Salvaged Bougie

I recently salvaged a Bougainvillea which my daughter no longer wanted. She cut it back and dug it out of a large planter and gave it to me in an ice cream bucket. It has nice structure and would like to save it. We live in Zone 4 and I do have a lighting system set up for my few tropicals. I have left it in the ice cream bucket and punched a few drainage holes in hopes some of you experienced in Bougies could give me some sage advice. I anxiously await you replies.

Wish I could help but no experience with em. Good luck.

Precarious wrote:Wish I could help but no experience with em.  Good luck.

best reply... EVER !

reminds me of a joke:

an iowan walks into a pub where a nebraskan is tending bar...
he asks the nebraskan for advise on what to drink

the nebraskan shrugs and replies:______________________________

i forgot the punch line...

(sorry david, but i couldnt resist !)

and rather than just hijack this thread with a punchline-less joke, i can say this (as you probably already know):

if you want it out of the ice cream bucket, you could "slip-pot" it into something more suitable for growing (but slightly larger, in order to not disturb the roots) and then leave it to grow to recover from the cutback... leaving any root work for the summer time (probably summer 2016).

i believe this is universal advice (but not very sage) for any tropicals being grown here in the mid/upper midwest.

hopefully the sages will now chime in

(all this talk of sage is making me hungry with turkey day right around the corner !!!)

Give the bougie as much light as you can -- fluorescent a few inches over the plant for 12-13 hours -- and water very sparingly. They prefer soil that is drier than it is damp.

My bougie did very well in free draining soil under lights the past two winters. Give it some bougain and you will instantly see a healthier tree.

Hi David,
Bouganvillea do well under lights, if the light is bright enough. Or a good south window. If you are using fluorescent lights, I would use an 18 hour day length - all winter long. To some extent you can make up for lower light intensities (compared to full sun outdoors) with longer day length. Like Jim Lewis said, they don't want to be too wet. Otherwise they are pretty easy to keep growing through the winter.

When you have a larger bougie, with a trunk greater than 4 inches in girth, you might be able to just leave them in a slightly above freezing spot, bone dry all winter. That is what some do down south. But a smaller specimen won't store enough water to do this.

I personally keep mine growing all winter. This one is in a 2 x 2 x 6 inch cascade pot, my original thought was to make a long descending cascade branch, but so far the tree has not co-operated. This one lives year round under a 4 tube 48 inch long T-5 fluorescent, with 6500K lamps and 18 hour days. Bloomed nicely last April.

Thank you all for the advice. I did put it into a bit larger pot with some well draining soil mixture. I have it under a 4ft shop light and am using an old T5 aquarium light to supplement (14 hours on the shop light and 5 hrs on the t5 during the "midday "). I also read a suggestion about indoor tropical needing air movement and put a small fan on one end of the bench with it coming on 4 times a day for 1/2 hour per period. I wonder about humidity as it is real dry here in the winter and I don't know if the pot elevated above a pan of water will contribute much.

By the way, I have never done tropical bonsai inside and am quite excited. I miss the damn little trees when they are under 2 ft of snow.

Ouch that hurt! How'd you like a cow poke!

I was responding to try and keep this gentleman's post 'up front' since no one had responded to it yet. Andre took us to task for not responding to people, and I didn't want this one to get lost.

Okay, okay, now I'm laughing too. No cow poke.

I wonder about humidity as it is real dry here in the winter and I don't know if the pot elevated above a pan of water will contribute much.

Don't worry. They like low humidity. NO drip tray, please.

Precarious wrote:Ouch that hurt!  How'd you like a cow poke!

I was responding to try and keep this gentleman's post 'up front' since no one had responded to it yet.  Andre took us to task for not responding to people, and I didn't want this one to get lost.

Okay, okay, now I'm laughing too.  No cow poke.

sorry man - like i said... couldnt resist and i reckoned your skin is thick enough
and thats what you get for listening to andre about anything other than horti-arti-cultural subjects !