Cutting taken on : June 21, 2016
This is a 1 yr progression of a ficus mini bonsai from cutting, growing hydroponically in a bottle cap. The roots in water are sacrificial and will be eventually cut off but they give me a much faster growth than possible in my soil-mix of the same volume.
Periodic pruning of the water roots & the Kratky Hydroponics technique have resulted in a dense root structure that can absorb more nutrition, when fed correctly & regularly. It is fun, educational & something new to me. But hydroponic growing does need more maintenance than traditional growing. The biggest kick I get is from repeatedly proving wrong the popular wisdom that trees do not like wet roots ! My trees roots thrive in water !
The perforations on the bottle cap allow multiple roots to escape into the water below in the bottle. Traditionally, a bonsai is allowed to grow big in a large pot or ground and then reduced in size to fit into a smaller pot. In this experiment of mine, I grew the tree in a tiny pot from the very beginning. Since I live in an apartment, i have very limited space & sunlight. So, by keeping the bonsai size small, I can have more plants in the same limited space. After getting tired of frequently watering such a tiny pot, I decided to convert all my bottle cap bonsai into self watering setups in Feb 2017. And it proved to be a really great decision ! Both me & the trees are happier now :-) I just replace water every Sunday & add some liquid NPK to it. The soil in the cap is also fertilized with diluted liquid NPK, roughly once in 2 weeks.
I usually collect the green stem cuttings of this ficus and root them easily in water. That is my preferred method for mini bonsai projects. For thicker trunks, air layering is a far better & easier technique than taking traditional cuttings, not only for this but for other species too. Read next part.
More Bottle Cap Bonsai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sW2C9Qk6fU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maztHAeJ1NA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfQRq0M-zyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVuFm3yvNyU
More resources on mini bonsai (mame bonsai) :
http://instantbonsaiforeveryone.blogspot.in/search/label/mini%20bonsai
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