Comments Request: Improve my Lime Citrus Tree [Bonsai]
Improve my Lime Citrus Tree
Shout out to #artists, #designers, #arborists, #bonsai #growers, and master #gardeners. This post is especially for you and my tree-loving friends.
Lend me your ideas on what I can do with this #lime #citrus #tree.
Questions: How should I grow this tree differently? How should I design this tree differently?
Here are some more options:
Choices
- #opinions, #advice, #commentary
- #photos and commentary on your own #trees and #plants
- original #drawing, #painting, #art
- lime #recipe, #song, #poetry, or anything else #creative
Hand drawn diagram of branch and leaf divisions of this tree. Leaves shown smaller to help identify key branches. This is an example of a helpful drawing. It could also be colored or totally re-sketched to look more attractive.
As long as you share something positive or constructive in nature, I will appreciate it!
Share a comment or a link to your post in the comments. It can be as simple or elaborate as you want. The point is to build #community, #reputation, and #relationships with #cooperative comments.
Special shout out to current #teambonsai fellows @romanolsamuels and @imagendevoz. I know you guys have some great advice and experience for bonsai. Anyone can join the team, just use the banner and share bonsai themed posts.
@steamdan is an expert with growing many types of trees and plants, and I know he always has a wealth of great ideas on these subjects.
@pricasso is the Picasso of steemit, and provides some humorous and abstract designs. I would love to see one for this tree.
To my followers, and new viewers, yes I definitely want your ideas too if you have a sudden creative streak. I love lots of comments, even if they are unrelated to this topic. Even if you don't read this post, if you write something kind, I promise no harm will come to you. :)
Reward! Reply! Review!
Support the comments! Look for the best comments and ideas below!
No rules. Have fun.
The Three R's of Steemit. Can I copyright that? Reward, Reply, Review. @creativetruth copyright 2018. All Rights Reserved. I'm totally kidding. This is the internet age.
About This Tree
May 24, 2016
This is a lime tree that grew from seed, and I've been spoiling it with this bigger pot, and lots of rich compost in the soil. Originally I grew it from a Mexican lime seed. The seeds were easy to come by. I ate the #fruit that came with my tacos, and planted the seeds indoors.
I'm not sure, but I think it is actually two separate trees, from two separate seeds, and I've always pruned the two trunks in a fashion to complement each other. For aesthetic purposes, I enjoy that they are sharing the space together, like intertwined lovers. In the future I may have to separate them, but I would rather not do that just yet.
My Goal
To preserve their beauty, greenery, the heavenly scent, and possibly get flowers or fruit years from now to enjoy as added decoration. By keeping it in a small proportional size, I can showcase the tree in the future as a bonsai style tree.
Here is my tree in depth, from different angles:
The #bark has started to form over this past year on the thickest, oldest #wood.
Front tree, right side #branches.
Back tree, lowest left #branch
Back tree, upper crown
Back tree, lowest right branch
Back tree, three mid level branches
Back tree, top left branch
Back tree, top two branches
Full portrait view
Please feel free to use any of my photos for reference, or edit them with your favorite digital #paint program, as I did in the cover photo at the top. These are all 100% original photos from my own collection, and I am happy to share them here on steemit.
Special surprise if you mention fruit. The legendary @trufflepig is apparently a huge fan of these fruity topics, and inadvertently summoning this bot always cracks me up.
Improve my Lime Citrus Tree
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I am living and growing from your support.
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Hi friend @creativetruth this is my proposal,
I hope you like it! https://steemit.com/art/@daniellozada/ideas-for-a-citrus-bonsai-tree-or-challenge-from-creativetruth
First of thank you 🙏🏼 for the mention😊. This is a very young tree. There are two things I think should be decided now. Do you want a well formed tree and do you want a fruit bearing tree.From the blog above the one question has already been answered. So that makes it easy. The tree is planted in a deep pot. At this point i woul abvice you to plant it in a big/deep seedling tray. This will help with the nebari and thinken up the trunk. Next you must form the structure of the tree by letting it grow and pruning back.
Dicide if you want a big or medium size tree. Once you have that you can form the tree to the correct height. This is a very young tree so let it grow freely and prune back yearly. Fertilize regulary. If you see flowers on the tree do not prune as those become the fruit. Rather prune after the fruit are off the tree. Side note try not let the tree bear fruit every year as the tree tends to send all its energy and growth into its fruit. Also when you do allow fruit on the tree remove a few only keep one or two. Keep in mind that leaves on the tree may get smaller but fruit tend to stay the same size as the full grown trees. This is the reason why we use tree like crab apple trees cherries and so on cause there fruit are naturally small.
Getting trees to bear fruit is a rear specialty in bondai as you need to leave the tree to grow as some trees only grow fruit from two year old branches. So timing is everything.
Read up more on the species and how they grow. This will help you make the right decisions while training this tree.
Good like hope this helps you.
Thanks for chiming in @romanolsamuels. You have a wealth of experience and useful knowledge. I like all of your tips. If a tree fruits or flowers, I consider that an added blessing. The tree in bonsai has to be the real star. Sounds like I should analyse the roots later this spring, and put the tree into to a pot sized for the tree height I want, and begin to expose the nebari.
Anytime. If you need anything rlse just shout. 👨🏼💻
Great insight! Think I learned a thing or two already. Cheers!
I think that giving them or it a less wider pot would indeed encourage the main trunk to thicken at the bottom. That would really help with its root system as well. What I can add is that a lime tree's growth is too fast to catch up if you decide to prune yearly. Its root may be pruned by that timing, but the branches you will have to always keep an eye on them ,at least twice a month. The ammount of nodes in yours is already too high, and as you will start to give it lots of sunlight , it's going to throw branches/stems all around the place in no time. If you want to keep it small enough you must do exactly what you're already trying/aiming with this post. Plan its final form or at least take the best of supervision to the lime's pattern, because you will be pruning and giving it shape at least ten times a year! Have a great week peeps.
Thank you for the correction. I do not know lime trees. Have not worked on them.
Hey guys! @creativetruth thank you for shouting my name, it means a lot. I'm proud to be here not just to help but to learn from everybody, checking out a post from your authorship is always a hype, cheers!
Let's get to business: that lower horizontal branch has to go. lol no, I'm not that of a dictator myself; learned that the hard way. And even if we both agree it would be a shame for me to waste such a long stem just for the sake of visuals. I always mourn every branch that I prune from my plants, even tried to grow roots from them, but haven't been succesful, yet.
I have a couple of thoughts about "these two plants". Did you know you can literally grow more than probably a hundred lime seeds in a pot like that, at once? I think I have at least a couple of that variety, but I would need to compare their fruits to see If they match. You could take out all of their roots entirely, prune them and plant them again without they even dropping a leaf. How strong is going to be the sunlight for the next two months, you have them without direct sunlight ATM?
My second thought is more of a question. Looking at your plants, I think you could at least try to search into the soil to check if both trunks have separated root systems. Do you know about "air layering" propagation? Both main trunks look like they're reaching a mature stage, turning from green to brown you can see the long way they have endured. Althought they look small, I don't think you have to worry much about the leaves. When they reach a certain ammount of maturity the leaves will look or will sprout smaller if you keep them as bonsai trees. for how long have you been growing them, two years, three? From the ammount of leaves they don't look much younger at all.
I think it's over three years now.
Since I only repotted it once, by delicately putting the 6 month old seedling into the larger pot, I will have to do some investigation as to how the roots look. It doesn't seem to be pot bound, so I hesitate to unearth them, but maybe I will since you say they are very resilient at this age of maturity.
Can you explain more about why removing the bottom branch is recommended, and what shape you would encourage to match my goal?
The thing about yours is that it has so many nodes already, that it could be entirely subjective a form for either one, I believe that you could even leave them together in that pot and see what happens, they really have that form into growing in a matchful pair. I also agree with the analogy of it as one tree, they blend together pretty well, and both have lots of space still to grow, so I wouldn't disagree if you decide not to stress their roots, but if you have them indoors, it's worth a check.
About the pruning, the bottom branch it's pretty obvious, it's too horizontal and even dropping down at some parts, especially at its half, reminds me of a hammack. Althought I wouldn't obligate it, if you expect it to grow limes, the tree will try to challenge gravity and may not succeed.
As I said having so many nodes would also mean that after pruning you pretty much should expect for the lime tree to sprout twice this ammount of nodes/new stems. But I also think that the 3node rule is pretty flawless when it comes to these sort of decisions. What I would encourage is to prune it now and to take advantage of the lack of direct sunlight. The trunks and branches, the leaves as well look very healthy, so I wouldn't mind any shape at all, as long as you are designing it as a bonsai and pruning whenever it's best. The plant(s) will respond with growth if you guide them through it, and you are pretty good at it yourself!
Rough sketch! I'll try to work on another pic, but I found this sketch very cool. What do you think, have something else though out? I didn't know that you made the lower branch go that way with wires, did you thought about the fruits that it would sprout? Maybe for being that low it could be like a cool way, to have the fruits standing on the ground like a cucurbita, you could leave that branch for as long as you want and see where that goes!
I don't think I ever noticed this sketch image last time. Maybe you slipped it in on a comment update.
Anyways, I'm checking back through this post for ideas, so I can finally make some of the pruning and wiring choices on my lime tree. I decided to do most of the major cuts in the summer, because it is responding so well to sprouting new leaves right now. Once I take the tree indoors, it should have a comfortable environment to get used to its new shape.
this is good work, you can always do bonsai things like this and all your work looks successful always.
Wouldn't that be awesome.
That's very unusual.
So small lemon tress, good job my friend @creativetruth, thanks for your sharing usefull and informative post, i like it and have upvote and resteem your post to more than 1570 my follower, thanks for your kind and support to me...good luck
Lime trees. Yes, they look very similar. Smaller leaves. Thank you for always commenting @abialfatih. I appreciate it.
Thank you too brother@creativetruth
Strangely (only because I know nothing in the fruit bonsai field), I would totally agree with @steamdan with regard to the bottom branch having got to go. I've never grown any type of fruit tree or anything of the like as a bonsai and the fact that, thanks to @bonsaiaustin, I'm trying a bonsai avocado I doubt that I'd be a good consult on anything but the aesthetic look of the tree. @romanolsamuels has a few good points as well especially. I'm sorry for the lack of advice but I'm also treading on new territory at the moment with alternative bonsai - this after I had to restart the avocado bonsai due to the seed literally splitting and breaking in half. Thanks for the mention though. If you do need help with traditional bonsai, I'm sure I would be able to shoot you a few tips.
PS. This is my lime tree and it definitely ain't a bonsai. It was riddled with disease a few years ago and I completely left it to die. A while passed and I chopped off the top leaving basically just the stem. Its obviously grown a bit.
Isn't the avocado seed is supposed to split slightly? I watched some videos in the past of people starting it from seed, and it is really interesting, but I've never done it myself.
Thanks for adding to the conversation.
I'm still trying to figure out the reason for removing the lower branch, considering how flexible it was to stretch it that direction with wires. Is it too thick and long?
Suppose its more for the aesthetic value. As for the avocado, you're not wrong however, its not suppose to split and break apart entirely.
Great lime tree! I'm getting pretty good with avocados, they're kind of my specialty atm. They do break at half, I've had started form seed at least a hundred of them, and if they break at the very start (even before it starts to sprout, a seed may split), I have been able to start them even in that way, the trick is to find the perfect soil level for the pit and the top of it should never be buried. This one is havin a rough time because now I'm learning how to start them directly on the ground, but I have as many as 50+ avocado trees, most of them in pots, but I would not recommend to mess in any way with an avocado's root system, it's very fragile and any stress will cause the plant to die very quick. If you would manage to make one a bonsai I would be really surprised, definitely worth to check it out. I'll be waiting for an entry on our blog on it, cheers!
Well, one half of the seed went tumbling down the counter 😂 I'll be trying again for sure though.
That's too bad. You'll have to start over.