Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Bonsai Gardening For the Railing Planter Box

!±8± Bonsai Gardening For the Railing Planter Box

If you've mastered the art of gardening and turned your backyard into a lush utopia, why not take on a new challenge? The ancient Japanese art of bonsai is a challenging but beautiful and rewarding experience once perfected. A railing planter box is the perfect way to display your beautiful bonsai trees on your patio. This is because bonsais are meant to be housed in confined spaces. The term bonsai consists of two separate Japanese words. "Bon" means tray, while "Sai" means growing. And keeping them outside on your deck gives them natural sunlight and moisture.

What are bonsai trees?
Many people think that bonsais are their own unique series of miniature plant species, but this isn't so. Rather, it encompasses many different species of trees and plants, but ones that are miniaturized and fit neatly into a railing planter box. In theory, any large enough plant can be transformed into a bonsai, but this can be quite a task, and many plants have specific space and root needs. Some plants that are better suited to the practice include evergreens such as Pine, Azalea, Pomegranate, Cypress, Fig, Serissa, and Cedar. On the other hand, many deciduous trees also work well for this purpose, like Maple, Cherry, Zelkova and Beech.

Seeds
To begin your new hobby, you will first need to purchase seeds. Bonsai seeds and tree seeds are one in the same. If left unattended, your tree seed would grow normally into a full-sized tree. It's the cultivating techniques that make a bonsai tree what it is. These techniques include the following: leaf trimming, pruning, wiring, clamping, grafting, defoliation and deadwood, all of which can be done right in the railing planter box.

Location
Positioning your railing planter box can be limiting if you're sticking to the confines of your deck railings. However, you can also place most models of planter boxes on the ground or around your deck, not just on the railings themselves. As a rule of thumb, bonsai trees should be positioned away from direct sunlight. They should also be exposed to a good amount of air circulation and a moderate amount of humidity. Remember to also place your planters somewhere that you can get to them easily for watering and pruning.

Styles
The two basic schools of design in bonsai making are Classic (koten) and Informal (Bunjin). In the classic style, the trunk of trees are bigger at the base and taper towards the top, whereas with informal style it's just the opposite, though this is more difficult to get right. But either style will fit nicely into a railing planter box, or you can mix and match. From there, the main styles are further divided into five designing subcategories defined as formal upright, informal upright, semi-cascade, cascade and slanting, or windswept.

Tools
The tools you will use for cultivating your bonsais are in some ways similar to regular gardening tools, especially hand tools. Oftentimes, your regular gardening hand tools can be implemented for this purpose, but other times the delicate and miniature nature of the cultivation often requires specialized equipment. A few of the tools you might want to pick up beforehand include pliers, root cutters, shears, soil sieves, branch bender, trunk splitters and tweezers.

Accessorizing
If the few bonsai trees in your railing planter box look somewhat barren, you can add to it by growing some moss or creeping ivies down the side of your deck. Just remember not to overcrowd too many things into your planter, as some species will naturally thrive while others will suffer trying to get to the same water.


Bonsai Gardening For the Railing Planter Box

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Saturday, November 26, 2011

All You Should Know About Chinese Elm Bonsai

!±8± All You Should Know About Chinese Elm Bonsai

A Chinese Elm bonsai is an extremely flexible variety of tree as it allows you to shape and style it anyway you want. These trees are very popular owing to the fact that they look perfect as miniatures, due to their rounded shape, fine twigs and small leaves. They have a modeled dark grey bark that has a coloring mixed with cream and red.

A Chinese Elm bonsai remains semi-evergreen as long as it is kept indoors. However, when they are grown as large bonsai trees, outside, they will turn into deciduous trees. A great thing about growing Chinese Elm bonsai is that, unlike other elm trees, Chinese elm is not prone to the Dutch elm disease.

The bark of the Chinese Elm is its most attractive aspect. With age, the appearance of the bark gets even more attractive, acquiring a fissured look that enriches the character of the bonsai. In case of this bonsai, you should remember that smoother the bark is, the weaker it is.

You can also grow the Chinese Elm bonsai on the ground for sometime, pruning and trimming it while it grows in the soil. This will help the trunk to get a stocky appearance, if you alternate the growth of the tree with regular chopping, through a period of a few years. Since this bonsai variety has a masculine look, you can give it a ragged and scarred or a hollow look by styling it.

Sunlight, water and fertilization

The Chinese Elm bonsai usually requires full sunlight or partial sunlight. Too much shade can lead to interior shoot die back, or growth of overlarge internodes. Only people, who live in places that have extremely hot summers, should keep this in partial shade.

During winter, you can keep some or all of the leaves of the tree. However, take care of the roots during the winter. This is because; the Chinese Elm bonsai has fleshy roots that can get damaged easily if they are allowed to get cold.

Never allow the soil in the bonsai pot to run dry, as this can severely damage the tree. Make sure to water the bonsai on a regular basis. Since, they grow fast, it requires proper fertilization. They should be fed every month, or twice every month, depending on the organic content of the fertilizer that you use.

Styling and repotting

Repotting of this bonsai must be done once every year for the first five years, after which you can repot it every couple of years.

The Chinese Elm bonsai can be styled into any shape and style. You must use bonsai wire to give it the desired shape. You can also achieve a multi trunk style by wiring together a number of branches of the tree.


All You Should Know About Chinese Elm Bonsai

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Growing Bonsai - Care for Fall

!±8± Growing Bonsai - Care for Fall

Leaf color may be close to its best in October when growing bonsai trees. This is the time to enjoy your colorful bonsai using them within your everyday living environment as well as displaying them for friends. As always, winter, spring, summer or fall, watch watering! There is a real danger in over watering as this causes sour soil and root rot. During the fall months, some bonsai trees may still use a little feeding but do not use nitrogen. A formula of 0-10-0 is best for late in the season feeding.

If your bonsai has moss present on its soil, it should be lifted off. Leave bits and pieces all over as this should enable it to grow to cover the bonsai surface again. Be sure to remove all liverwort and Irish moss though. Save the good moss you take off and replant it for use in the spring.

This is also a good time to check your bonsai wires and branching as well as shape any pines, junipers, etc. you may have in your collection. Repot only those bonsai trees that will still grow enough to heal all the cuts; it is probably better not to repot now but if you must, now is the time. Ezo Spruce, Quince, and Zelkova species can be set into slightly larger bonsai pots, selecting pot colors to go with the colorful blossoms they will produce in the spring.

Tropical and other tender plant materials should be brought in gradually to adapt them to their winter shelter environment. It is that time of the year again and tropical bonsai do not hold up well in frigid climates. Naturally your regional location will determine the extent to which you must adhere to this practice.

During the fall, is also a good idea to inspect your bonsai root system to plan for spring potting or repotting priorities. Flag any bonsai that have roots coming out of drain holes and any whose roots are starting to run along its pot walls, round and round.

You need not hurry to perform these bonsai fall maintenance activities, if you begin early enough. Handle every bonsai individually and enjoy it. Touches here, a little maintenance there, make it all fun. Trim a little; shape a little, plan for the next season's work. Relax and enjoy, its fall, the time when plants rest and relax. Shouldn't this also be your time of rest and relaxation?


Growing Bonsai - Care for Fall

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Friday, November 11, 2011

The Five Best Bonsai Gift Trees

!±8± The Five Best Bonsai Gift Trees

If you've ever been stuck for an original gift idea for that hard-to-buy-for-person on your list, (and who hasn't?) consider a bonsai. As a gift, a bonsai is a peerless example of a gift with lasting appeal. It is a gift with history. It is a piece of art. It is the gateway to a lifelong hobby. A bonsai is an all-natural, ecologically friendly gift. A bonsai is alive. And maybe best of all, every single bonsai is unique to start with and will become more so as the years go by. While some bonsai are valued at thousands of dollars, it's not difficult to find many impressive gift trees from specialized greenhouses or online for less than a hundred dollars.

Many people think that you need the emerald green thumb voodoo gift to keep a bonsai alive and that isn't the case. Now, there are some trees that are rare and incredibly valuable and difficult to care for. Some trees require a considerable amount of attention and expertise and if you're living in a cold climate, preparing an outdoor tree for the winter can be a challenge. But there are also many, many bonsai types that are easy to care for. For the uninitiated, an easy to care for bonsai that will survive inside during the winter like any other "houseplant" is probably the best place to start. All you need to know for sure, if you're buying a bonsai as a gift, is that your friend has somewhere to put it where it will get bright light. A big south or west facing window is, in my opinion, a necessity.

So, here is my list of the top 5 bonsai gift trees for beginners,

1. Juniper
2. Schefflera Arboricola
3. Ficus
4. Mini or Dwarf Jade - Portulacaria
5. Fukien Tea

Juniper - The most popular bonsai in North America is the Juniper and if you buy one as a gift, unless you're buying it for someone who already has a lot of bonsai, you need to stick with Juniper Procumbens. This is a specific type of Juniper that is ideally suited to bonsai, very easy to grow and can be brought indoors. There are some Junipers - for example the Chinese Juniper - Juniper chinensis- which cannot be brought inside, so don't be fooled.

Schefflera Arboricola - Whether you realize it or not, you've seen this tree as a houseplant, or in a restaurant or office. Commonly known as the dwarf umbrella tree, this small version of the very popular houseplant is an interesting and easy to care for bonsai. Unlike the Juniper, this bonsai doesn't look all that Japanese, but it does look very tropical- almost jungle like and any friend you have, particularly one who likes houseplants, will be thrilled with this unique exotic version.

Ficus - There are many different types of Ficus, more recognizably known as Figs. My favorite as a bonsai gift is the Tiger bark Fig, because it's easy to grow, with a very interesting trunk shape and bark and - well - it looks like a bonsai. Other well known fig bonsai that make good gifts are the Benjamina and the Ginseng Fig (especially good for friends with a taste for the unusual). As a first bonsai gift I should warn you that both the Green Island and the Narrow Leaf Figs are a little trickier to grow. The one thing that everyone should know about figs is that they tend to drop leaves when they're stressed and they can be stressed very easily. However, they will grow back! Don't give up.

Mini Jade/ Dwarf Jade - This is my personal favorite bonsai gift for people who have never grown a bonsai before. The correct name is Portulacaria afra and it's a South African native, but since so many are familiar with Jade trees as houseplants, the Mini Jade or Dwarf Jade is probably a better name. Here's another bonsai that will drop its leaves if it gets too stressed, but again they easily grow back and this might very well be the number one easy-to-grow bonsai. Mini jades - like their full sized namesake are also very attractive in an exotic and quite unique way. Their rounded, very fleshy leaves look like something a dinosaur would have hidden behind, although in the case the mini jade it would be a very small one. While you cannot ever let any bonsai completely dry out, I've found jades to be among the more forgiving of little watering slip-ups. That alone would qualify them for this list, but you'll find that with their tiny leaves and remarkably tree-like appearance for something so small, the mini jade bonsai makes an outstanding gift bonsai.

Fukien Tea - I add this tree to the list of great gift bonsai because as far as tropical trees are concerned, Fukien Tea (sometimes called Fujian Tea) is among the classic bonsai. It needs to be kept warm and never allowed to dry out and for some reason it is very attractive to insect pests. But with its tiny-perfect, shiny, dark green leaves, white flowers and red berries, this tree is a bonsai for bonsai lovers. For anyone who treasures the classics - in anything - this is a gift they will never forget.

I said Five Bonsai, so I have to stop there, which is a shame because already I want to add in the Chinese Elm and the Zelkova and the Sweet Plum and then move to the slightly more advanced "winter outside" group of bonsai, but where you live strongly influences just how difficult an outdoor wintering tree can be. But with this list, you're off to a spectacular head start on the gift list to end all gift lists!


The Five Best Bonsai Gift Trees

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