How do you care for the Chaenomeles bonsai?

Shrubs with small leaves and beautiful flowers are ideal for bonsai work. Moreover, if I had to recommend a genre, it would undoubtedly be the Chaenomeles, for its ornamental value, but also for how easy it is to control their development, and give them the style you want.

So if you just bought a Chaenomeles bonsai or you are planning to get one, then I am going to talk to you about its care so that problems do not arise.

What are the characteristics of the Chaenomeles?

When we go to buy a bonsai, it is always interesting to know the characteristics of it when it is allowed to grow freely. In this way, we can have many doubts resolved even before we start working with it. In the case of the Chaenomeles, known as the Japanese quince, they are shrubs or small trees of about 3-4 meters in height originating from East Asia, specifically from Japan, China and Korea.

Its leaves are deciduous, alternate, simple and with a serrated margin. The flowers, which sprout in spring, are about 3-4cm in diameter, and are white, pink, red, or orange. The fruit is a pommel that ripens in autumn.

How do you care for the Chaenomeles bonsai?

Now, if you want to know how to take care of it as bonsai, let's get to it:

• Location: outside, in full sun.
• Substratum: mix 70% of akadama with 30% kiryuzuna. Another option is 50% mulch + 40% coarse-grained volcanic sand + 10% black peat.
• Irrigation: prevent the soil from drying out. Daily watering may be necessary in summer, and every 2-3 days the rest of the year.
• Subscriber: with a specific liquid fertilizer for bonsai, like this one from here.
• Transplant: every two or three years, at the end of winter (before bud break).
• Pruning: in autumn if the frosts occur well into winter, or shortly before spring otherwise. Dry, diseased, weak or broken branches must be removed, as well as the opposite ones and those that grow very vertical. In addition, those that are growing too much must be cut to 2 or 3 leaves.
• Wiring: not very necessary. Often with a stake, a rope and / or small lead weights for bonsai, a branch can develop as we want.
  Anyway, if you want to wire, do it in spring-summer, with specific wires for bonsai and leaving the same distance between twists and turns. Remember to check it from time to time so that it does not get embedded in the branch.
• Style: very adaptable. Formal Upright, Informal Upright, Forest, Windswept, etc. You have more information on this topic here.
• Rusticity: resists well up to -18ºC.

Enjoy your Chaenomeles bonsai!