Pleased to meet you!

Hi all,

My name's Ricardo and I'm a horti-holic... And with the terrible joke out of the way I'd like to introduce myself as a recently turned indoor gardening enthusiast with little to no horticultural experience other than my trying and failings (though I've had some successes to be pleased about) so I hope you will all put up with my constant questions.

I'm originally from London, but recently moved to Budapest, Hungary and couriered my current collection of plants with me. Some were quite happy with the movers and others quite evidently showed their protest (More on that later, though)

I live in an apartment so due to limited outdoor space, save for a few herbs and flowers out on the balcony I keep most of my plants indoors in a room with one West facing window, not ideal so I'm supplementing light with two 300w LED panels.

My main area of interest is in trees, and bonsai art and I have acquired what I like to think is quite an interesting and unusual collection of trees which are as follows:

Established trees:-

• Monkey puzzle (5x 1 y/o seedlings)
• Ginkgo Biloba (2x)
• Dawn redwood (3x)
• Silver Wattle (2x)
• English oak (1x)
• Lebanon oak (1x)
• Cyprus oak (1x)
• Black walnut (2x)

Currently in the seed tray (fingers crossed!):-

• 10x Kumquat seeds
• 10x Lemon tree seeds
• 10x Japanese maple seeds
• 10x White sakura seeds
• 20x Rainbow eucalyptus seeds
• 30x misc. pine from locally foraged seeds

As well as various unidentified cacti which I will not doubt place in the ID forum later for you all to have at.

Now as I said earlier I'm interested in bonsai and I'm aware that ideally, trees and indoors aren't exactly eggs and bacon but I feel like with enough care I could manage to be successful with it, as the lamps I've purchased really are quite astonishing, and the room where my plants are mainly kept experiences quite natural temperature swings as the insulation in there is shite. Was going to fix it but actually based on my research, for the sake of it being my gardening room I think I'll leave it as it is, as Hungary has very clearly defined seasons. The air in the room is pretty dry but hoping to fix that with some rocks on trays of water.

I'm hoping that someone with experience in caring for bonsai can explain to me the process of miniaturisation. Not just pruning a tree to keep it a certain size, but how exactly you get those bonsai trees where even the leaves, flowers and fruit are scaled down much smaller than is natural. I am particularly keen to start practicing on my triplet of oaks, will make a formal thread for this later but the trees I have, have very large leaves despite being quite small seedlings themselves and would be interested to know how to begin pinching and pruning so that they eventually scale down. Look out for my thread on this later. Promise it will be shorter than this one.

For those of you that read all this, thank you for bearing with my first mammoth post I hope that was a thorough enough introduction. For those of you that didn't?

TL;DR - Hi guys my name's Ric, I like bonsai. I want to grow bonsai but how do I make the leaves all small and cute like? Cheers

 

Hi Ric, welcome to GC

I have a book on bonsai somewhere as I was going to have a go and haven't got around to it yet so I may be able to help you but I should imagine there will be someone along soon who has had first hand experience and can offer you assistance.

Good luck.

 

Hi...welcome to GC

 

Thank you for the greetings! Any advice at all is welcomed, even if not specifically regarding bonsai but more about just raising plants and trees indoors as I understand it's a hard task but I've got the bug for it and hopefully I can make it work.

 

hello and welcome :-)

 

Hi PuzzledMonkey and welcome.

I myself have done Bonsai for some 20 years both in the UK and here in Portugal. Mine were always outdoors in the UK but due to the heat here they are in an 'outdoor' living room ... an in/out situation in the shade.

You have some nice established trees and hopefully your seedlings will come along. Photos would be nice.

May I suggest you do a Bonsai search here and you should come up with all the information you need.

 

Hi Victoria,

You most certainly can expect some pictures very soon! Spent the morning taking some very nice ones that I'll post in a more formal thread in the trees topic later. I do hope you stumble across it, I have found some very relevant and helpful information on pinching and pruning techniques but would still love some tailored advice that's specific to my collection.

In the mean time if there are any pictures of some of your own works I'd love to see them!

 

Welcome to GC Ric. I know absolutely nothing about Bonsai so won't be much help to you, sorry! You've certainly set yourself a challenge rearing trees in an apartment, good luck!

 

Welcome

 

Here's my favourie at the moment ...

 

Welcome to GC Puzzled Monkey Enjoy...

 

That is such an amazing shrub???

 

Hi @PuzzledMonkey Im new to the forum too ... What a fantastic hobby you have.... Wish I was that talented, really looking forward to viewing your photos

 

Very beautiful @Victoria What species of tree is this? I love to see bonsai when they are in full bloom, always so spectacular to see.

@Apple Blossom I don't know if I'd quite call myself talented. Just dabbling around at the moment in the hopes of some day being realising that I have in fact become quite talented :D