All,
I picked up this buddhist pine bonsai from our local nursery. It’s about 2 ft tall and 1”-1.2” thick. This is my first indoor bonsai. Can you give me some general info as how to take care of this?
1- I have a west facing window, would that provide sufficient lighting?
2- what type of fertilizer do you recommend? And how often should I water and fertilize?
3- some of the roots show up on the right side of the pot. Should I top off the soil? What do you recommend for topping? The bonsai soil I use does not look very appealing.
4- is it possible to grow moss on an indoor bonsai? I may move this outdoor in the summer. Does moss survive indoors during winter?
5- can you give me some general idea as to how old this guy is?
6- I picked up these led grow light from amazon. Are they sufficient for bonsai?
www.amazon.com/Relassy-Spectrum-Goosenec...d=1583014622&sr=8-40
7- how do you clean the leaves?
Item 1. Not enough light for vigorous growth. Enough to keep it alive, not enough to get good rapid compact growth.
2 - How often to water - answer - when it needs it. Not more, not less. You can not put a tree on a calendar schedule. Daily, stick your finger into the pot, at bury at least fingernail depth. If feels moist, don't water, feels barely damp - time to water. If it feels dry, you should have watered yesterday. They want to go from wet to barely moist, then wet again. Do not let get bonsai dry. Check to see if it needs water daily. Actually water it on the days it needs water. Weather will change how often it needs to be watered. Hot sunny dry day, low humidity, it can dry out in a single day. Cloudy, cool, high humidity couple days - the tree might go a week without needing water. You MUST check daily, and only water when it needs it.
2 (part 2) Fertilizer. My preference is for a chemical fertilizer, one that is high nitrogen, low phosphorous and relatively high potassium, NPK, the numbers of what I am using right now is 12-1-4 with a long list of micro nutrients. A 12-2-13 will work. Actually many, many different formulations will work. Key is to fertilizer every 3rd or 4th time you water. And keep your fertilizer concentrations on the dilute side. A tree growing indoors will be growing slow, and will not need much fertilizer. I usually use 1/2 to 1/4 of what the label tells you to use. If you like doing the mathematics I use 40 ppm as N. If you don't know how to get to that number don't worry about it, for a fertilizer who's first number is 10 or near 10, that would be about 1/4 teaspoon per gallon.
3. - yes top up with the same bonsai soil that is in the pot. If your bonsai mix at home is different that the mix the tree is in, doesn't really mater a lot. Just top up with bonsai mix.
4 - moss is difficult to get to grow indoors. It is hit or miss to get it to grow outdoors. But sometimes we get lucky and it just grows. There is a whole cult dedicated to growing moss. I was never given the secret handshake. So don't worry about moss, you will either have it show up everywhere, or it will always fail for you. Few are in the middle ground.
5 - your tree is probably 2 or 3 years from a cutting or 4 or 5 years from seed. Don't know which.
6 - those lights look like "good enough" supplemental lights for one or two plants at a time. They should be positioned as close as possible to your tree. Leave lights on about 18 hours a day. This will nicely supplement the light from your west window. Do plan on giving your tree a summer vacation every year outdoors, if possible.
7 - cleaning leaves can be done with a damp cloth with just plain water on the cloth. Or you could set the tree in the shower. Before putting the tree in shower, adjust temperature to room temp, not cold, not hot. Careful where in the shower you put it, you don't want so much water that you flush soil out of the pot.
Hope this helps.
1500 lux
