How to Care for a Bonsai Tree

Video Transcript

"Hi, John with Paradise Palm in Salt Lake City, Utah on the behalf of expertvillage.com. Just want to quickly go over a couple things you might want to keep in mind when caring for or having a Bonsai for your home or office. Generally, if you're getting a Bonsai, especially if it's an indoor Bonsai is that they're a very highlight plant. This is a great example of a Ficus Retusa. It is a gorgeous plant and their beautiful in a home of office, people think of it as a very complicated plant, and unfortunately it doesn't need that. One thing I'm going to show you, briefly, is that there's a lot of roots. It's basically a brick of roots. Being that it's a highlight plant and it is very root bound, which is a good thing for this particular plant, is they dry out very quickly compared to your standard house plant. So, basically, you need to consider it a house plant with very little soil and water it accordingly. Where most plants you water once a week, at most, a plant like this you may need to water up to three times a week in summer and perhaps even in winter. Basically, your best location for a plant like this a south or west facing window, as much sun as possible. The light you'd expect for a cactus or a succulent and making sure, unlike this cactus or succulent, they are getting enough water, to take care of this very dense root system. But if you do these things, you give it the light that they need, you give it the water they need, very difficult to over water because they have drainage. There's no way you're going to over water the plant if it's given proper light, you can insure that your plant's going to do very well, have no water stress, and grow very healthy, such as this Ficus Retusa here."