Dear all,

First of all thank you for reading this lines, even if I know there are many similar topics.

I have been reading lots of articles and watched many videos, but unfortunately I am a beginner in bonsai and I cannot truly identify the problem, so I hope you are able to advice.

- living in Romania (east of Europe) and received the bonsai end of August;
- placed it in a semi-shade (north facing room) place in the living room. (wrong decision probably)
- from day #1 it already had yellow / brown leaves and by end of week #2, 60% of the leaves dropped;
- week #3, unfortunately left for holiday, and my mother took care of it. by end of the week 90% of leaves dropped;
- she took the decision (a beginner in bonsai as well) to immerse / dunk it in full water;
- end of week #4 a lot of new leaves appeared and the tree seemed to recover in a beautiful way;
- then she thought the bonsai was over-watered, and replaced 30-40% of the soil with new one
- by end of week #5 long loose branches developed (sign of not enough light I assume?), even if there were new nice small leaves coming up all-over.
- from that week onwards, the growing was really SLOW, the new leaves became very FRAGILE, and some of them developed black color at the tips, falling or going black completely before they could even grow.
- 4 days ago I have moved the bonsai to a much brighter (west facing window) place, and hopefully this will help.

However, I have a hard time understanding if it was only lack of light, or the changing of soil damaged his health, or I am even having an over-under watering problem? I usually water it once at 3-4 days when the soil feels dry.

Your help would be much much appreciated,
many thanks,
Corin

If you took your time to read through past threads you should more or less know the answer: place it outdoors, where it can get plenty of light and an environment that is natural for plants and not for furless (well, mostly) primates.

thank you about your response as well. forgot to write about that in the main topic -
unfortunately I do not have that option (living in an apartment) + winters are really cold here.

any view on the part of watering and so?

Trying to get the tree growing this time of the year when it should naturally go dormant will weaken the tree. Some people make it thrue the first winter. Very few make it thrue the second. If you aiming for long time health for the tree you will need to find a way to let it go dormant.

corin77 wrote:

unfortunately I do not have that option (living in an apartment) + winters are really cold here.

Dunno where you are exactly, but -give or take- you’re at the same latitude as I am.
If your area is particularly subject to cold wind you’d need to give it some protection, but other than that trust me when I say that tree would easily thrive outdoor while it will at best struggle to survive if you keep it in an apartment.

I think on this forum we’ve seen hundreds of new bonsai enthusiasts with posts exactly like yours, but I don’t think I remember even one of them coming back to show how vital and green their tree became after keeping it inside...