Bonsai 101 - Chapter 6: Principles for How to Make Your Own Bonsai Tree
This week's 101 series is all about soil, water, light, and fertilizer!
In this chapter of the Bonsai 101 series, Milton covers the technical aspects of the ingredients you will be using to implement your bonsai.
Questions like “What kind of soil should I use?” or “How often should I water my bonsai?” are likely to get you to do almost the right thing – however, having a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind the answers will give you more of a holistic understanding of how to care for your bonsai so that you can feel empowered to make any necessary adjustments to accommodate your specific situation or work habit preferences.
Milton shares 4 main principles to understand when it comes to properly implementing your bonsai, and he covers each in this video today:
Soil
Watering
Light exposure
Fertilizer
Soil
Soil is there to hold the tree and to provide it what it needs to thrive: moisture, nutrients, and oxygen.
The composition of the soil can usually be quite forgiving – so long as you compensate by watering routinely – but when it comes to bonsai, you need to be mindful of the small volume in bonsai pots, which means that there is literally less soil available to take care of the bonsai than there would be if it were planted in a larger pot or in the earth.
What we use for potting at BH bonsai is:
One part of the rich Pescadero sandy loam
One part organic material (for retaining moisture) – like peat moss or coconut coir
One part of perlite (to increase porosity for air)
For the diehard DIY person, you can readily substitute our soil with:
Top soil from your garden
Commercial houseplant mix
Coarse sand or grids for porosity
When using a DIY or more economical soil mix, you will need to be mindful of how your tree responds so that you can adjust your watering routine (as needed) to give what it tree needs.
The only cardinal rule in keeping your bonsai healthy and “happy” with any soil mix is to ensure that the rootball stays moist.
Watering
Your watering routine must be consistent with the weather conditions and the soil that you use.
On the other hand, build some slack into that by soaking your bonsai to give time for the root ball to absorb abundant moisture.
The BH patent-pending pot has that feature built-in by effectively having a built in soaking creature without changing the appearance of the bonsai.
For existing bonsai, put it in a soaking tub, which could be an aluminum baking tray, with a hole punched on the side that is approximately ½ inch above the bottom of the soil line.
Some viewers have voiced concerns about drawing the bonsai, others advocated keeping the bonsai on the dry side – based on Miltons’s experience, one only draws a tree due to prolonged soaking in stale (smelly) water. You will see an amazing growth rate when you soak your bonsai.
Trees will survive droughts, but they thrive with ample rainfall. The same principle applies when watering your plants – you can’t over water them as long as there is adequate drainage.
Light Exposure
Bonsai trees are outdoor plants that need sunlight to induce photolysis to stay healthy.
A bonsai can be kept indoors a few weeks at a time…such as placed next to your workstation to enjoy…as long as they are routinely taken back outside for periods of time.
This is even true for tropical bonsai like ficus. They can stay green for a while, but eventually become leggy and buggy.
As a rule, the best option is to keep your bonsai outside, in partial shade or in morning sun.
Fertilizer
Although not critical for a bonsai to survive (because there are residual nutrients in the soil), fertilizers do provide good nutrients that will benefit your bonsai’s health.
Having a regular fertilizing routine will speed up your bonsai’s growth, which will provide you the opportunity to reshape or achieve your design goals faster.
Any houseplant fertilizer will do – but Milton recommends using less concentration and more frequent administration than the recommended dosage.
Milton has personally found it convenient to use fish emulsion with kelp at half concentration at the following intervals:
Every other week during the summer
Every quarter during cooler months
Not at all in the winter time
Bonsai also seem to thrive on chicken manure pellets – which you can find on Amazon. They are not smelly or messy, and can be easily spread at a concentration of one pellet per square inch or two.
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