AusBonsai

Hi guys

I just wanted to post this bougainvillea cutting , it was a tree growing outside my mates fence I decided to just cut it just below ground level and managed to get some nice taper and flare at the base.
It has really good movement taper and a natural strip of dead wood up the trunk.
I had some bags of potting mix from k mart I was using to sift over my newly seeded lawn and saved the chunky bits of decomposing park to use as the soil for this tree.

Pics will follow

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So it turned out the soil I used was infested with fungus gnats and I was concerned that the gnat larvae would eat the cuttings new emerging roots so after a bit of Research I decided to create a physical barrier to stop the gnats getting in and out of the soil breaking there life cycle . I collected some corse sand from the beach and placed a layer of sand on top of a fly screen over the soil . And also used a tray on the bottom filled with sand and a fly screen .
The white powdery stuff is diatomaceous earth , the little buggers are still hovering around the pot but they definitely don't like the diatomite

So after 6 weeks tonight I lifted the pot from the tray and it had heaps of roots coming out the holes.
So happy days bougainvillea really are bulletproof.

Do fungus gnats really eat roots?

Hi Paulneil , don't know anything about fungus gnats .However very impressed with that trunk you have to work on ,should be a ripper in a few years time. Cheers John

Paulneill wrote:
Do fungus gnats really eat roots?

Hello Paulneill,

The below images were photographed from an old Hort. text book from the 1980's. Not too sure whether the chemical treatments would still be recommended today.
The images were still in my computer from helping another member early last year.
Hope this helps,
Kevin

I've had them before, the tree suffered. From my experience if you have fungas gnats the mix is staying far too wet.

Cheers,
Pearcy.

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I reckon I'm all over the fungus gnats issue , well at least taming the situation. I can believe how invasive they are , that layer of sand idea is legendary. I'm not too concerned after seeing the roots.

Here’s an update on these 2 snot trees.

Hate that photos never do the trees justice.
These 2 are looking good, it’s slow progress up here in the pilbera as nothing grows here with the extreme heat. I miss bonsai[DISAPPOINTED FACE]


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They look like they're coping well with the heat. Guess they'd need some pretty thick shadecloth to survive Summer?

Think that's the bougie they call "smarty pants."

Yea mate they handle the heat well, just don’t put on much growth. I don’t use a shade cloth and I don’t think it would make much of a difference. The trunks don’t burn. They are bulletproof
I think they are called pink pixie