Hurricanes and Bonsai

Being in the South, we’re often faced with the threat of one or several hurricanes in a year. Several days of wind and rain pound your trees performing a pruning and defoliating action on your trees by mother nature herself. It’s tough to see something you watch and care for go through this, but all in all, as long as it doesn’t get too bad, I think it’s good for them. I may change my mind one day when a major branch is broken, but for now, I leave them out to toughen them against the forces of nature.

Plant-Care.com has a good article on Hurricanes and houseplants, and the lessons we can learn from them. It goes over the differences between your indoor potted plants and your outdoor landscape plants. Click here to read the article.

Technorati Tags: bonsai, weather, indoor bonsai

Fertilizing Bonsai

I tend to love fertilizing days. It seems like I’m nurturing the tree and providing everything that it needs. We all want our pre-bonsai trees to grow at their maximum growth rate and we want to make sure our bonsai trees stay at their best.

I have several fertilizer types that I use on my trees. For in-ground trees, I use all organic fertilizers. I love Plant-tone All-purpose organic which contains a mixture of organic components (blood meal, feather meal, manure, crab meal, etc.) to give your trees a complete nutritional buffet with a 5-3-3 nitrogen/phosphorus/potassium mixture. I also have started using Terraform worm pellets and Terraform liquid fertilizer. The worm pellets are pretty inexpensive if the recommended rates of feeding are right. One $8 bottle is going to last me a couple of years. The liquid version is the exact opposite. I spent one $8 bottle in one feeding.

For potted trees, I’m using a variety of inorganic fertilizers right now. Miracle-Grow Bloom Booster (15-30-15), All-Purpose (24-8-16), and Miracid (30-10-10). I know many people who use Miracle-Gro fertilizers on their bonsai and swear by them. I have compared them to other liquid fertilizers and they do tend to pack more micro-nutrients that the tree needs. I just haven’t been able to find another that compares. It’s immediate, I haven’t had any problems with it burning, and it’s very easy to apply once you get your system of fertlizing down. I am thinking of trying some of my organics with my potted trees following some advice that I got at a bonsai forum, and I’ll wait and see what kind of results I get out of that.

For a much more general article on fertilizing your bonsai, check out this article. Technorati Tags: fertilizing bonsai, bonsai, organic