Are you a bouger?

SU2

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For substrate: I made a few less-than-ideal choices since I got the plant 18 months ago, and got to the point where either I was going to kill it mucking about, or I was going to make certain that it survived by reverting to a natural substrate. The potting soil and sheep shit has worked really well and the plant is doing quite well now (health wise). I intend on leaving the roots alone for 2-3 years to develop a thick root-pad before deciding on any other substrate change.
I'd say that's a LONG time for a re-pot, at least if it's not in a container like a pond-basket/colander, can just picture the thick, circling roots! At least they can handle massive root-prunings like champs! However, w/ you not being able to water frequently, you can still have 'the best of both worlds' by simply using an epiphytic mix (like "orchid mix" products that are bark, peat etc), you can have drainage *and* high water-retention (in fact you could even add those water-absorbing polymer crystals into the substrate, the ones that swell-up like 8X their original size when wet, they are just awesome not only for the water retention&release but soil-structure since they move the substrate every time they enlarge/contract, this is something that worms/etc would do naturally but don't in our containers!)

(and I've gotta ask, why on earth are you now "random user" instead of SKbonsai? am confuse ;p )

Flowering: I found that clipping the bracts and flowers as soon as they began to show colour, did have "some effect" on encouraging veg but not enough to employ as a way to prevent flowering.
I think this IS the ticket, will explain in a sec!

I am undecided if the plant is trying to flower because it thinks its going to die (and wants to throw its seed before this happens), or if they just flower when they have available resources (I tend to think the latter in the case of bougs).
You can make that decision by gaging the tree ie is it healthy/established or not? I've had cuttings that I just rooted start to flower, surely they are what we'd consider 'death flowering' (trying to re-produce because it seems death is imminent....when the health/vigor of a tree is low enough sometimes it'll just go to flower instead of trying to grow) But, as you said you tended to think, they do basically just flower when they're healthy, they can flower many times in a year with flowering sessions taking 6+ weeks...it's funny because I've got two that are blooming like crazy right now and they're two of my weakest, for example here's one that wasn't healthy and did a full-on flowering, I let it go so it could 'stabilize' a bit but just removed the flowers today:
20180606_095714.jpg 20180606_095944.jpg 20180606_095958.jpg
I've got others that are weak & flowering, but most of my bougies are healthy and now barely putting out flowers (they were weeks ago but those were clipped and never re-appeared), when they do I'm simply clipping them when they're visible....which leads to the prior quote:
did have "some effect" on encouraging veg but not enough to employ as a way to prevent flowering
It does have that effect, almost a month ago I was shown pics on another forum that were similar to @Starfox 's pics here, showing me that tip-growth will resume after flowering (they went further and expressly said they just remove the flowers and it keeps growing), I setup a handful of 'tester branches' and put tags on them to ID and removed their developing flowers, they just continued to grow and, in weeks, have yet to try putting out new flowers (ie I don't think it was just some 'delaying flowering' I think it legitimately got its flowers out and moved on), one of these tester branches grew 25% in a little over a week (grew from 20" to 25" in 8 or 9 days after it was tagged+de-flowered, was this healthy/vigorous guy:
20180602_202135.jpg
[lol you can see the blue 'tag' in the center of the canopy, that's the branch that was de-flowered and went from 20" to 25" in barely over a week after I clipped its half-formed flower bracts! Also worth mentioning the two flowering bougies to either side of the central boxed one, those are two of my weakest potted bougies, the one to the right is literally a stump I laid against a piece of a broken mortar pot and used screen&zip-tie to hold some DE over it, it's been close to a year now and it's still alive somehow lol, there's less about as much substrate-volume as trunk-volume on that lil guy, he flowers a lot and I suspect it's nothing more than "I'm dying / must propagate myself!" responses!]

My intentions: The trunk on this plant is 3-3.5" across (depending on the viewing angle) and about 6-8" high. Will make a good formal upright, if I can get the veg stage straightened away. However, I now realize that it won't ever have good branch structure, so the best I can do is fill in the canopy with vegetative growth to have a fuller looking appearance... the plant is on track to do this now.
Can you re-post the tree by chance? Am unsure what you mean by 'getting the veg stage straightened away', and I dispute your notion that "it won't ever have good branch-structure", I've found bougainvillleas to have an absurdly flexible morphology, you'd said a couple pages ago:

I want to have the only upright formal boug since it seems to be generally accepted (on web sites that I've read) that they won't conform to this style.
this got me thinking the same as you, that I'm going to make some upright formals myself (though I haven't seen it said you can't..), anyways for example check out this cutting (probably 2/3 of my bougies are propagated hardwood cuttings that were started like this guy), after letting the first shoots grow a bit they're simply zip-tied at their bases so that the branch-collars are angled upward and, once they start really growing and tapering-into the trunk, this early angling intervention will make all the difference, I'll have my primary branches set&lignified in a way to allow me to do a proper upright:
20180605_195748.jpg ...btw that's my idea of 'slip potting' lol....I probably get 85-90% success doing this type of propagation and use styro/plastic cups to start, once there's enough escape-roots I'm setting them into slightly larger containers that have real rich[but well-draining!] substrates so that they can successfully finish their first growth-spurt and hit the stage where I can comfortably prune the top & bottom, re-potting at the same time :)



But so far as branch manipulation you can really push them where&how you want to, I'm expecting the right-side shoot on this branch to 'fuse'/grow-into/taper-from the trunk very well:
20180603_190722.jpg (that's a limb being re-built because it was too-tall for this guy: 20180603_190655.jpg , so it's great to be able to easily guide it where it needs to grow!)

And expecting these branches to fuse together (was going to remove one but why waste? :D ) by mid/late summer as well:
20180527_135613.jpg

Actually that^ is going to get the 'regular branches' approach as well, will be removing the top-half (everything above my 2 branches/leaders) at some point down the road (once I have a better root-mass), I know it's too-thick to be 'formal upright' and I suck at the nomenclature but this will be developed like a (very thick/stout!) 'regular tree' in that it'll be a straight trunk leading to 2 vertical primaries leading to a rounded canopy, will take til the end of next growing-season I expect but by then I should have a neat little specimen! This was a 'cutting' lol, a 1' tall / 5" wide stump that I put 4" into perlite, took 6wks but it rooted!


(I think it was Leo in Illinois who said to leave the roots alone for a couple of years after the first repotting.) I want those people to know that their advice wasn't ignored outright. No matter what anyone says, I do give it consideration, but I did what I thought to be the best course, at that moment in time, with the experience that I've gained with other plants, and the resources that are available to me...
Same here! That's all we can do, learn what we can and then apply it to the best of our abilities :) Though I'd disagree w/ leo on this one, I've found bougainvilleas to be virtually carefree when it comes to re-potting, the sole problem/concern is that the root//trunk intersection must be treated carefully if the roots aren't thoroughly developed (for instance on my propagated stuff, the roots themselves are very hardy but their attachment to the trunk, not so strong!)

"If I were you"; I'd leave one of those cuttings to do whatever it wanted to do and see what the results are. You are fortunate to be in the best place (possibly) in the continental U.S. for this plant's natural growth habit, so I'd take advantage of that. "In my mind" just the term "vine" conjures thoughts of something that grows helter-skelter... you can't push a rope or herd bumble bees, so letting it do what it wants "might get you something worthwhile", but continually messing with it/them, might ensure that you're never satisfied with it on any level.

I've got sooo many bougies as I propagate them constantly, I've got in-ground ones that I leave to their own devices and I've got propagates I'm forcing into certain parameters- they really are that flexible in their growth habits to allow for this, they can be guided to most any form so I'd definitely drop the notion of them being unchanging and 'set in their way' as you're implying here! And yes my area is certainly among the best in the US for growing them outdoors, you're inside though so you can do whatever conditions you choose right? If growing well they can be pushed to most-anything!
 

SU2

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Hey, I replied to you elsewhere on this but you at least got me thinking enough to go check what was happening on mine and it's easier to post pics here so here are a few pics of growth beyond the flowers.
Pretty much everyone of mine are doing something different but all are pushing growth now as you would expect this time of year.

This first pic may show it best, on this tree the first thing it did when it woke up from winter was to start flowering, now that the flowering has stopped it is pushing veg out. You can see the flower stem at the first node and now new growth going beyond that.


Thanks a lot, am so glad this is the case (I've been told as much on another forum, can't recall if it was IBC or ausbonsai), need to find that thread on reddit where I (thought) I was told otherwise, as it was a prominent bougie-bonsai person who'd said it (I had to have mis-read, though I'm so sure I didn't!)

I mentioned in the post I just ^ wrote but I'd started the "remove flowers as they occur" approach almost a month ago now, with excellent results! I've got one branch that was starting to flower, I tagged it and it was 20" long (actually high 19"'s, was erring on the conservative side), I removed its flowers and it was barely past a week later when I re-measured to find it'd grown 25% (from 20" to 25" in maybe 8 or 9days), I've done this on others (that're tagged as well) to see whether it was working and on every one of these established, about-to-flower bougies that I removed the flowers from, not only have they continued to grow but they haven't tried to revert to flowering, I think letting the flower bracts actually grow-out a little (just enough to where you can see them splitting to 3 flowers, am unsure if premature removal will thwart a 2nd-round of flowering the same as at least letting the shape of the bracts setup) then removing them is the way to keep a bougie growing strong, I've had universal success so far w/ the measured specimen and have also begun doing flower removal in conjunction with pinching the tips, to see if the de-flowered, pinched tips put out new vegetative, or flowering, growths...will report back on that once I've got enough data points to know what's what :)
 

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Great score! Love that one. I have several purple ones. I didn't actually know there were dwarf varieties, too bad you live in Australia :(.

You did not know there were dwarfs eh??? Maybe you get a gift if I can get off my backside and propagate. ;-)
 
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Mine tend to go straight to veg in spring but I also give a harsh haircut to the lowest live node just before they wake. I find it helps with some tight movement and lower branching. I agree that if you keep a close eye you can tell the type of growth that gives rise to bracts and snip it off ASAP. Also change the ratio of your fert to higher N and when you want flowers go to almost zero nitrogen. Glad to see people learning and pushing the envelope with these. They are one of my favorites!

I did three little ones a couple of days ago. We will see how they turn out.
 

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I water 1-2x/day, and my fertilization is a 3-day rotation, day 1 is 24-8-16 (1tbsp/gallon), day 2 is tap water, day 3 is epsom salts (~1/4-->1/2tsp/gallon) Am thinking to up the fertilizer by ~50% and double the epsom salts (maybe more, am just hesitant to guess at #'s for its use, it seems like it'd be a perfect adjunct to my regular 24-8-16 miracle gro I just wish I knew how much to use so I could stop erring on the side of wayyy-too-low!


May I ask why you water this much? I thought they needed to be watered less...
 

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What is the difference between Bougainvillea Glabra, and Bougainvillea Barbara Karst?

Is the Karst just more red than the Glabra?
 

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Not a bouger....

But I am wondering what you think of this form for a Bougie?

;)

I didn't want to make it tapered, so the glaze will pop off the flowers better, more visable.

So I added a lip to get it more...more...
...more proper form ..

This is a Sorcemission pot, private til it ain't. Only the second so I'm Trying to kill it!

6.5x3 Sorceround still to be bisqued.
With "Lip Service".

?

Sorce

As everyone knows, I am no expert on pots. However, I have been wanting to repot this Pink Pixie for ages and take a bunch of cuttings at the same time. I also want to regrow the roots and hide a really ugly spilt into two fat roots. I was was going to put it in a half-height, cut-down gallon can but then I looked up on the pot shelf and saw one of the really cool pots I bought this year. It's a Sam Miller (my first, not my last of his!). One of the many things I like about this is the glaze is an oatmeal with some darker shades of brown and also shades of olive green poking through.

It is neutral enough that the browns match the trunk and the greens will work with the leaves but I am really excited to see how the electric pink of the bracts set it off. We shall see.

The pot is just perfectly deep enough so I can bury the flawed roots having nicked the trunk and squirted it with rooting hormone. If that works, will cut the rest off and have a VERY flat radial root pad.

Here is the pot (I made a little gif real quick so you could see the whole thing):

IMG_20180707_131831038-ANIMATION.gif

The pot is far more round than my crappy gif makes it look! Anyway that is a pot I will be using for one boug.

Anyway:

Here is how the boug started and as I said I hacked nearly all the branches off for cuttings. Now I will regrow the top and the roots. It has some real flaws but some strong points as well. As you can see it's pretty ugly where it splits. (It kind of looks like a naked lower body with indistinguishable naughty bits... ) As I said all that is going away and I will use the fattest part (the hips) as the new base.
IMG_20180707_133656610.jpg

As a side note, This was planted in 8822 and lava last year. The fine root growth was VERY impressive. It looked like it has been in a strainer. I have never seen bougs grow fine roots, normally they are more like carrots.

Here is the finished product with more crappy rushed pictures. I will post it again once more leaves start popping.
IMG_20180707_145052021.jpg
 

milehigh_7

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What is the difference between Bougainvillea Glabra, and Bougainvillea Barbara Karst?

Is the Karst just more red than the Glabra?

There are several species in the genus Bougainvillea. Here in the states we have four main species. Bougainvillea buttiana, Bougainvillea glabra, Bougainvillea peruviana, and Bougainvillea spectabilis. However, according to 'theplantlist.org' there are 33 named species.

What we have most of the varieties in the trade are hybrids of these species. Barbara Karst is one such hybrid. I have read (can't find the source right now) that it was the first boug hybrid to be introduced into the trade.
 

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There are several species in the genus Bougainvillea. Here in the states we have four main species. Bougainvillea buttiana, Bougainvillea glabra, Bougainvillea peruviana, and Bougainvillea spectabilis. However, according to 'theplantlist.org' there are 33 named species.

What we have most of the varieties in the trade are hybrids of these species. Barbara Karst is one such hybrid. I have read (can't find the source right now) that it was the first boug hybrid to be introduced into the trade.


That's interesting!

Another interesting tidbit is that of the two $1 bougies I bought from lowes - both were grown by the same farms, both had the pink flowers, both had the same leaves, but one's tag was Barbara Karst and the other was Glabra.
 

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That's interesting!

Another interesting tidbit is that of the two $1 bougies I bought from lowes - both were grown by the same farms, both had the pink flowers, both had the same leaves, but one's tag was Barbara Karst and the other was Glabra.

Well Barbara may be called Bougainvillea Galabra (many people think this is the only species) but that's incorrect, it's a hybrid. Galabra is a species name and 'Barbra Karst' is a variety that has been cloned from specific parentage. Bougainvillea buttiana 'Crimson Lake' and Bougainvillea glabra 'sanderiana'.

One thing I have found is that many big growers don't keep up on the naming. They don't care and it's not worth their time. They will pick a few varieties that sell because of flower color, growth pattern and so on and that's all they bother with.
 
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SU2

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Firstly&off-topic, reading your post hit 2 personal (yet superficial) notes to me- "little trees"(your avatar) is a friend's old band name, and "tree of life" is what they called a of jewelry (a twisted-wire tree-sculpture) I bought for someone earlier this week!!!

Mine tend to go straight to veg in spring but I also give a harsh haircut to the lowest live node just before they wake. I find it helps with some tight movement and lower branching.
I'm a bit unsure what's meant by the 2nd sentence here by "tight movement"? Re lower branching, if you're referring to back-budding (and not the development of existing lower branches) then "hard prunes" as you describe certainly get it back-budding although I've found such a high chance of pruning leading to flowering that I'm always hesitant to prune/pinch anything now, for instance I recently had a fungal issue that ruined some branch-tips, every single one of those branches has started budding at every node down-shoot, and each is putting out a flower!

I'm very very curious about what yours look like, how you store them, when they're "asleep"? Do yours lose their leaves? Mine didn't last year, although I had to bring them into my patio at least 4 or 5 nights over the winter....But, I've got a major problem this year that I've yet to figure-out what to do: because I'm growing-out all my trees, they have giant "foot-prints", the growth makes every tree take up 5x the space its box does, while I'd love to just prune before winter/during "sleep", mine didn't go to sleep enough last year and would start growth if cut (growth that'd be weak and likely to die when the temp went back down!) so am having trouble deciding when my last pruning should be and how small I can get them for that 3-mo period where I'm worrying about cold-nights!


I agree that if you keep a close eye you can tell the type of growth that gives rise to bracts and snip it off ASAP.

For sure- there's a different hue to it even when they're still buds, if you're in the garden 2x/day it's virtually impossible to miss a bougie that's on the verge of starting a flowering-phase. Being that flowers take energy and give nothing back (I know they're actually "modified leaves"/bracts but they don't photosynthesize so they're a net-loss), I used to try and just prune based on flowering, it seemed to make sense ie by the time something was flowering, the branches were already 2.5-3.5' long and I figured cutting back to 2 nodes at that point was a good way to thwart flowering-phases before they began while also contributing to branching-structure down the road, both of those were wrong assumptions (cutting-back a flowering-shoot to any degree has always led to the resultant growth starting-out as flowering-growth, and as far as branching-structure it certainly doesn't make sense as the ramification it creates will, eventually (when the primaries' thickness are sufficient), be so high/tall that it'd be cut-off!)

So I asked and asked and found someone on ausbonsai who demonstrated that (contrary to what I was led to believe) you can simply remove flowering-bracts as they occur and let the branches continue to grow (I'd been told that trees/shrubs that are terminal-flowerers ie flower at the ends of new shoots would not continue growing from the flowering area, that for that branch to continue growing it'd need a new leader from a lower-down node on the branch; I'm suspecting this isn't the case w/ bougies because the flowering-habit is one of large bracts w/ small flowers, instead of flower-clusters like many other species) Having done this for the past couple months I've witnessed as well as measured shoots just keep growing&growing while I cut-off flower-bracts as they appear, HOWEVER I think I've been noticing *re*-flowering at nodes where I removed the bracts' petiole before it developed into the normal cluster of 3, so to err on the side of caution I've been letting them grow just long enough that the 3 bract-sets are formed before removal (essentially waiting til they're simple to remove with my fingers, instead of going around w/ precision sheers to remove them when they're 3/16" long since I think they're re-flowering when I do that (will be testing this to see if it's really happening or not!)


Also change the ratio of your fert to higher N and when you want flowers go to almost zero nitrogen. Glad to see people learning and pushing the envelope with these. They are one of my favorites!

I did three little ones a couple of days ago. We will see how they turn out.

I'm using osmocote's 15-9-12 as ~75% of my total fertilizer regimen, and fortifying that with 24-8-16 instant-release m.gro ('blue kool aid' as we call it ;D ) maybe once every 4-7d at a 1/3 rate (so maybe every 5th day everything gets a 8-3-5 dose of instant release, I do this right before a stretch of sunny days, and hold-off if it's a rainy week. I apply my micro's, iron at ~1.5% and magnesium&sulfur at twice that, whenever I do the instant-release "booster" feeds) I guess that, with such a large % of my nutes being the Osmocote, I'm kind of locked-in to that level :/ Can't really complain though, I was seeking that level of uniform nutrient-availability (was using instant-release every third day, total PITA!), I think consistently-available nutrients are an often-overlooked point, when it comes to our inorganic, low-CEC substrates I think that timed-release ferts at least at some level is "good practice" no matter how you slice it!

What do you mean you 'did 3 little ones'? Unsure if you mean collected them / stuck propagates, or did work to some ;p Would be interested to see how they turn out though, definitely update w/ photos if/when the time is right :D
 

SU2

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Since this is the BOUGER thread I'm realizing this is an ideal place to ask you all: if you've got a moment & the inclination for a challenge, I just posted a thread seeking help/guidance on where to cut my trunk-line on a very challenging piece of material (large, sideways bougie w/ 3 trunks, I call it my 'Cerberus Bougie', I've let it grow-out into a bush and am now ready to choose&carve my real trunk-line so I can get my primaries started & hardened before winter ;D )


Well Barbara may be called Bougainvillea Galabra (many people think this is the only species) but that's incorrect, it's a hybrid. Galabra is a species name and 'Barbra Karst' is a variety that has been cloned from specific parentage. Bougainvillea buttiana 'Crimson Lake' and Bougainvillea glabra 'sanderiana'.

One thing I have found is that many big growers don't keep up on the naming. They don't care and it's not worth their time. They will pick a few varieties that sell because of flower color, growth pattern and so on and that's all they bother with.

Thanks for mentioning this, it's kind of reassuring to know that about the commercial growers...from how I understand it, bougies hybridize very readily and, because they're all around the world, they're doing this on their own and creating cultivars that weren't human-chosen, which further complicates things. Wikipedia actually expounds on this in their Bougainvillea page, it's pretty interesting! I've gotta say, while I'm a Bouger through and through (of my ~90-something trees, at least 2/3 are bougies!!), I've never taken the time to learn what cultivars I have, in fact I'd always been under the impression that "the generic" bougie that's everywhere in my state is the "pixie pink" one, I'd guess 80% of my bougies are this variety, had always thought "pixie pink" was the most-common bougie but subsequently found that wasn't the case, so kind of gave up trying to discern TBH! I've got 1 variegated bougie but it's a baby, being grown-out now and won't be ready to start working for at least 2-3yrs :/ )
 

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Here are the three I repotted about two and a half weeks ago. Two of them (a Barbara Karst and an Alexandrea) I pruned hard and defoliated. Now they are in 5" bulb pans. The other Barbara Karst I left longer green branches that are still flexible. For some reason I looked like it should be wired so I left them. Here is how they grew out. FYI Alexandrea is a "semi-dwarf" variety that in my searching is kind of rare. You can see how sparse the leaves are on the one with longer branches retained.

BK #1 IMG_20180714_233827990.jpg


Alexandrea IMG_20180715_002143492.jpg


BK #2 IMG_20180715_002041304.jpg
 
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milehigh_7

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Here is what that 'Pink Pixie' looks like after a week. (BTW: 'Pink Pixie, Torch Glow and Bangkok Red are dwarfs that have a VERY congested growth habit and smaller leaves sorta like the Hokkaido of Bougs.)
 

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milehigh_7

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I would love to! I have wwwwwaaaay to many projects ATM. However I have seen people do it by hand by polinating with a paint brush and covering the flowers with a tied brown paper lunch sack to control the source of the pollen.
 

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Y'all are just playing with bougainvilleas... this place means business! WOW!

That's a 45 gallon stump which you can purchase! http://bougainvilleas.us/

45-Gl-Stump-11.jpg
 
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Is this a completely formed seed pod? Or is it just shy of forming the seed? And I assume those long brown parts are the pods that would be planted?

IMG_5002.JPG
 
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