yeah they are! I love them, they've just gotta be one of the best beginner bonsais so that's a huge plus for me but I love them in-general (I like thorns, like their growth habit, and their flowering(bracts, technically) is incredible!)
Thank you
Yeah I've been meaning to get rid of more (got rid of two ~a week ago), have too-many from when I just started that have no real potential but am still maintaining them (by default basically!)
That's informative thank you! I imagine I put too-much faith in them being stabilized and not treating them like fresh transplants (though I frequently read that that period is incredibly shorter with bougies, like the wigerts and adamaskwhy who'll advise fertilizing right at the beginning when first boxing-up a yamadori bougie)
I stopped fertilizing until the infestation is gone, when I re-start I'll only do so with a low-nitro / high-potassium (how about phosphorous?) fertilizer, any recommendations would be appreciated! Also, was planning to always add (at the exact label recommendation) my mineral fertilizer (iron/magnesium/etc etc, no NPK), I've stopped that for now due to the bugs but what about the trace minerals should those be applied always or more in-step with nitrogen?
[Also, you say potassium for lignifying + roots....do you happen to know any good resources that really get into the chemistry of what the macronutrients NPK actually do? I mean I know vague things like 'nitrogen = green', 'phosphorous helps blooming', but would really like a more solid understanding of what's actually going on, I know far more about auxin transport than I do basic macronutrient biology so would really like to correct that!]
I'm not sure how to parse this, I mean my plants are getting infested by bugs I don't see how inattention is a valid approach, though I presume you just meant in general - these three affected bougies really weren't getting any special care/attention, they were just in a good vegetative state - apparently the 'higher nitrogen during growth season' was dumb since they're recently-collected but I wasn't hacking them I wasn't misting them they were truly just being left to veg:
View attachment 156519 View attachment 156520
I'm planning to get them off the ground soonish, part of me wanted to wait until I was ready to do some carving so I could do it all in one shot (I've bought a die-grinder and angle-grinder for this but am still just learning with them, not ready to actually do work on my trees), was thinking that it made sense to get a lot of that excess/useless wood off my stumps sooner than later, though right now I'm strongly considering a 'gentle' transplant (like not even shaking the substrate from the roots, simply break the boxes they're in and re-pot them in something else, so I can place them on my new bench!)
[edit- just imagined you may read that last part and think "he's beyond helping" lol, I want to be clear that in no way am I planning to put a powertool to one of my bonsais until I'm 100% sure it's the right thing to do, I've only gotten the tools now because I wanted to practice for a while before ever touching one of my trees...I'd planned on waiting a while, then doing trunk work on those two while/during transplanting, but am now thinking I'll be better-served to transplant them sooner than I'm gonna be ready to do any woodwork to them]
That one is at one month to the day actually)
