Lucky1406

These are just a few of my bonsai, I've really grown my collection in the past few weeks(I know, it's a little fast, but when trees are just $2.98 at the local walmart, wouldn't you buy them too?). I'm having so much fun with all of them. I really can't wait to see how some of them will turn out. Well, here are a few pic's of what I have this week, it will be sure to grow into more as long as I can stay under the girlfriends radar.

-The first is a Snow Azalea, I planted it next to a piece of petrified wood that i liked. I'm really liking how it turned out.
-The second one is of a tree that I purchased like you see it. I just couldn't pass on the price. It's 23 years old, and has a beautiful trunk. It's a Japanese Boxwood. My only worry it that some of the upper branches have this black stuff on them(just on the branches, not the leaves), is that normal? I'm not sure with boxwoods.
-3rd, 4th, and 5th pictures are of Blue Wisteria. These two came in the same pot, and I was able to separate them into two nice bonsai. The little one has great potential, and I just really like the larger one. I know that it's a little out of proportions, but I'm going to wait a while before I touch anymore of the branches and try to make it smaller, any thoughts? also, if you look closely in the 5th picture, you can see some ants, these are all over my trees, and it's been hard trying to get rid of them, should I be worried? will they hurt my trees? They just seem to be little black ants, and don't seem to do much damage, what do you think?
-6 and 7 are of the same tree, I just wanted to let you see a few angles of it so that you would get a better feel for it. i really like this one, and really only needed to wire one branch. This is my girlfriends favorite. She likes the saucer from a pot that I turned into a bonsai pot.
-the last tree is just one that I found struggling for life after been mowed over several times and did what I could with a small pot. We'll see how it turns out and if it can become something really nice.
-The last picture is of my little setup, as you can see, I'm already out of room. And I think that's a good thing, I need to slow down in quantity, and start focusing on quality. oh well, I'm off to go water, hope you liked looking at my collection, can't wait to hear what you think,
Nick

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Lucky1406

And here are the rest of the pictures,
Nick

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Mattbonsai

Nice little collection you've got there, and a really nice display bench,

With the ants, the normal reason for the ants to be going in and out of a tree or shrub on a large scale, is to harvest aphids, or scale insects, the ants feed off the honeydew excreted by the aphids, and regularly move the aphids from plant to plant in order to get the best harvest, which for us, is bad news because they spread the problem, I've recently had ants move some scale onto the new growth of my japanese maple. I'd look into controlling the ants, and look for any scale insects or aphids, which will need to be treated with a systemic insecticide.

-Matt-

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Prowler

Nick
Ants are not much of a prob. on their own, they are there for a reason as Matt stated.
They are tough little devils and getting rid of them can sometimes damage your tree in the process. get rid of their food supply and they should move out.
One natural way is get a large containor, dunk the whole tree in water and leave alone for about 15mins. this wont kill your tree but ants dont like it, neither does greenfly etc. Cheers.

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