Bonsai Show - Belgrade 2006

Here are some pictures..

I added all pictures from Bonsai show in Gallery. All bonsai are from the Bonsai Club Belgrade.

Just contributing with some of the photos I took!

Thanks Marcus and Maja for the excellent pictures. These are really nice bonsai plants. The large, natural looking pots are tufa or some other type of limestone?

I think it is tufa
This bonsaist make this pots on your own from big peace of stone which collecting on our mountains...

Very nice. I make my own pots using hypertufa (cement, peat moss, and perlite). They work very well for bonsai and succulents because it is easy to control moisture (plants can be kept wet, dry, or very dry) and they can be made to look like natural rock. Also, they are very cheap to make, light weight, and can be made in any size. Of course, they are not as nice as the ones in your pictures.

evo

Evo. How do you make hypertufa exactly? I would love to make my own containers for alpines and succulents. Do you have a recipe?

Hi Jekka,

I'll be happy to share everything I know about hypertufa. I can do this in a posting or article. I'll be grading exam papers for the next three days but after that I can put some stuff together. I will tell you, hypertufa has worked very well for me with absolutely no losses in succulents, even the very fussy ones. Just give me a couple of days to get this university stuff out of the way.

evo

Evo, since you use cement in your mixture, do you find they leach alkaline salts into the soil at all? Or does the peat moss balance that out? I've been curious to make some hypertufa planters as I have a 'recipe' saved for that but worried about the alkaline effects of the cement. I never found anything that answered my question before so never proceeded to make any. And I also have many acid-loving plants since my area is acidic so try to choose plants that suit the environment. If I want to grow something that really likes alkaline soil (lilacs, gypsophila), I need to work lime into the soil around them.

Quote::

The large, natural looking pots are tufa or some other type of limestone?

Marcus wrote:

I think it is tufa

Yes, it's Tufa, it's very common here. We call it SEDRA (I've noticed poets like that word a lot ).
Bonsai growers don't like to change its original shape (well, at least that's what they told me ). It is formed when water evaporates from lime-rich waters, leaving calcite (calcium carbonate) to crystallize, often with impurities of iron oxides (rust), which give tufa its yellow and red coloration and it very decorative.
On the other hand- tiny holes inside the "rock" allow bonsai-tree's delicate root system to grow and breathe easily. So, these "pots" on the pictures aren't really pots - these plants were really planted in Tufa-rocks.

Iso,

I have never had problems with leaching or pH in these containers. You see all kinds of sites saying, pre-soak in vinegar solution, don't plant for one month, etc. etc. etc. However, I make them, cure them for three or four days and plant with no chemical treatment at all and have NEVER experienced problems caused by the cement. And, I have done this with almost 1000 plants of various families, genera, and species. Indeed, I have tried to find plants that are compromised by the cement but have yet to do so. In fact, most plants do surprisingly well in these pots. In a couple of days, I'll do a photo/text posting with some of the different techniques I have experimented with to produce interesting designs.

evo

Thanks for the response Maja. Tufa is very hard to find and expensive here. The tufa I have seen is really nice and fun to work with. The Belgrade Bonsai show must have been wonderful to see. I envy you.

evo

evodevo wrote:

Thanks for the response Maja. Tufa is very hard to find and expensive here.

So I've heard! Seems like we've got quite a treasure here!

(And the show was really great, yes! plus, it was a great, sunny day! )