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Bonsai Trees - Month Three
Here's an update on my three bonsai trees, three months in. The ficus I repotted around a month ago is doing great, with new growth and large vibrant green leaves. It's still not strongly rooted in the pot so I have to be extra careful when handling it. The only problems I've noticed is that once there was a leaf that was green but had yellow veins that I usually see when I overwater, but it was only a single leaf! Also, one of my leaves had a brown spot like it had been nibbled on so I've been watching if anything's getting on my trees. It's fertilized with rapeseed cakes underneath a layer of peabody decorative rock - not that glued on stuff. I barely placed enough to cover the soil (rootopia from Joe Bonsai) to make sure it got enough air going through.
Moving on to my chinese elm, I'm not sure what to think. It doesn't seem to be growing what so ever, with no new foliage. Every now and then I'll spot a single yellow leaf but they are always on the inside of the canopy where they're blocked by the foliage. It's potted in the 1 to 3 tidy cat and pine mulch lineup that I got from Mortalis. I put about a quarter or a half inch of the tree's trunk under the soil line to make sure it rooted extra good because it's so small. It's got the rapeseed cake fertilizer like the ficus, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I water once a day around one or two with my other plants. The branches and foliage are small and delicate, they literally break to the touch so I can not really handle this tree. I'm not sure on the direction I'm going to take with this tree, wether I want to keep it small or make into a larger specimen such as my ficus and juniper but I'd appreciate some feed back. I bumped it up to the next largest container available, because it had become root bound in the nursery if you're wondering why it's in that seemingly gargantuan potter.
Finally, there's my juniper. I pulled this massive tree out of it's pot and fluffed the edges of it's roots to get them freed up a little a bit and to get a bunch of debris off the soil. I pinched off a few little branches coming off here and there, as well as a few others I didn't want. Nothing considerable just small cuts or twists. I've got the multiple trunks it seems to have split off of one another with the left side hanging over the pot to become a cascade in the future. I'd really like to develop it into a very nice cascasde on the left, possibly with a good shari. I'm not sure what to do with the rest of three, having put thought into shaping the branches/trunks into two formal uprights. It's really quite the odd tree and I haven't been able to do it's structure justice with my camera phone. It is not fertilized with rapeseed cakes, by the way as the soil it's in had appropiate food for six months.
Anyways, I'd appreciate any feedback on the trees especially on how to strengthen my elm up and maybe what to do with the juniper and ficus. I'm starting to think of just growing my ficus as a nice looking indoor/outdoor decorative plant instead of a true bonsai due to it's styling.
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