In a break from the usual bonsai video I do, in this video I take a Clivia and show you how I go about dividing and planting it.
I did this recently with my spider plants. I never knew they divided into new plants, AND sprouted plant pot ready “babies” on long tendrils. Plants have become very fascinating!
you must be wondering what i’m about to do i’m not going to do anything with bonsai for a change because my gardening activities is much more than just bonsai i grow vegetables i grow beautiful trees and shrubs because my first love is really gardening so i was doing something quite interesting last night and as always i suddenly discovered that it would be worth showing to my youtube uh you know audience and this in case you don’t know what it is it is called a clivia c-l-i-v-i-a clevea and it has beautiful orange blossoms it’s a type of lily and every now and then you’ve got to propagate it by dividing it like all plants herbaceous plants or whatever you propagate not just from seed but by division and the roots were absolutely fascinating look at it they’re thick roots like almost like the udon noodles you know just like udon noodle look at it thick and fleshy but surprisingly they don’t break so easily although i’ve been teasing it none of the roots have broken so before i split it i thought i’d show you what it is like because i’m going to divide it so that i get more plants i usually divide these once every three years or so by which time it will form a big clump but i don’t want to break it so that it won’t have much root attached to it you need some root so i’ve got to pull the roots out like that it’s all tangled up so it’s quite different from repotting a bonsai so this repotting exercise look at it long roots all entangled going round and round in the pot apparently the japanese are very fond of it when i used to go to japan i came across some nurseries which just specialized in this and there are some varieties which have got variegated leaves as well so like these palms this has got a cult following so clever i’m trying not to break the roots so the roots have just gone tangled up with each other so the more i can disentangle the easier it is to separate the plants there you are okay i’ve got one with good root like that so that one is okay this one also okay with those roots so that should be okay so this is what i’m doing all the time if i come across a situation where it’s difficult i may have to cut it with a saw don’t worry i’ve done this before so i know that it will work but it’s just to show that it’s so different from doing your bonsai where we cut the roots and in this case not cutting the root i’m trying to preserve the root but then of course i’m propagating at the same time propagating by division root division these sort of plants i like giving to friends because those of my friends who grow house plants love this sort of thing of course it’s not a hearty plant so it has to be protected so i grow it in my greenhouse so there’s another one and so it goes on i want to show you all of them so what i now do i will either plant it in a deep pot if i wish to let’s take you here and i will show you is simply planting it in one of these bonsai training pots put a bit of mesh and i find that they’re not fussy about soil ordinary garden compost or potting compost is fine you can use bonsai compost but that seems to be a waste i know some growers plant it in this cocoa fiber coconut fiber and then i’m going to show you something even more drastic whenever you plant or divide plants same with doing your air layering when you separate an air layering we always remove some of the branches because if the root system cannot supply the water to all the leaves the tree will suffer and it could die so because there’s such a lot of foliage and i’ve disturbed the root i’m going to reduce the foliage i’m going to reduce every single leaf to about this high not only will this put less stress on the root system but it will also make the tree more stable so it can stand up more easily and won’t topple over i will also take off these seed heads i’ve collected the seeds already from this so now it can stand properly i’ve removed most of the leaves so there’s not so much stress and there you go so this how i put up my clivia so it’s another type of repotting which is quite different from how we repot our bonsai
Creating a Bonsai Root over Rock Statue
