Bonsai / office plants?

Anyone here into Bonsai? I got my first and only Japanese Juniper about 1.5-2yrs ago. I've always been fascinated by the variety. I hate not being able to see anything natural where I work (no windows to my offices) so that sparked me to finally buy one. I'm not all that creative with pruning yet...I butched the poor thing last year but luckily I had at home outside all this summer and really filled back out. I've started doing a couple small prunes lately but I'm being very careful about it. I kinda have a shape/growth plan I'm trying to work towards. This guy is hardy as heck to, at the last building I had an office in it was kept pretty cold for all the server and network equipment but this tree never had a problem whereas I think I killed two other plants there :(

i have a casdacing juniper bonsai also, I haven't really pruned him too much either, better to prune a little than a lot, or so I was taught by the people who sold it to me. I'm trying on getting a nice shape by training the branches to curve with some copper wire. They do quite well in colder environments as long as they get ample sunlight. You should post a picture of yours, I'll get one of mine up here and maybe we'll find some other bonsai people.

Over the years I have had over 30 bonsai. I usually get them going good then I give them to someone. I don't have the patience to just leave them alone for years at a time.

Once they get established you really have to be patient a little nip there a tuck here -- oh that's a TV show...

I LOVE bonsai plants, but I have a black thumb so I have about 15 different kinds of cacti around my house.

Also the last reptile show I went to (MARS) there was a stand with a bunch of carnivorous plants and they had these other wide looking hanging "air plants" that were a grayish/green colors that were curly. I forget the name of this kind of plant but I wanted to get one and forgot about it. Now I can' for the life of me find remember what they were called or where to get one at. I'd love to have it in my room!

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Originally Posted by AkivaSmith

Over the years I have had over 30 bonsai. I usually get them going good then I give them to someone. I don't have the patience to just leave them alone for years at a time.

Once they get established you really have to be patient a little nip there a tuck here -- oh that's a TV show...

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HAHA! But its quite true...I can't tell you how sad my tree looked after its "haircut" it was terrible. Do you take cuttings and grow them into new or existing plants you establish for others?
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I am kinda trying for the cascading look with mine, I've got two main branches that where always there and I'm working on a third by pruning most of the shoots to try and force a third offset branch. Its kinda funny I purchased the Juniper from an Oriental man who was setup in the parking lot of the tractor store as we where coming home from out of town. He was very knowledgeable and had a large display with lots of awesome looking trees. He had one on top of his van that pretty big and he said it was 35 or 40yrs old (I can't remember now).

While my tree is at work I have this cheap $30 grow lamp unit I bought online that it sits in/under. There is a dish and then an overhead lamp with good lighting for it. All I do is fill the tray up with water whenever its low, don't usually let it try completely. The lamp has a very primitive timer on it but it works well. Basically when you plug it in it will come on that same time every day. When it comes on it comes on dim and gradually gets to full brightness like a sunrise...and the same for sunset. It has I think Fall/winter/sprin/summer settings on it also that I guess change the time the lamp stays on.

I'll get a pic next week, look forward to seeing others who are more experienced than I :P

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Originally Posted by lillyorchid

Also the last reptile show I went to (MARS) there was a stand with a bunch of carnivorous plants and they had these other wide looking hanging "air plants" that were a grayish/green colors that were curly. I forget the name of this kind of plant but I wanted to get one and forgot about it. Now I can' for the life of me find remember what they were called or where to get one at. I'd love to have it in my room!

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Did they look like this?

http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/tro...d-epiphyte.jpg

We used to find those bromeliad things around Miami - they were pretty cool looking things that sort of hung out up in the air growing off of other plants.

Here's two of my Juniper. This guy is 9 years old. We named him Hanzo and he is in need of some shape prunning but I've been letting him grow until I'm sure what I want to do.http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...o/000_0061.jpg

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...o/000_0063.jpg

They looked like this sorta:
http://mgonline.com/Tillandsia_tectorum.jpg

but then had these kind of leaves:
http://www.bio.fsu.edu/greenhouse/teaching_collection/tillandsia/images/Tillandsia_13.jpg

Nice Spaniard, is that the original pot? I've read they should be repotted sometimes. Mine is starting to show roots above the soil and near the surface so I've been thinking about something different for a pot. I've also yet to furtilize which is another thing that I've read should be done (yearly I think?)

There is a whole process you have to follow when repotting a bonsai. I can't remember off the top of my head right now; but they don't always need to be repotted, sometimes pruning the roots and re-potting in the original pot would be fine. Theres actually something you could do with those roots that are growing out the top. You could let some of them grow out and if you put a rock in there or something they will actually grow around the rock and make it part of the tree. You should look around I got a book and I was very imformative, I'm sure google could get you the same thing though.

Fertizing should be done every 3 weeks I think during the growing months of april-sep

what do you use to fertilize? Is there something easy I can just put into the soil like a spike? I was amazed at how much my tree "bushed" out just this summer from being outside 24/7

I bought a bag of fertilizer when I purchased my bonsai and its enough to last me quite a while. The one that I have looks like neon blue sand, and all I have to do is mix a table spoon of it into a gallon of water and let the pot soak in it for 5 minutes. There's no name or anything on it because I think it was specially made by the people I bought my bonsai from. I'm sure you could find something similar online.

They do grow much better when they're outside, when you use a flourescent fixture they say that the tree should get about 12-14 hours of light. Junipers also need a hibernation period that's triggered by colder temps, I think somewhere in the 40-50 degree range. If they don't get this hibernation period they usually grow for 3 years straight then end up dieing. I've got quite a few books so if you have a question let me know and I'll look it up.

I'm hoping I can nurture mine to be around for much longer when I'm long and gone. I have a cheesy vision of me being old and donating my bonsai to an arboretum or something lol

Sorry this took so long, figured since I was taking pics of my office for the other topic I would get a pic of my tree up finally. Probably not the best angle but its still kinda bushy from it's regrowth this summer and I'm only trimming small bits once a week or so to get to a shape I like. Originally the foliage was across the top solid but I trimmed it and am going for some sort of 3-way design...

http://warrenreptiles.com/temp/bonsai.jpg

I have several bonsai plants in my office. The :cens0r::cens0r::cens0r::cens0r:o and Mame.
I got them from my friend. She gave it to my on my birthday.
I even bought some more bonsai plants for my house.
plants for hire