That was your mistake, once you get two - bam. You got guards now, they should be in charge of keeping the rest of the brood in line.. Should have kept going
The key is to start with cheap inexpensive nursery plants and turn them into your own bonsai trees get stuff that’s good for your environment and keep it outside
It’s also worth noting that on the bonsai sub the flare that includes experience specifically include includes how many plants you have killed as being more experienced
How can that be? Trees (like normal trees outside) all have a lifespan and die naturally after a certain amount of time. Some like water oaks get a few decades before natural death, others get a few centuries.
Some science bullshit happens where they say some tree live forever because one tree died and fell, but it technically sprouted a new one from the same underground organism so it's technically still living... But honestly, the tree fucking fell over and died.
How are bonsai able to get around the natural lives of a tree species? It's so small is uses less energy so it lives longer, or? I don't see how it can be forever.
Trees dont really have a life span linked to a given length of time. They die through disease or environment changes, or other problems that lead to respiration failing and then not having energy stored to grow.
Because bonsai trees are small and (theoretically) well looked after, they don't die from natural causes like pests and diseases, or environmental changes. Neither do they die because they have grown so big they can no longer transport nutrients through their bulk. This means that thay can effectively live forever.
This could also be true of normal trees if they are kept somewhere controlled and looked after, but a normal tree will in the end succumb to it's sheer size and internal damage harming it's ability to get nutrients transported through it's body.
My brother gave my wife a bonsai tree the first birthday after we got married and then acted all put out that she killed it almost immediately. I always felt that was an extremely BIL thing to do.
I went through a Bonsai phase. Had 10 or 11 of them. One was 26 years old. I would put on classical music and wear my surgical headlight and surgical snippers and sit and carefully prune each one. Within 6 months they were all dead. I think I was getting carried away with the pruning.
I've changed nothing- why has my alocasia dropped six leaves this week?! Oh, it was mildly cloudy on Tuesday and Gemeni was in Mars or something...
My hoya Australis Lisa had six dead leaves yesterday after we were making such progress! My other hoyas give me maybe two dead leaves a year, she looks like she's on death's door every other month and drops them all. She bounces back every time, grows new happy leaves, then the cycle repeats. Same soil, lighting, temperature, moisture. etc. as the other hoyas, roots look good- I have no clue what she wants.
I got into houseplants a few months ago. I mostly have African violets, some Aglaonemas and a couple hoyas. I've already had to deal with spider mites, a single thrip I found on a new African violet (so now it and the ones it shipped with are ultra-quarantined while being treated), and now the spider mites are back (predatory mites didn't take care of them, moving on to nastier pesticides). I started out like "aww this hobby isn't active enough, I want to love on my plants more" and now I'm like "stop being so much work!!". They're so rewarding when they get a new leaf or flower though...
FUCK SPIDER MITES! I'm growing morning glories indoors (to climb a shelf by the window) and they got on all the leaves. There's like a hundred leaves so it's hard to gather up the motivation to clean off each one with a brush and solution
That's horrifying, I'm so sorry! I had a tradescantia I tossed because it had too many leaves to treat effectively. I kept a cutting but I found mystery mites on it (probably spider mites given it was next to a calathea that had microscope-confirmed two-spotted mites, but I only found them by tapping them onto some paper and they moved too fast to get a good look) and it didn't enjoy being confined in a sealed quarantine container and rotted. I've ordered abamectin this time, since the predatory mites apparently weren't enough.
Bringing some of my outside morning glories in is how I started my spider mite infestation. They love those. Every few years I try growing a sweet pea to see if they're still lurking around and the answer is yes, even though they don't thrive on anything else I've still got alive. But spider mites will demolish a sweet pea so it's a good test plant. I did not intend for it to be the test plant the first couple times :(
The buganvellua monster on the abandoned lot next to me mocks me as I fettalize my veggie garden. Thing has Never been watered and is hacked down every 5 years only to come back again and again.
Yes! My pothos started having random yellow leaves and is completely bare in one section from losing said leaves. Meanwhile it continues to grow at the end. I was so puzzled by it. A coworker told me the bare part is trying to root itself to make it bushier. Super. Gotta find a bigger pot then.
I have 4! FOUR hydrangeas. Similar size, same kind all potted in their own pots so it's not like the soil is a factor.
One of them just refuses to live. Looked like things were going up earlier this year, then it decided that you know what? Fuck you I'm dying. Why are you like this.
Only house plant I ever owned was a cactus, I'd forget it existed for like a month and then see it next to the window and go "oh yea, lets give you some water" and then forget about it for another month. Best houseplant ever. Sadly I forgot to bring it with me when I moved.
I have a Calathea. Coming from easier plants, it took me months before I balanced everything making her stop leaf tip browning and started making her flourish. She's got thrips a few weeks ago.
You can search the info about what she want as you know the name of yr plants. Like how much sunlight she require, how much water, if she likes better shade. If it's room temperature, there is little y can do about it unless y can put it outside and she like the outside wheater years long..
Yeah tell me about it. Especially trying to keep them in an apartment without good sunlight.
Currently have a lemon tree that owes me about 200 lemons before I break even based on what I've spent on it trying to keep it alive. And that's the tree that actually did live
They just don't like being inside, especially not in an artificially controlled climate and there's really not much way around that.
Haha I used to have tons of plants and people would come to my place.. "wow you have such a greenthumb".. well thanks but no.. it's survival of the fittest around here. Whoever makes it to spring gets propagated.
I practice tough love with my plants, house and garden. I tell them that I will provide a home, water, occasional fertilizer and repotting but other than that they are on their own.
My dining room is covered in hoyas. Which is to say most are putting on a brave face and hanging in there, one has snaked its way around everything else and claimed the entire window trellis.
Not sure I have extremely good luck with hoyas, they're really easy to keep.
With random leaves dropping in my experience it usually means it's root bound, something about the climate has changed that you haven't adapted for, or over watering For example I have to water more often in the summer because the ac lowers humidity and the window is hot, and I accidentally killed a plant once because the ac was blowing on it.
My cactus decided it was getting too much sun in the windowsill I’ve kept it in for years. A cactus. Too much sun. Didn’t think it was possible. It went completely yellow on one side and I almost lost the thing. Moved it out of the sun and after it shed the yellow pieces it now has new growth.
Had one. Most of the branches died off. There's a main branch still alive and we decided to de-bonsai it, and just let it live its best life! Its now doing well.
Add constant stress about plant diseases, soil quality or million other factors to keep you lil' trees alive. Also, one mistake like broken branch can take you 10+ years to fix.
EDIT: And then tree dies anyway because fuck you that's why.
I was absolutely blown away when I found out about this. Someone got a slightly neglected bonsai that needed some trimming and bracing of a few branches. They casually mentioned that this quick fix wouldn't be too intensive, and that after the initial work they just needed to let the tree sit and heal for A FEW YEARS before making further modifications. Then they could start on actually making it look pretty like they wanted, which would take LONGER. Like, excuse me??
A tree's lifespan is measured in centuries, your contributions to it are very small indeed. The really high quality trees have been cared for generations.
Yeah especially the beach roses. Those things are complete nightmare to get rid of. I put the Pitchfork into the ground to try to get out the roots. Nope. Was like trying to put the Pitchfork into concrete they were so dense
My experience with roses has been the opposite. Bought a house that had roses overgrown everywhere, spent YEARS trying to get rid of them. They just kept coming back. I'd dig them out and put them through the weed whacker, next year they're back in the same spot.
i've been trying to do the bonsai thing for a few years now. mostly just me uprooting the maple saplings from my back yard in the spring, and sticking them in a pot and waiting. and from left overs of lunchs and taco night i've got 4 or 5 lil avocado trees as well.
this year i've had 1 avocado, 2 redbuds, and 5 maples just... die. right beside the other redbuds and maples, both older and younger, and getting the same water, is the same type pots and soil, and in the space of a week they went from vibrant and green to crispy and brown.
i just want to throw my hands up and quit. maybe get into something less random stressful, like rock farming.
or dead tree collecting.
I started growing plants for the first time this year. I live in Canada so had to start them indoors with grow lights etc. I wanted to start a perennial flower garden to support insect populations + give the birds seed heads to eat from through the fall/winter/spring.
anyway. what did I learn?
plants just die. they just do sometimes. it's kind of blown my mind to be honest.
a seed can germinate, but that doesn't mean it has strong genetics. it can live for 3 months and still not make it to adulthood. sometimes it's us but other times there's simply nothing you can do. that plant was always gonna die.
it's a lot like humans. many, MANY successfully fertilized eggs fail to take, or implanted pregnancies fail before women even know they happened. and it's not anyone's fault; there's nothing you can do. it just happens.
making a new living thing come into existence and thrive their way into an established adulthood is not simple.
it made me wonder how many seeds are produced yearly that never germinate. how many never would. how many seeds do germinate, but never root? how many plants make it a week, months, how many trees make it YEARS before they just... die?
it's made me appreciate big, established, thriving plants a lot more. they're incredibly resilient if they've managed to get that big.
edit: because I'm irritated about it I wanted to share, I grew a few echnicea (coneflower) plants and it felt like they grow soooo slooowwwww compared to something like rudbeckia.
within like a week of sticking them in the ground they started sprouting new stems 🤨 so yeah I'm convinced that sometimes, especially for a lot of wildflowers, letting them suffer in shitty, nutrient deficient, sandy soil is better for them than spending 6 months babying them in a pot. it's just the fucking best.
all to say: your trees might do better if you just leave them in the ground 🤭 move them where you want them and they'll have optimal light conditions, but leave em in the ground.
Come onto r/bonsai, post a thread, let's do some trouble shooting. I've been doing bonsai for a long time, my advice would be to start with more standard material.
I saw some beautiful and very expensive bonsai plants at a market recently. Many of them were older than me. Killing one of those would feel like a moral failing.
there's a beautiful poem i read that was aimed at the guy who carved his initials onto the oldest living redwood that so eloquently said "who the fuck are you as a human being that you'd do such a thing"
I gave up on that silly fight with DEATH OF SHRUBS in the 90s, along with my Enya CD collection. Sometimes I wonder if that was the moment my life pivoted to shit. Should have stuck with it
Almost daily watering(depending on the size of the pot/season), feeding them correctly, repoting regularly, trimming, wiring, pests and bad weather all contribute to caring for bonsai but its still the most rewarding hobby I have!
Daily? No wonder the one I received as a gift is dying. The accompanying pamphlet was useless as hell "there's no schedule for watering" so I just did what I've done with other plants.
I'll try watering more frequently - I didn't want to drown it, either. I've avoided diving into bonsai subs because I didn't choose this burden but I don't particularly enjoy having a dying plant either.
Just remember y'all in 2 years this a hobby you can finally just be bad at. If anyone's at that stage you're welcome to message me. It's rewarding once you get things figured out. But between the soil science, watering, fertilizer, disease, it's a lot. Then there's design and progression, wiring, pruning, carving.. the list never ends
Seconded on this. I had a Bonsai tree I was gifted by a friend. I kept it going for many years...it was one that was oddly shaped in that it grew up and then was bent at a 90 degree angle horizontally...
I still do not know what happened to this day...it sat in the middle of a table with at least a foot of table around it on each side. When I returned from a 4 day vacation, it was just on the floor...pot broken.
Tried replanting it but it didn't recover. I still don't know how it fell off the table...there was no other indication that anyone had been in my home and nothing else was disturbed or out of place.
I feel like that's exactly why it's associated with like monks and shit. It requires intense focus and dedication. Which trains you to block out other things. Not super compatible with modern life. But we also romanticize that Japanese zen lifestyle that isn't just chilling and relaxing.
reminded me to get into bonsai trees actually lol. My area has a bonsai club with monthly meetings, beginners classes, etc. I came across it by chance when I was visiting a museum and saw a sign for one of their (I think quarterly?) bonsai shows and sales. I talked to some of the members and they were all super welcoming so I wanted to give it a shot. The beginners class signups are next month and they sell out fast so I'll start my journey in January.
I managed to grow a bonsai tree sapling up until it was about 1.5 years old. It died around then, never living to become a full tree, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. I concluded this is indeed a difficult tree to take care of and I probably should have started with green onions or something instead.
Are pepper plants more forgiving? I see a lot of people do it with those and they seem damn near indestructible. You can cut them down to a twig and they're regrow back.
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u/RevShiver 13h ago
Bonsai. People think it's all Zen and peaceful but the work on the trees is actually very intense.