My adenium seedlings are almost a month old now. They're getting nice and fat. I've noticed a few are getting yellow and are dampening off. My research says nothing regarding treatment. Seems that adding fungicide could do just as much harm as good, so the best treatment is to provide a free-draining soil mix. I still have another 70 or so seedlings that need to be potted up. I've ordered some 3.5 pots, which should be here 'sometime'.

I did some pruning of the bougainvilleas I recently purchased. I placed the cuttings in water while pruning. I prepared a GP nursery tray with a good, free draining soil mix and planted about 70 cuttings. The cuttings were prepared by removing the very top of the growth, and removing any flowers. The lower leaves of each cutting were then removed, leaving a few leaves at the top. No rooting hormones were used. The cuttings were placed in my garden where they will receive daily watering/misting of about 15-30 minutes, more during hot, dry days.

Looking around some of my links, I found a very good pictorial for starting a mame bonsai from a cutting. I couldn't find the instructions, as the site was Japanese, but the pictures are fairly self-explanatory:

1. Start with a small cutting that is well established.

2. reduce the root mass

3. Assess flexibility and possible new shape of tree

4. Apply wire to cutting

5. Bend to new shape

6. Re-assess new shape of tree, make adjustments as needed

7. Apply wire to bonsai pot

8. Wire tree to bonsai pot

9. Apply final dressing to bonsai, enjoy your new mame bonsai

I don't know if I fully agree to this 'shotgun' approach to creating a mame bonsai. Seems to me that it's very nice for demonstration purposes, but it might stress the cutting too much to perform so much work on it at once. I usually wire my trees at a different date than I repot, but at any rate it's a great little pictorial for the steps involved in creating a mame bonsai from a new cutting.

Here's a bit of 'do as I say, not as I do': NEVER EVER EVER re-use bonsai wire! When the time comes to remove wire from your bonsai, wire cutters should be utilized. NEVER attempt to unwind the bonsai wire, as you can easily cause damage to your bonsai. The little bit of money you might save by re-using wire is outweighed by the potential damage you might cause to your favorite bonsai. Understood? NEVER DO IT! Anyone who re-uses bonsai wire has a screw loose!

So I was going through my pile of dead pine seedlings that I had ordered earlier in the year. Yep, all died. I applied wired to most of them, but that's not what killed them. The asshole that sent them to me didn't do a very good job packing, so they all dried up and died en route. I never toss anything until it's not only merely dead, but undeniably, certifiable fully dead. These were just that. I tossed them to a corner, wire intact. What I've been doing with my ficus cuttings is I've been visiting that corner and I've been collecting the bits of wire to re-use on my ficus cuttings.

Understand that my ficus cuttings are cannon fodder. I have plenty of them, and lots more where they came from. They are my chalkboard on which I draw my thoughts and ideas. They are my test tubes, my bunsen burners. I'm not pulling any punches with my ficus cuttings and I'm taking LOTS of risks, which includes re-using bonsai wire on them. The wire is too thick for them, so I usually pre-bend the wire into spirals, I then work the ficus around and into the wire before bending to shape.

This is a very liberating attitude. If I break my little cutting, I simply bandage it if possible. If it's too far gone, I cut it off at the break, then hope to get two new cuttings (top and bottom). If it becomes hopelessly damaged, then I'm out a cutting, which is no big deal. I bend branches and I see small fractures. These fractures mend and the tree twists and turns. I remember how liberating it was when I created my first bonsai, but this is different. With larger bonsai, there is an investment of the starter stock that I need to be aware of. If I break a bigger tree, I'm out that cost, and I'm out of the potential profit of selling that bigger tree. The costs of failure are therefore much higher. The cuttings on the other hand, cost nothing to create and I'm not selling at the moment, so I'm not out anything if I fail.

So I continue to plant cuttings. It's supposed to be about 109 today, but I don't mind the heat really. Well okay, the heat is horrid, but it's fantastic for my trees. The trees that can stand the heat, that is. I just work on my trees inside, where the AC keeps me nice and cool.