AABC - GARDENIAS

[MelaQuin]

GARDENIAS
Taken from a demonstration by Chris Di Nola and Clinton Nesci at the AABC Convention May 2010.

Gardenias when young are pretty useless as bonsai. The roots are fragile. The are better when they are about 4-5 years old and they are better to work with when they have hardened off.

Gardenia is a tropical tree and likes full sun and moist soil. The branches are fairly flexible and easy to work. Stock plants usually have a lot of bonsai potential and working them with wire you can get interesting shapes.

With a collected Gardenia but back to bare wood and treat as you would a fig. Dig the tree in warm weather and best after flowering. When the roots are disturbed they can drop leaves but they will regrow. You can defoliate gardenias to get some back shooting but don’t defoliate every year.

Radikens don’t make good bonsai because they can’t handle the cultivation but larger leaf varieties can.

Feed with osmocote or another slow release at repotting and use an organic fertiliser after 4-5 months.

Gardenias flower in November to December and will spot flower at other times.

Question: what causes buds to drop?
Response: Usually drying out, they are very sensitive to drying out and can drop buds and leaves if this happens.

Lifespan: As long as you keep up their vigour they will last a long time. You don’t feed them or keep them in a protected position they will weaken and get sparse. Don’t let them grow out but keep pruning to keep them dense with full foliage pads.

Yellow Leaves – this is a nitrogen problem. They are slow growing so people forget to feed them and they don’t like that. If you use a balanced fertiliser and fertilise regularly the yellowing won’t occur.

Black Spot – If the plant has scale you will get Black Sooty Mould. In full sun this should not happen tho a less than robust gardenia is subject to scale and all that follows.

Jin and shari – flowering trees don’t normally have jins and shari; the wood is not hard enough as well and it will rot easily.

Root Prune – The first prune do not take too much root; reduce by half and keep the root ball intact. Once the tree is established remove about a third of the root ball at each repot. If you are using a different soil mix to the one the tree is in don’t bare root the gardenia. Remove what soil you can and then when you pot it infiltrate the new/different soil throughout the existing soil mass rather than removing all the old soil. The tree will be more likely to happily survive if you observe this practice.

All shrubby types grow more robustly than ground cover gardenias.