Species: Melaleuca Styphelioides “Prickly Paperbark”
Trunk: 8mm
Source: Plants Plus
Cost : $3.75
My Skill Level: Low
Once again any advice or suggestions welcomed and thanks to Rory for this
[Natural] Melaleuca Styphelioides - Kieranrulz
- Kieranrulz
- Aussie Bonsai Fan
- Posts: 50
- Joined: July 1st, 2018, 4:54 pm
- Favorite Species: Plum
- Bonsai Age: 1
- Bonsai Club: BSA
- Location: Sydney
- Contact:
[Natural] Melaleuca Styphelioides - Kieranrulz
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Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God & destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that the Nature he is destroying is this God he is worshiping - Hubert Reeves
- Kieranrulz
- Aussie Bonsai Fan
- Posts: 50
- Joined: July 1st, 2018, 4:54 pm
- Favorite Species: Plum
- Bonsai Age: 1
- Bonsai Club: BSA
- Location: Sydney
- Contact:
Re: [Natural] Melaleuca Styphelioides - Kieranrulz
April update
Early January I planted this into a grow box with my other entry. I live in an apartment with a small balcony with very little room left and was hoping this would help bulk it up. This grow box took about 40ltrs of native soil I got from a hardware store. At first it dropped its leaves then started pushing out new ones.
February 2nd I thought I’d chop it down to encourage lower growth and it did. I added some wire to get some movement into the trunk but took it off again shortly after because I didn’t have much growth and thought it’d be better to wait till it had some branches to determine how to shape.
I had a big problem with getting the watering right as this box only has 2 drainage holes. It was pretty much constantly wet. The trees seemed to be okay with that but the fungus gnats were in the thousands. I used potato slices to get rid of the larvae and yellow sticky pads to lower the numbers. It helped a lot but it was still a pain in the butt with all these guys flying around. I didn’t water for about 4 weeks to get it dry out and purchased a moisture reader so now I can water when needed. It’s about once a week to once a fortnight that I’m watering now.
So the next issue I had was that I hadn’t turned the tree in 3 months so All the growth was heading in the one direction. I turned the box around late March and it’s since starting to get better.
I was thinking of moving it into a colander then planting the whole thing so I can turn that without having to lift the heavy box which only gets me 2 directions instead of 4 or more. I’m just not sure if I should just wait until next spring to do that or if I try to dig it out with the soil around it and sort of slip pot it into the colander. Thoughts on this are encouraged thanks.
Early January I planted this into a grow box with my other entry. I live in an apartment with a small balcony with very little room left and was hoping this would help bulk it up. This grow box took about 40ltrs of native soil I got from a hardware store. At first it dropped its leaves then started pushing out new ones.
February 2nd I thought I’d chop it down to encourage lower growth and it did. I added some wire to get some movement into the trunk but took it off again shortly after because I didn’t have much growth and thought it’d be better to wait till it had some branches to determine how to shape.
I had a big problem with getting the watering right as this box only has 2 drainage holes. It was pretty much constantly wet. The trees seemed to be okay with that but the fungus gnats were in the thousands. I used potato slices to get rid of the larvae and yellow sticky pads to lower the numbers. It helped a lot but it was still a pain in the butt with all these guys flying around. I didn’t water for about 4 weeks to get it dry out and purchased a moisture reader so now I can water when needed. It’s about once a week to once a fortnight that I’m watering now.
So the next issue I had was that I hadn’t turned the tree in 3 months so All the growth was heading in the one direction. I turned the box around late March and it’s since starting to get better.
I was thinking of moving it into a colander then planting the whole thing so I can turn that without having to lift the heavy box which only gets me 2 directions instead of 4 or more. I’m just not sure if I should just wait until next spring to do that or if I try to dig it out with the soil around it and sort of slip pot it into the colander. Thoughts on this are encouraged thanks.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God & destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that the Nature he is destroying is this God he is worshiping - Hubert Reeves