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Learning How to Care for Bonsai Plants
Written by Kelsey W.
The beautiful bonsai tree is a marvel in miniature with its tiny branches and small size. The delicate art of growing bonsai trees stretches back more than a thousand years to Japan, where the practice started.
The first thing to know about bonsai trees is that they’re not a specific species of tree. Rather, growing a bonsai is essentially growing a tree in a little pot, keeping its features small by pruning and shaping it over time.
There are some species of trees that lend themselves very well to beginner bonsai projects, like the bald cypress, but the important thing to know about bonsai trees is that they do need regular care.
When you welcome a bonsai tree into your home, you’ll need to water it frequently and you may even need to have someone come by your home to care for it if you find yourself leaving on a vacation for a week or two.
Are you ready to try your hand at raising a bonsai tree? Let’s learn a little about this fascinating method of growing a tree and the basics of getting started.
Is It Truly Difficult to Grow a Bonsai Tree?
One of the most important distinctions to make regarding the care of bonsai trees is that they need regular attention, but they’re not really difficult to grow. As long as you get the basics down, you’ll never encounter any surprises while caring for your tree.
Bonsai trees are nothing if not predictable. All you have to do is remember the following rules for care that will guide you throughout the lifespan of your bonsai tree.
The first is:
Never allow your bonsai tree to dry out.
Bonsai trees grow in very small pots, and there isn’t a lot of room for water in those pots. As a consequence, they tend to dry out quickly. If you’re in one of the drier areas of Southern California, you may need to water your bonsai every day!
If your bonsai tree lives outside (sometimes they do), you may need to water your bonsai every single day. If your bonsai resides in your home, you might only need to give it water every few days. Perhaps every other day or every three days.
Getting your watering schedule right is the most important part of bonsai care.
You’ll want to touch the soil and water your bonsai whenever it starts to feel a little dry and make sure you never allow it to dry completely out.
You might water your bonsai every three days during a particularly humid stretch, maybe when the humidity often rises in SoCal in August. Or you might water your bonsai every single day when the Santa Ana winds blow, and the air feels dry and crackly.
The next rule of bonsai care is:
Bonsai soil requires a variety of components.
The soil for your bonsai is actually something you might need to put together from a few different sources. It’s pretty difficult to grow a bonsai by just grabbing some dirt from your yard and putting your bonsai in a little pot with the local soil.
The easiest way to ensure your bonsai has the right dirt is to get a readymade mixture from your garden center. The experts can certainly put a good mixture together for you, and your bonsai should thrive.
However, if you want to take on the responsibility of making your bonsai soil yourself, you’ll need to create a mixture that includes pumice, lava rocks, organic compost, and tiny pieces of gravel. Some bonsai experts also recommend akadam, which is a granular soil that looks like tiny round pieces of clay.
The consistency of the soil should hold onto water enough that the roots of the bonsai never dry out, but the soil shouldn’t suffocate the roots, either. You’ll want to make sure the soil isn’t hard and cakey but rather loose.
The final rule for bonsai care is:
Bonsai trees love food during the growing season.
The traditional growing season for most beginner-friendly bonsai trees is from early spring all the way until the middle of the autumn, and they do like to receive occasional fertilizer throughout that entire period.
The good news is that you don’t need to do anything complicated with the fertilizer. A simple liquid fertilizer that’s designed for bonsai plants is completely sufficient. If you have a bonsai tree that has a traditional growing period, you’ll just need to fertilize them once a month to keep them happy.
If you try your hand at raising a tropical bonsai, your bonsai will have a growing season between fall and spring and require weekly fertilizer during that time. If you grow a conifer bonsai, you’ll want to fertilize every week while the bonsai is actively growing and then reduce that frequency to once a month in the winter.
Where Do Bonsai Trees Enjoy Living? Outside? Inside?
Bonsai tree placement is a pretty important part of ensuring your bonsai gets to enjoy the happiest life possible at your home. Can you grow your bonsai in a pot outside in Southern California? Is it possible to grow your bonsai inside?
If you’ve ever visited The Huntington Library and its famous botanical gardens near Pasadena, you may have walked through the Japanese garden, which has several amazing bonsai trees growing outside. From seeing these trees, you might assume that all bonsai trees can grow outside.
Indeed, as long as your bonsai gets to enjoy about six hours of sunlight every day, you can grow it inside or outside. You may need to move your bonsai tree when the sun’s arc across the sky changes or when the temperature starts to change.
Bonsai trees love the sun, but ten hours of direct sunlight in the middle of a blisteringly hot Southern California summer day is a little much for the little trees to handle, even for outdoor-loving bonsai species like pine trees.
Likewise, if your window starts to get less than five or six hours of sunlight in the winter, you might need to move your bonsai so it receives additional light when the days are shorter.
If you’re a bonsai beginner, the easiest place to grow your bonsai is in a pot inside your home in a bright window. A south-facing window is ideal, and you might not need to move your bonsai at all throughout the year.
Do Bonsai Trees Need Repotting?
You might assume that bonsai trees never need repotting because they’re meant to stay small and miniature in their little pots. However, even bonsai trees will eventually enjoy a larger pot. It’s just that you won’t need to increase the size of the pot by a significant amount.
Young bonsai trees may need a new pot every two to three years, while older trees may enjoy their pots for up to five years before requiring a new one. The best time to give your bonsai a new pot is in the spring or right before the growing season for your particular species of bonsai tree.
Some Last Tips for Keeping Your Bonsai Happy
Can you over-water a bonsai tree?
While bonsai trees do love water, they can become waterlogged. Yes, you can overwater a bonsai tree. Visit them regularly for watering, but don’t overdo it.
Do you have to prune a bonsai tree?
Shaping a bonsai tree into a shape you like is part of the fun, and you should get used to trimming your bonsai tree two to four times a year.
What species of trees can be bonsai trees?
Ficus trees and Chinese elms are appropriate as beginner bonsai trees. Japanese maples are a beautiful option, too. Juniper trees are another popular option, but remember that they like outdoor life more than indoor life.
Can bonsai trees really last a lifetime?
Bonsai trees can outlive their human companions, and the oldest known bonsai tree is estimated at more than 1,000 years old! That bonsai tree lives in a museum in Milan, Italy.
Learn More About Growing Plants with Green Thumb Nursery
There are so many ways to increase your knowledge of plants and gardening, and growing a bonsai is definitely one of the more advanced projects you can take on as a plant parent. Get help from Green Thumb Nursery when you have questions about your plants, and let us help you choose the best plants for your home, yard, or balcony.
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