Feeding Bonsai Trees

Feeding plays a very vital role in ensuring good health for the bonsai trees. Hence it becomes very essential to have a good understanding of the kind of fertilizers to feed your bonsai trees, and the right kind of schedule to be followed based on the season and the kind of plant.

Since the bonsai plants grow in shallow pots, they have limited amount of soil available to meet all their requirements for nutrients. There fore it becomes very essential for them to be fed regularly. Fertilizers have three basic components Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. Nitrogen helps the plant in processing the proteins and hormones and generally helps the bonsai tree to have healthy leaves and stems. Phosphorus aids in the overall growth of the plant. Potassium helps in strengthening the root system, and aids in the overall health of the plant by assisting the tissue repair process. Other important elements that play a vital role in the plants growth are Calcium, Magnesium, Sulphur, Iron, Copper, Boron, Manganese etc. Use of fertilizers should be made judiciously as too much of it and at the wrong time might cause more harm to the plant than good.

During the growing season of the plant that is from late spring to early summers you should use a high nitrogen content fertilizers for your bonsai plant, this should be applied once every two weeks. During the mid summer time when the temperatures are very high you should not feed your bonsai trees, and for the late summer season feed with a low nitrogen based fertilizers so that it will aid in the growth of the trunks and the twigs.

You can either use a liquid feed or a solid feed for your bonsai. Liquid feed allows the fertilizers to seep into the soil and retained for a prolonged duration of time. It is also a well accepted rule that feeding should be stopped during the winter season, or the dormant season of the plant. Feeding plants which are unhealthy is also not advisable. The roots of the bonsai plants need to be in good health to do absorb the feed and produce good results. Hence immediate feeding after carrying out re potting should be avoided as the roots would already be stressed by the root pruning carried during the re potting exercise.