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video Ficus bonsai has been used for growing not so long ago, but this didn’t prevent the plastic and responsive care plant to become one of your favorite earrings. It is hard to imagine that even a novice with a certain patience and diligence manages to give Benjamin or microcarp a ficus to look like an adult, but miniature tree, only 30–60 cm high.
However, that’s how it is! At the same time, work on such a bonsai will not last 15–20 years, but much less. The reason is the enviable ductility of the tree, in favorable conditions:
- excellent airing roots;
- overgrowing wounds on the trunk;
- forming new branches instead of cut ones;
- forming using wire and string.
Even a tree grown to standard sizes in the hands of an enthusiast in a few years can become an original bonsai. What is needed to turn the most common Benjamin ficus on our windows into a bonsai?
First of all, you need to create suitable conditions for the plant. Then a lover of Japanese art will have to master the care and basics of formation on an adult plant. When all stages are completed, you can go to practice and create your own composition.
Care for ficus bonsai at home
Although bonsai seems to be stunted in development, the plant is alive and requires comprehensive care, including:
- watering;
- top dressing;
- transplant.
In the warm season, the ficus should be under the bright but not exhausting sun for at least 12 hours. When choosing a place for a pot, you need to give preference to a corner that is protected from drafts and hot air, which comes from batteries in winter.
The optimal temperature for ficus bonsai is 18–25 C.If you provide sprinkling to a tree, it will survive the heat without shocks, but a cold snap below 15 ˚C will prove to be a serious test for tropical culture. In cold, damp soil, the roots of a ficus-grown microcarp or Benjamin can rot, which is fraught with plant loss.
The frequency of irrigation depends on the season, air temperature and soil conditions. In the warm season, they usually focus on the drying of the top layer of soil. In summer, the plant needs moisture more than in winter.
Dry air helps compensate for crown irrigation. The same measure contributes to the formation of air roots, which are necessary if one is to grow bonsai in the form of banyan from small-leaf ficus.
Specialized bonsai supplements that grow in a very limited amount of soil are needed. They are carried out with an interval of 2-3 weeks, a month after transplantation. Excellent foliar fertilizer method.
Choosing a pot and soil for ficus bonsai
In addition to the traditional forging pruning, ficus for bonsai needs to remove dead or damaged shoots and roots. It can settle pests. Compared with ordinary room ficuses, bonsai care at home is more laborious and laborious.
Bonsai are always grown in flat heavy pots. This is not a tribute to tradition, but a necessity in order to limit the volume of roots and slow down the growth of the aerial part, as well as to increase the stability of the tree.
At the same time at the bottom of the selected pot must be at least one drainage hole. For the access of air and draining of water from the ceramic containers may be present legs. Convenient when the kit is a pallet. For bonsai grown as a ficus Benjamin height from 30 to 50 cm, a pot about five centimeters deep is enough. The shape and diameter are chosen according to the style of the plant and the idea of the composition.
In order for the plant to feel comfortable, to get enough moisture and nutrition, the pot needs to be filled with properly selected soil. In Japan, bonsai is grown on a clay substrate in the form of granules of various sizes. If there is no such composition at hand, you can buy soil for palm trees or independently mix soil on the basis of equal shares:
- humus;
- recruited peat;
- clay powder;
- washed sand.
As an ingredient for the substrate, you can take fine expanded clay and perlite, leaf earth and vermiculite. The composition may be different, the main thing is that the ground for transplantation of ficus bonsai is loose, aerated and contains enough food for the growth of the tree.
Ficus look great on stones, eventually wrapping them in roots and creating a complete illusion of the natural picture. Before making ficus bonsai with such a neighborhood, the roots of the plant are treated with thick clay gruel, fixed with wire and ensure contact with the soil.
How to grow your own ficus benjamin bonsai?
Young plants for growing bonsai are obtained by rooting green apical cuttings from 8 to 12 cm long. At these lengths of shoots there are several dormant growing points, which will later become branches and roots of the tree. Cuttings:
- is dried at the cut points;
- treated with crushed activated carbon;
- put in a solution of growth stimulant.
In the greenhouse at an air temperature of 25–27 C, high humidity and bright light, the beginnings of roots appear in bright light on the planting material. When the plants can start an independent life, they are transplanted one by one or several seedlings into prepared pots with sand drainage and bonsai soil.for decoration you can immediately use stones.
The formation of Benjamin ficus bonsai begins with a pinch of the top growth point when the plant reaches its intended height.
Formation of Benjamin Ficus bonsai
The most famous among gardeners is Ficus Benjamin. However, other species are also suitable for growing miniature trees of incredible forms, for example, Bengal ficus, rust-leaved, fig-tree, familiar from tasty and healthy fruits.
And it is even easier to grow bonsai on the basis of the ficus microcarp than from a seedling of a small-leaved variety of Benjamin. In this case, you can use a radical pruning with the removal of the entire green part. The remaining stem with roots will serve as the basis for the future bonsai.
On several saplings planted in one pot, often use such a technique as weaving. For this purpose, the trunks of the plants, while they are not hardened and woody, gently weave, fixing the chosen position with a rope. In order for the stems to grow together, the bark is removed at the places of their contact and the wood is treated with a special compound.
In bonsai, it is especially appreciated when the tree fully reproduces the picture of life, therefore, it is necessary to form not only the trunk, but also the roots. Work on them begins in 3-4 months after the rooting of the young ficus. With the help of a special spatula and stick, the root system of the plant, starting from the root collar, is carefully freed from the ground. During transplantation, excess roots remove or shorten the entire bundle. Appeared, for example, on ficus mikkarp bonsai, air rhizomes are sent to the soil, straighten and drop by drop to obtain a spectacular banyan.
Work with changing the shape of the trunk is done very carefully. You can not hurry.
When choosing materials, it is better for beginners to prefer a rope or fabric tape than a wire that can ruin the wood. If you can not do without a wire, it is better to take the material in the sheath, laying felt or other fabric under it.
Winding with a rope or wire is made from the bottom up, from the base of the shoot or trunk to its top. The direction changes carefully so as not to break the branch. The fixation remains on the tree for 45–60 days, after which it is cut off.
One of the most important techniques for growing your own ficus benjamin bonsai is pruning. It is carried out with the help of sharp scissors and a knife at least once every 6 months. The best time is early spring, then until autumn you can adjust the shape without fear of seriously damaging the plant:
- The roots and whole branches are cut off smoothly, without hemp.
- Places of large cuts are processed by garden pitch.
- The shortening of the branches begins when they have 8–10 leaves on them.
- Leaf removal is carried out carefully, avoiding the exposure of the crown.
Ficus bonsai transplantation
Adults bredai from ficuses are transplanted infrequently, and the older the tree, and the lower its growth rate, the less it has to do.
Until the age of five, plants are transferred to a new soil and pot every two years. Then you can not touch the ficus for almost 5 years.
During a transplant, bonsai ficus is subjected to correction of the root system. It is cleaned of dead parts and cut to bottom by one third. The field of this plant is transferred to fresh soil, after taking care of the drainage. The ficus compacted and fixed in a pot is watered, and in half an hour the excess moisture is drained.
