering them somewhere it gets very icey in the winter? Can I just leave the pot outside exposed to the elements. The reason I'm asking is coz in the ground, the roots are protected a little from the worst of the weather, but in a pot, I'm a little worried about the roots.

 

[Mr GreenJeans]

Good question GMT!
If a subtropical, I'd bring it inside for the duration of the winter. If it is a hardy temperate plant, you could cold frame them or pile a big heap of straw on them as an insulating blanket. Bringing a temperate climate plant inside for the winter will deprive them of their rest period and will tend to get ill the next year. I've personally used the straw technique before.

 

[!PeAcE!]

i plan on bonsaing my g-13xhpxlr