Thank you! I thought Fukien would be less finicky, which is why I was interested, so good to know! I was about to buy one.

I've been talking to Dave from Pittsburgh Bonsai for the last couple weeks. I'm finishing grad school next week, switching jobs between this month and next, and just got married (I was on honeymoon and thus also missed the auction!).

I really appreciate it, and will send you an email (I'm assuming I can find it via your profile). I just took a couple cuttings of the Crosby for a friend, but I'll look and see if I have another branch to spare that ought to be removed anyway.

Any thoughts about light? I was thinking about putting an LED lamp (not one of the purplish grow lights) over my bonsai plants.

I have two of those purple led lamps, one HID fixture and one T5 fixture. The purple light of the LED is not so bad but does make the plants look strange. I think a 4 lamp T5 fixture is overall the best in terms of color and efficiency.

I think you should be able to email me through my profile.

Thanks! I sent you a message through Houzz, but I don't think it was email. My plants are in the living room (main room in our apartment), so my wife wouldn't go for the purple light. The purple light and I would be living in the basement ;)

I did not get any message. I have never used this feature before and so I am a bit lost. It seems I cannot send you a message through your profile. I do not see any option. Bummer.

I would go for the fig! Sounds great and something I myself would like to try. I'm considering starting an olive. And tropicofcancer is right. Invest in a grow light! It will really open doors to a larger series of plants and where you can choose to keep them. I spent a little more money and went with the Aspect. It's gallery style quality so it really showcases your plants as well as grow them. You can find it here www.soltechsolutionsllc.com/aspect/

Tropic - I clicked on your username above your post and it took my to your profile. At the top of your profile (where the banner is), there was a "message" button on the right. If you go to your own profile, there is a button just a bit lower that lets you check your messages too. But maybe my message didn't get through? My email is my same username on gmail, so you can get in touch with me directly.

John M - I will have to consider it. I have most of my nicer plants in a corner of the room by a south west window on top of an old secretary desk we use as a bar. I wonder if I can put a desk lamp with an LED bulb on the desk, or a floor lamp. Possibly even something hanging like the one you put in the picture.

At this point, along with tropics suggestions, I'm leaning toward another ficus or variegated schefflera to go with my all-green schefflera. I appreciate all the insights!

Hmm, I sent the message again and it said "sent successfully" but when I check my sent messages, it says I haven't sent anything...

Got two messages from you this time. Success. I replied too. Let me know if you get my message.

Edible figs usually have very large leaves. We have one in the ground and the leaves easily reaches 12 inches across. I a ficus benjamina "Too Little" cutting grown. It has such tiny leaves. Very easy to grow. It has your name written on it I think - lol.

One thing you can consider is to hang a white curtain such that the plants are between the curtain and the window. That will increase the light quite a bit. In winter a small fan would be useful to keep the air moving around the plants.

I have no messages in my inbox, but I'm beginning to suspect there is just a bit of a lag on Houzz.

The leaves on the fig would be an issue for a traditional bonsai. I also understand they need a "down" period: either by cooler darker environment or apparently defoliation (at least so I've been told recently). The fig bonsai's I've seen pics of were very nice looking, and the idea of getting a few figs every year isn't so bad either!

A girl I dated in college was Vietnamese and her father had pepper "trees" in pots on the back porch that he must have brought inside every winter (New England). I had the idea of taking some of the hot pepper plants from my garden indoor at the end of the season. I looked online and saw some interesting pages on hot pepper bonsai as well, but very little info on their light requirements. But thats just an experiment.

Maybe houzz is buggy. It is rather strange how the messages behave on this forum.

Hardy figs do need a cold dormancy, I believe. Pittsburgh is a bit too cold for them. During bad winters mine suffers a lot. So I started protecting them a bit using leaves and cage around it to hold the leaves. In containers it should be a lot easier.

I am still a newbie with bonsai. I grow a lot of plants and use clip and grow a lot. I have not yet seriously done any wiring and refinement.

A few years back I discovered pepper as bonsai. I have a tabasco pepper plant that I overwintered last year. It is nicely fattening up. I am trying my hand at ghost pepper this year too.

Yeah, my brother in law has a nice fig tree, but it died back quite a bit two winters ago. This winter he wrapped it and, as you know, the weather wasn't too rough, and it came out pretty healthy in the spring. I know a few people who do outdoor figs and they all ways they get a lot of die-back. One person offered me a potted fig tree, but I didn't take him up on it at the time.

I'm completely new to bonsai, so I hadn't heard of clip and grow, but I just read a bit about it and that makes sense. I have a medium size jade I'm giving to my father and law, and I've sort of been using that method. It works a bit different with jade though: I always pull off the bud at the end of the branch, and about 50% of the time, the brand will bud again close to the trunk (sometimes it just re-grows a bud where you pulled one off). When it regrows a bud, it might be in a random place, but sometimes you can control (or guess) where it will bud because it most often pops up were a leaf was recently removed. So if I want the branch to move leftward, I might remove an old, oversized leaf and pinch the end of the branch hoping the growth comes out where the leaf was removed. Of course jade often buds laterally (on both sides), and that isn't appealing to the eye, so similar to the clip and grown method, I remove whichever new growth is not in the correct direction.

Nice to hear about the peppers - I will have to try!

You may like this thread on pruning/shaping jades.

Yeah, that is useful. I always try to pick the ideal branch when there is trifurcation, which is probably the best way to shape a jade. My Crosby only has one trifurcation and my plan was to let it grow until it's a) added some girth to the tree and b) is a bit more viable length for a cutting (for you). I remember a video from "bonsai iligan" demonstrating the (Chinese?) style of completely lopping off the top of the tree every few years and selecting two of the branches that pop out: one bend slightly down and out to the side and one bent upwards to be the new apex. I think this slows growth, shortens internodes, creates a nice tapper, and gives nice movement to an informal upright (without the use of wires). Looking closely at the large jade I have, there are three main branches / trunks. I think my eye falls to the center one as the main apex. However the plant was bent a bit in shipping and the natural apical branch was broken off. The branch right smack in the middle (at the top) will become the new apex, giving a notable taper and naturally wavy bend to the trunk. But thats just my half-baked and amateur plan - we will see if the plant, and others who are more knowledgeable than I, agree!

You seem to be on the right track. For jade pinching selectively is the way to go. Some have even tried wiring with success. I have not tried that. It seems to be very easy to snap the branches if one is not careful. For a multi-trunk plant, usually the thickest is selected for the apex. The next thickest with a slightly lower canopy and so on. My downside is that I have too many plants and some plants get forgotten. That is what happened to my jade. I need to prune it hard and make it look more tree like.