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Geranium as bonsai?

Posted: March 19th, 2014, 5:12 pm
by Drac0
Late last year I took & was given cuttings from a large number of geraniums, purely to grow on for my mother & others. They were all just grouped together in their pots & left to grow for a while. Today I decided to give them a bit of a tidy up as they had been growing a bit while. Along the way I came across the one pictured below.

I had never considered a geranium for bonsai until I spotted this one. Unlike the others, it has grown but remained quite compact, while the trunks/branches have bulked up. The leaves are already small & the flowers are only 15-20mm across (sorry, already trimmed off the dead/dying blooms). I saw it & straight away thought it may work....

Anyone done some geraniums who could provide some pointers or ideas?
Sorry for the poor pics :)
geranium1.jpg
geranium2.jpg
Cheers

Re: Geranium as bonsai?

Posted: March 23rd, 2014, 6:38 pm
by Drac0
Re-potted this little one today, now to let it settle into it's new home. Sorry for the bad pics, I'm working on getting better..... :fc:
geranium03.jpg
geranium04.jpg
Cheers

Re: Geranium as bonsai?

Posted: March 24th, 2014, 3:42 am
by lackhand
I like it. Have no idea how it will go long term, but I'm interested to see. I always appreciate those trying new things, so :clap:

Let us know how it goes.

Re: Geranium as bonsai?

Posted: March 24th, 2014, 8:08 pm
by kcpoole
I have quite a few different ones I use as Accent plants.
Super easy to keep and train. Just cut back hard when you want to reduce in size. As bonsai they probably do not ramify that well, but hey, no harm in trying

Ken

Re: Geranium as bonsai?

Posted: March 25th, 2014, 2:15 am
by Drac0
Good thing with geraniums is you can always cut them back to almost nothing & they will generally recover well. Do it with my mothers all the time when they get straggly in the garden - cut them back to a few inches from the ground & they go again.

The thing I like about this one is it seems the leaves are naturally small, less than 25mm across the widest point. And the flowers are small, forming on very short stalks too. I'll see how it goes in the current pot, but perhaps next year it will go into the ground for a while to get some thickness. With the height I want from it, getting a good base size shouldn't take too long.

Like the idea of using them as accent plants Ken. Might use a few cuttings off this to create some later.

Cheers