A few months back I grabbed an armful of juniper branches from the green recycling bin at a Bay Island Bonsai workshop. I’d found both kishu and itoigawa shimapku branches and figured I could use them to make cuttings for grafting roots or branches. Although I’d made cuttings many times before, I wasn’t sure about what […]
Bonsai Care
The bonsai care category includes topics like Watering, Fertilizing, Repotting and Bonsai Soil. You can also find information about the Pests commonly found on bonsai, and read Interviews with bonsai professionals.
Bonsai pests!
If you had asked me, two weeks ago, if my bonsai were healthy and insect free, I would have said yes. At a glance, they all looked great. Looking closer, however, I discovered that one of my pines looked dirty. Some dirt on the needles – this must mean… Aphids! Aphids are most commonly found […]
Bonsai fertilizer – follow-up
Last month I began using tea bags filled with fertilizer to feed my bonsai. Unfortunately, it only took a few days for me to realize that this technique didn’t work well as implemented. The bags started disappearing immediately. Critters tore through some of the bags and carried others away completely, leaving behind the toothpicks that […]
New hinoki bonsai
I recently picked up a couple of large hinoki cypress with the aim of developing them as bonsai. They seemed healthy and had good sized trunks so I thought they’d warrant the effort. Hinoki cypress – Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Tempelhof’ Adding new trees to my collection never seems overly burdensome. I simply remove a few branches and […]
Mountain Hemlock
I recently added a new tree to my collection – a mountain hemlock. I haven’t worked with the variety before so I have a lot of learning ahead of me. Mountain hemlock – Tsuga mertensiana My first goal for the tree is to develop a healthy root base. To do this, I will bare root half of […]