Garden and indoor bonsai. Conditions of detention .

In temperate latitudes, cultivation of indoor bonsai is very difficult, so these plants, as a rule, are short-lived. More successful cultivation of garden bonsai contained in the open air.

Garden bonsai suffer if they are kept at room for a long time, as the room air is too dry and warm for them. When keeping plants in fresh air, problems rarely occur. In summer, the plant should be shaded from direct sunlight, and in winter should be covered from snow (rain) and wind. Fruit and flowering bonsai for a few hours put on a well-lit place. The garden bonsai includes the Chinese juniper, the cypress-pea fruit, the Kempfer larch, the Japanese cryptomeria and the common pine, as well as the Japanese maple (Japanese) and gray elm (Dzelkovo serrate). Virtually any hardy plant can be grown as a garden bonsai.

The idea of ​​indoor bonsai was born not in the East, but in the West - in Germany. Room bonsai are more endurance than garden. However, they require high humidity, so plants should be kept away from heating appliances. Room bonsai fear drafts.

Conditions of maintenance - air humidity.

As a rule, the humidity in the urban area is insufficient for bonsai. How can this problem be solved?

The most expensive, but not the most effective way to establish the optimum humidity of the air - an electric humidifier. Humidifiers have a number of disadvantages: large size, high cost of maintenance, noise effects.

A simpler way to solve the problem is to install bonsai in a flat vessel or on a plastic tray filled with water. The bottom of the vessel (tray) must be laid out with small pebbles or a grate and a pot of plants should be placed on top of them. The amount of water must be maintained at the same level. The effectiveness of this method of air moistening will increase if a vessel with water is placed above the heating system.

To increase the humidity of the air, it is recommended to spray the plants with water. However, this procedure gives only a short-term effect, so it must be regularly repeated. Spraying should be done in the morning, so that the plant has time to dry in the evening.

Conditions of maintenance - Watering and soil.

Watering.
The soil in the vessel with bonsai should be constantly wet (not dry, but not wet). Dryness of the soil can be determined by touch or light color. A dry crust on the ground does not necessarily indicate dryness of the entire soil.

Water should reach the bottom of the vessel. In case of poor water permeability of soil, watering should be repeated 2-3 times, until every grain of sand is moistened. In summer, bonsai require more water than in winter, which is associated with more intensive growth of the plant during the warm period. Subtropical plants are watered as rarely as possible in summer: the soil should be relatively dry. Tropical plants do not tolerate cold water at all.

The best water for irrigation is talaya. You can also use tap water, which is defended before use for several hours: water gets room temperature and removes dirt and mechanical impurities.
The soil.
Ready soil for indoor plants, commercially available, is not suitable for bonsai! As a rule, such a soil contains many tiny particles. In extreme cases, it can be used as an additive to the main ground.

Conditions of maintenance - Light mode.

Conditions of the maintenance of indoor bonsai.
According to the demands of home bonsai can be put on one level with the most fastidious houseplants. Incorrect content will either destroy bonsai, or make it less attractive and become an ordinary plant, but not a miniature tree.

Bonsai plants overwhelmingly belong to tropical and subtropical, so the climatic features of our region are not suitable for them. From this the conclusion follows smoothly - the conditions must be created by oneself. If you doubt that you will be able to provide bonsai with everything necessary for its successful and proper growth, it is better to abandon this undertaking in advance.
Light mode.
The length of daylight in temperate latitudes is shorter than in the tropics and subtropics, so without additional lighting, the boneai will experience a lack of light. A particular deficit of sunlight is typical for the cold season - from the end of October to the beginning of March. Different types of bonsai require different lighting conditions, which should be clarified in the article on a particular plant. When choosing a place of content, bonsai pay attention to the following lighting parameters:
- side of the world (north, south, west, east);
- distance from the window (on the windowsill, near the window behind the curtain, near the window without a curtain, in the depth of the room);
- angle of incidence of sunlight;
- the location of adjacent indoor plants;
- the presence of external obstacles to solar eveta (nearby nearby buildings, dense trees);
- the color of the walls and window sill.
It should be borne in mind that curtains intensively absorb the sun's rays. Therefore, if the bonsai is behind the curtains, they should be raised or moved aside during the day to allow sunlight to reach the indoor plant.
As for the angle of incidence of the sun's rays, the growth of the plant is more intense if it stands on the left side of the east window or on the right side of the west one. Approximate degree of illumination can be measured using a photoexposure meter or luxmeter. These devices give accurate information about the amount of light per unit area. The limits of illumination for different types of indoor plants range from 500 to 5,000 lux.
The lack of light must be compensated with artificial light. It is not recommended to use artificial light all year round, which can have an adverse effect on the plant. In winter, as well as on cloudy days from October to March, additional lighting is necessary. Fluorescent fluorescent lamps, high pressure mercury lamps and halogen gas-metal lamps are used for these purposes. It is better to refuse incandescent lamps, since the light emitted by them is far from daylight, and the heat rays have a destructive effect on the plant. In addition, the efficiency of incandescent bulbs is not high enough.
Fluorescent fluorescent fluorescent lamps that are highly efficient and convenient to use are most preferred. To purchase such lamps is not a big deal. They can be of different colors and different shapes. For lighting bonsai, elongated 18 W (59 cm long) and 40 W (120 cm) white bulbs with markings 20 or DE LUX 21 are recommended.
Halogen gas-metal lamps are installed in a horizontal position.

When installing additional lighting lamps, please note the following rules:
- The closer the lamp is to the plant, the more efficiently it is used. However, do not forget about thermal radiation!
- All lamp light should be directed towards the plant. - For each square meter of the illuminated surface must be at least 70 watts. It is considered that the lamp is set at a distance of 25-50 cm from the plant. - In winter, the duration of the day should be increased by 4-5 hours.

Conditions of the maintenance - Temperature condition.

Subtropical types of bonsai (myrtle, olive, pomegranate, rosemary) are kept in winter at a temperature of 5 to 15 C, and in summer they are carried out to the open air (to the balcony).

Tropical species all year round contain at a temperature of 18 to 25 C. In summer, the plants are left indoors. Tropical plants are not recommended to be put on stone window sills if the heating system does not pass under them.

The higher the temperature of the plant, the more light, water and nutrients are required. The lower the temperature, the less abundant the watering and feeding of the plant should be.