Bonsai Diary #1

I am now in possession of an itty bitty tree. Well, it's not a tree, exactly. It's a Grewia occidentalis,a lavender star flower grewia which is more of a shrub, but it's been trained thus far to look like a tree.

I've also acquired a planter, some tropical bonsai soil, and some gravel for the tree. However I do not want to transplant it yet.  I am, with all luck, moving this Thursday. Probably this stress on me is also stress on the tree, so I'm waiting for now. I also want to make sure that it doesn't die. I am notoriously bad at keeping plants.

The aforementioned itty bitty tree

In fact, I've tried to grow a bonsai once before. It was an Australian bottlebrush and the kit I bought required you to grow them from seed. Australian bottlebrush trees don't germinate right away, though. They need to go through a dormancy period of simulated winter. The kit recommended doing this at the coldest part of your refrigerator and for me that happened to be the meat and cheeses drawer. I followed the kit's instructions, and someone in the house knocked it over and scattered the dirt and seeds all over the cheese. They threw everything out out while cleaning out the drawer, and that was the end of that. I killed my bonsai before it even sprouted.

Fortunately this bonsai is already sprouted and fairly tall and, better still, a tropical plant so I don't have to worry about any dormancy period care.

The current plan is to keep the plant watered and keep pruning the dead leaves off and transplant after the move. Then, in a few months, once it's recovered, I can break out the wire and start trying to train it. Considering the plant already has a slight slant to it, I'm planning on aiming for a slanted-style bonsai.

This is assuming the plant survives the week. If it actually does, I'll give it a name.