Bonsai Tree Care for Beginners
Hi, if you’re new to my channel, my videos are aimed at providing tips for growing great bond side as well as progress updates and the various bits and bobs of work that I do on my trees throughout the year so feel free to subscribe.
Because I have a ton of great videos in the pipeline, have you recently got your first bonsai and you’re wondering? How can you get the best out of your tree? I’Ve got three tips that I use to maximize the success when I buy a new tree.
Most people’s first tree tends to be either from a garden center or an online bonsai retailer. So for this video, that’s what I’m gonna focus on make sure you watch right to the end, because I’m going to give a fourth tip, which is an alternative way to get started in bonsai.
When watering your bonsai tree, the main goal is to fully saturate the root system with water
Okay, here’s tip 1 make sure you check in with your bonsai. Every single day, you need to check to see whether the tree needs water. It’S also important to look at the tree. Look at the foliage check to see are there more leaves turning yellow than usual? Are there bugs, on the leaves, most of all just enjoy the tree on a day-to-day basis? You’Ll get to know the tree.
You get to see how it grows. You’Ll you’ll just enjoy observing the tree, keeping in touch with the tree, and actually I think it’s quite a mindful thing to do. It’S. It’S almost meditative tip number 2 make sure you keep the tree in a suitable location.
A lot of places keep their Chinese Elms in a greenhouse or even indoors, in less than ideal conditions for a tree. So if it’s the middle of winter and your trees been stored indoors, your trees not going to be used to the cold, you don’t want to just kick that tree out the door defender itself and it’s gonna be exposed to cold winds, excessive rain.
Fertilize weekly during the growing season
It’S gonna be freezing one day and thawing the next day the trees just not going to be prepared that so, if it’s the middle of winter and you’ve just got your tree, you’re, not sure whether it should go outside or not it’s best, probably to err On keeping it indoors, the next question from that is: where is the best place to keep it indoors? Well, the best place is where somewhere, that gets plenty of sunlight, a conservatory like what I’m in now is one place or you can keep it on a window.
Ledge in a room that gets lots of light, the flipside is that you don’t want it to be too warm. You don’t want to put the tree in front of a radiator or near a radiator. It’S like it’s best. If you don’t keep it in the hottest room in the house or in front of the fire, a nice cool light, airy room is best.
How to Take Care of a Bonsai Tree
Okay, here comes tip number three, usually bonsai, trees that we get from a garden center or grown specifically as cheap, bonsai and sold by online retailers are shipped in pots and in soil that aren’t ideal for healthy roots.
So I think it’s a really good idea to take the tree out of the pot that it comes in put it into a larger pot, not too big, but just a bit bigger than one it’s in put it into a larger pot with some fresh new soil.
Around it and grow it in that pot for one maybe two years, maybe even longer, if that’s what you choose to do, giving the roots a lot more room to spread out and grow is gonna really invigorate the tree within a growing season.
The trees going to be bursting with health, it’s going to be much more healthy than the tree that you start with the most important part of bonsai, is to focus on maintaining a healthy, strong, vigorous tree.
You can’t train a dead tree as a bonsai. It’S all about health and giving those roots room to grow is how you achieve health in a tree. At start, I mentioned an alternative way to get into bonsai instead of buying a bonsai tree, many of which tend to be in really poor health and end up dying and putting the owner off bonsai forever.
A much more rewarding and, in my opinion, successful way to get started with bonsai, is to hit up the local garden center or nursery and buy a tree or a shrub. That was intended for the garden not intended for bonsai but to actually grow and train.
That into a bonsai tree, there are at least three species that I would personally recommend you look at if you would like to try your hand at growing and training your bonsai from garden center material.
The first species is katana aster. These are charming little plants, they usually have small leaves they usually flower, profusely beautiful. They usually develop colorful fruits and the best things they’re really easy to grow.
The second species is shrubby honeysuckle or lowness, or a species. The shrubby, honeysuckles, lana, serenity de Lanice or a pinata are great bonsai subjects. They grow really well. You can take cuttings off them to to to propagate and increase the number of trees.
You have in your collection, they’re, really forgiving. If you make an error, it doesn’t matter they’re, just gonna grow more to replace whatever you cut off. If you go a bit mad trimming, the roots it doesn’t matter, the roots are just gonna regenerate, but even better than that, even though they’re so forgiving, they also have tiny leaves they have beautiful, smelling flowers, which bees etc, love.
And if you leave the flowers on until the autumn, you get these gorgeous translucent purple berries on them. They look absolutely beautiful and then the third species that I’m going to recommend is the Fuji cherry code.
Bonsai can do very well indoors on a year-round basis
Oh, no, my I think it’s pronounced is the particular variety prunus incisor Kojo. No, my these trees also flower, which bees love they’re, not the most popular species for bonsai, but they are really really forgiving.
They they don’t mind, root, work, they’ll, take pruning really well and they’ll bounce back, and they have this really really interesting. Zig zaggy twig structure really easy to grows. Bonsai highly recommended coming up in future videos I’m going to bring out some step-by-step guides for growing and training those three species, training them into bonsai, so that you can follow along each time.
