Balconytomato™ flower

Start the red yummy tomatoes flowing we have a flower!

Michaelsan Bonsai June update

The bonsai has been filling in quite a bit so I decided to take a new picture, the shape is no better but it does look fairly healthy, there is some tiny, very hard to see moss growing on soil, I have been misting it every day.


Here's the May picture for reference

Balconytomato™ Blowing the budget

So I blew the budget a bit and replanted 2 of the tomatoes in new pots

2 New pots $2(£1)
1 20 liter Bag of "organic" soil $0.99(50p)
2 Foam plates $0.20(10p)

This crappy picture is of three of the tomatoes now lined up on the back balcony where there is a lot more hours of light a day, 2 were replanted yesterday, you can see by comparing the size of the last pictures they are growing already woohoo.


In this picture the front tomato is at the top amongst all the flower pots I planted yesterday, the giant geranium is in the foreground, yes the deck is dirty and has to be swept when the rain is over.

Amazing Balconytomato™

Ok clearly bonsai is going to take years and probably end in heartbreak so I started another project that might bring some quicker satisfaction(or disappointment) to me and the blog, hope Petersan doesn't mind. I am keeping the spirit of the bonsai and making it cheap and experimental.

Goal: grow a sweet sweet tomato, the fruit of love, a divine tomato buddha himself would enjoy snacking on. This is the stuff dreams are made of.
Time: 7:30am Thursday May 22nd, partly cloudy, 15c
Location: My balcony
Cost: $2.10

Materials
1 flat of 9 'Pink Girl' tomato plants $2(£1)
2 plastic bags(previously enjoyed, one owner)
1 flower pot left over from last year
1 pot my bonsai came in
1 bunch of soil, some left over, some from a bag i was given
1 foam plate $0.10(5p)

Here is the flat of Pink Girl tomatoes from Reno Depot


Here is 3 potted on the front balcony, 1 will be moved to the back if the other back one survives


Here is one potted on the back balcony, it gets very hot on the back so there is a foam plate under the pot. A male blackbird who was guarding a nest across the yard protested loudly to me about putting the pot there, I was not deterred.

Wiring

Ok here's a rather poor photo of my attempt at wiring

Picture Update.

How my bonsai currently looks:-

It's Aliiiiiiiive!!!

Normally I wouldn't bother posting these images, but as they show a growth spurt here they are!

Humidified!!!

After the drying out scare I decided to try and help the survival of the tree by :-

1. checking the soil to make sure it's not dried out
2. regular branch checks to remove dead branches
3. I made a humidification tray

So how did I do it? I took one catering plastic tray, I half filled it with large-ish fishtank gravel I had laying around added water to the level of the gravel then placed the tree on it's tray on top of the gravel.

You can't see from the images but there is a lot of new buds appearing on the tree which is a good sign  of life, and there has been some major hacking of dead branches to help promote growth.

Emergency on planet Bonsai

OK been a while since I last posted (I'm surprised michaelsan hasn't whined at me as I whined at him to blog with me on this project lol), so a quick update of where I've learned stuff. Don't let the soil dry out! OMG I was so busy concentrating on the issues higher in the tree I forgot the basics of everything that everything that goes up is supported at the bottom! I'd managed to let the soil dry out completely so having been paying attention to the leafs I noticed they were drying out which lead to a panic of thinking I'd killed it (again).

I regain some composure and decided to water the bonsai, I placed the tree in a bowl and filled the bowl with water until it was half way up the trees' pot and left it for what felt like a few hours (though in truth it was probably only one) until the top soil was damp to the touch, I then took the tree from the bowl and left it on a side to drain off the excess water before returning it to it's place of pride.

Stringing it up

I stuck a guide string on the bonsai to try to start it going on a curve, should be done in ten years or so lol

here's an updated picture May 5th, has some growth

Second Bonsai Project

I volunteered to join Petersan on his bonsai project. Instead of a pre-made bonsai I will be using a sapling and carving it up, three reasons for this 1. I have no clue where to get a bonsai 2. it makes for two different approaches to grow a bonsai 3. it means we have both a deciduous and coniferous tree going to compare. I went to a couple of garden centers and chose my victim carefully, I settled on a Chamaecyparis pisifera(Japanese False Cypress) of the type 'Boulevard' from Walmart for $7(£3.50). It was a wise choice because it turns out they make these into bonsai!

Impatiently I ripped it out of it's home and started hacking at it, turns out these things have a ton of roots that I mostly chopped off, besides not knowing where to find a bonsai I also had no clue where to find a bonsai pot so an old plastic dish had to do. The following picture shows the repotted tree minus much of it's roots and foliage

Cute but definitely not the level of tree mayhem I was imagining. I abandoned all sense of caring about this tree's well being and started really hacking away at it MOUHAHA! In two sessions I carved away most of it, then cleaned it up fairly neatly, this thing is either going to be a bonsai or die a horrible death soon.

One more picture, I made a concept in photoshop of how I'd like to train it but it will have to grow some before I start hacking at it again

Reference Shots 28/04

OK I'm starting a weekly reference shots post so that I can refer back and see if I'm killing the tree or helping it grow. 

Expect more dull pics in the future.

New growth

In the midst of the death and felling of leafs from the bonsai, I've noticed new growth! I've not killed it like I was thinking Hurrah! over a week and I've not killed it... C'mon!!!

Misting

Ok it's been a couple of days since I originally posted about my Bonsai, well since then, I've trimmed some of the dead branches off the tree, I've also started a practice of misting the foliage when I get up in the morning... the Bonsai currently looks like this :-

The Butchered Bonsai

Ok, I'm trying to get a little more creative and a little more responsible in my old(er) age and as such when I saw a Bonsai on sale for £4 ($8ish USD)I thought to myself 'ok that will take some looking after' thus creating some responsibility for myself.

So I purchased it, and took it home... My first task was to try and identify what genus the Bonsai was from. Through l33t g00g1e 5ki11z I decided it was a Chinese Elm.

I then tasked myself with what I needed to do to make sure this tree survives (I'm a plant killer I can't keep Cacti I'm that bad!) as it is a sad little Bonsai, it hadn't been well grown in the farm, to maintain the size the main trunk had been chopped about 2 inches above the soil which any true Bonsai enthusiast would see as mistreatment of the tr4ee (tbh I do too but I didn't have 12 years to grow my own at this size for the same price).

Looking into the first steps of getting a Bonsai home, the general consensus was to re-pot water and put in a generally shady locale. Well that was achievable so I got some Bonsai compost (I also picked up some snips and some Bonsai nutrients) and set about re-potting the tree.


So here it is after repotting :D