Root Growth: Soil vs Bonsai Soil

Vance Wood

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@Vance Wood
As a beginner I use the 'typical' bonsai soils (Boon mix) myself because I picked it up from my sensei, but appreciate the story of how you (someone with a lot more experience) came to this soil conclusion/solution by trial and error.

Also I don't think @Jzack605 ment he could write down a better worded explanation on how soils work, but instead ment he could have posed a better question if it weren't for the Shiner Bock and bourbon ;)
I'm sorry I have been pilloried on this forum for twenty years because of one thing or another, and I know a dig and a turd toss when I see it.
 

Forsoothe!

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I have a different history with bonsai. I only have one pine which is more a yard pot plant than bonsai, so over watering is not a problem for me. I have lots of Junipers, which are bulletproof, and lots of tropicals and deciduous which prefer damp, but not soggy soil. The attachments should be read in order listed to understand my path which different from Vance's. Not better or superior, ~different, and with a different end product that works well for me.
 

Attachments

  • Non-Traditional Bonsai Potting Soil 12_16_18.pdf
    369.2 KB · Views: 82
  • Terra Preta Science news.pdf
    276.5 KB · Views: 15
  • Terra Preta BBC TV El Dorado.pdf
    113.3 KB · Views: 9
  • Terra preta Cornel Flyer landuse.pdf
    261.9 KB · Views: 5
  • Terra Preta Phillip Copens Aricle.pdf
    520.7 KB · Views: 3
  • Terra Preta Magic Soil by Allan Balliet.pdf
    579.6 KB · Views: 14

just.wing.it

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I have a different history with bonsai. I only have one pine which is more a yard pot plant than bonsai, so over watering is not a problem for me. I have lots of Junipers, which are bulletproof, and lots of tropicals and deciduous which prefer damp, but not soggy soil. The attachments should be read in order listed to understand my path which different from Vance's. Not better or superior, ~different, and with a different end product that works well for me.
It seems as though the thesis given in that first document implies that Growers of Bonsai don't want their trees to grow. Who came up with that notion?

Edit:
Seems like an incorrect view of bonsai, The Only Bonsai trees that don't grow are dead.
 

parhamr

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…implies that Growers of Bonsai don't want their trees to grow. Who came up with that notion?
Ryan Neil claims that was the school of thought in the first wave of North American bonsai. He explains there were various misunderstandings and mistranslations in which the lesson of “growth slows and becomes more ramified” was turned into a hardline “stop growth at all costs.”
 

just.wing.it

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Ryan Neil claims that was the school of thought in the first wave of North American bonsai. He explains there were various misunderstandings and mistranslations in which the lesson of “growth slows and becomes more ramified” was turned into a hardline “stop growth at all costs.”
I can see that as truth, sure.
But I dont think that was ever the goal in Japan....all I've ever read is that the most important thing is the health of the tree....drainage is one part of that.
 

coh

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So I decided to start reading through the first article but I didn't make it very far before encountering these words of wisdom.

"The conventional wisdom on bonsai soil is simple, making it 'believer friendly'. Like most conventional wisdom, it's mostly wrong, specifically that the three most important things in bonsai are drainage, drainage, and drainage"

OK, prove it! I'll read further.

Traditional Japanese bonsai soil mixes are intended to slow growth to the very minimum to stop increasing size. This is crucial if the tree is a hundred years old. Imagine how growth of only 5% per year gets out of bounds as the tree ages to 30, or 40, or 220 years in a pot. Also, the Japanese TELL YOU that the tree will stop growing (enlarging) as soon as it put into a traditional bonsai pot, with bonsai mix soil. "

Umm...if you are getting no growth or only 5% in a standard bonsai mix with sufficient fertilization, you are doing something very wrong. Some of my trees will put out several feet of growth extension
in a season if I let them.

My thesis is that bonsai trees CAN GROW if, and only if, they are potted in a mix that is intended to grow rather than intended to stop growth (and hold a given size).

LOL. Your thesis is so flawed there is no point in reading any further. Beating a dead horse indeed!
 

LanceMac10

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Keep going, you'll find yourself on an archeological dig!!:rolleyes::D:D:D:D:D:D

It's funny, @coh certainly doesn't follow "dogma", but simply uses what works in his climate. Tree's can certainly grow in just about anything....:cool:

.....just looking to catch a glimpse of the guy's soil, sheesh!o_O:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
 

coh

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Keep going, you'll find yourself on an archeological dig!!:rolleyes::D:D:D:D:D:D

It's funny, @coh certainly doesn't follow "dogma", but simply uses what works in his climate. Tree's can certainly grow in just about anything....:cool:

.....just looking to catch a glimpse of the guy's soil, sheesh!o_O:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
He describes what he is using in the first document. I'm sure it "works" but regular bonsai soils "work" too. All you have to do is adjust your care (watering
and fertilizing) to whatever you are using. Each will have benefits and difficulties to deal with.

Perhaps I will experiment with a similar mix for some plants. I use stuff like what he describes for "growing out" trees in nursery containers and grow boxes but have never
tried in a bonsai pot.
 

Jzack605

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Also I don't think @Jzack605 ment he could write down a better worded explanation on how soils work, but instead ment he could have posed a better question if it weren't for the Shiner Bock and bourbon ;)
This is exactly what I was saying; where’s the facepalm emoji?
 

Igor. T. Ljubek

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I think at the beginning of this train ride I mentioned that the most important aspect of a bonsai soil is structure. Structure is the physical nature of the soil as to how well it remains the same over a prolonged period of time. Water and climate have their effects on the structure of a soil mix in that the soil structure will break down and change, causing the soil to hold more water and expell less than it used to over a determined length of time. I have also found that a good soil has to breath. This is why I have my success with Mugo Pines. Mugos are a paradox in that they don't like to be wet but they like to be watered a lot. This means that you have to have a soil mix that drains well. Mugos like to be watered a lot because they need to breath. Essentially they liked the soil ball flushed with clean water and air.

Breathing for a soil mix is the process of water driving air out --- and--- gravity pushing and pulling the water through and out, pulling fresh air into a soil mix in the process. This is what hinders the formation of root rot, the circulation of fresh air in a soil mix. The fungus that forms phytotoxins cannot flourish in this kind of condition. When structure breaks down this process changes and when the structure changes it is usually not for the best causing the arability to slow. When the airability changes there is a tendency to over water because we all default to bad habit at times. We water this many times a day because we always have, not realizing that our soil is holding onto a lot more water than it used to. This in turn can cause root rot to start. A technical term is field capacity and can be measured if you are so interested in the debate.

What is important is that you understand what your soil is doing and know what to do when it stops doing it. Consistency is important in maintaining the root health of a bonsai and if you cannot achieve a consistency you are never going to be able to figure out what the hell is going on. Sometimes we get lucky,--- sometimes we don't. It is for the sake of structure that my mix is as it is. I don't like akadama because it breaks down too quickly, I don't like garden dirt because it breaks down too quickly and unless I have some lab tell me what is in the garden dirt I have no clue what I am doing. If I am just digging dirt out of the ground I have no clue what's in it, it could contain Triox.

In the beginning when I started doing bonsai we used collected garden/field soil,-- essentially dirt. We did not have access to pumice, coarse sand, composted Pine bark, Akadama, or even Turface and a host of similar products. We used good black dirt gathered from a foot or two below ground dried and sifted out to particles about 1/8 inch. We collected clay, red and gray driving distances to find it. We sifted this stuff and we did use construction sand. We also used forest loam and leaf mold. It was a major project to get a soil mix together and it did not hold on to its structure more that two years. Sometimes these soil mixes worked fine and occasionally they failed forcing us to repot a lot of trees or lose them because there was something wrong with the latest batch of soil. Finding consistent elements that can be put together like a kitchen recipe for apple pie was a major sea change in the world of bonsai.

The short story: You can use what you want for a soil mix as long as you have the time and talent to recognize when something is going wrong and know what to do about it. It is my belief that it is better to know what you are putting a tree into and what it is going to do over time than it is to of a sudden discover that your tree is not looking right. The problem with garden dirt is you don't know up front what is in it unless it is you that made that dirt up. I am not sure what the garden dirt recipe really is, I suspect it is more man made than is being portrayed.

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. I can see the whole picture now, really. I am done with bad (mostly organic) substrates, root rot and repotting every year. I've already bought myself perlite, pumice, baked loam/expanded clay + chopped pine bark just for the case. I still hesitate to go full inorganic, I think 75% - 80% inorganic + 20% - 25% chopped pine bark will work just fine for me, for now ...
 

Forsoothe!

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Regardless of what formula you use, everybody should consider using Bone Char as some ~minor fraction to provide C and P. Charcoal has been used for epiphytes almost forever, especially for orchids, and is useful both as a microorganism nutrient and as purifying agent which, I believe, would sequester sulfur dioxide, the mother of root rot.
 

LanceMac10

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Yes, I'm vetting horticultural charcoal and it's benefits in regards to container grown trees and shrubs. Very intriguing.
I am aware of it's use in bonsai circles and am contemplating it's addition to the soil mix I use currently.

Good suggestion.:)
 

coh

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Yes, I'm vetting horticultural charcoal and it's benefits in regards to container grown trees and shrubs. Very intriguing.
I am aware of it's use in bonsai circles and am contemplating it's addition to the soil mix I use currently.

Good suggestion.:)
I've been adding some hort charcoal to some of my trees when repotting. If I had to switch from akadama to bark, I'd probably mix in a larger
amount of charcoal, maybe 50% charcoal and 50% bark. Charcoal supposedly has a high cec and should last longer in the container than bark.

Interestingly, Ryan Neil is strongly against using charcoal.
 

Vance Wood

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I've been adding some hort charcoal to some of my trees when repotting. If I had to switch from akadama to bark, I'd probably mix in a larger
amount of charcoal, maybe 50% charcoal and 50% bark. Charcoal supposedly has a high cec and should last longer in the container than bark.

Interestingly, Ryan Neil is strongly against using charcoal.
Does he say why???
 

coh

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Does he say why???
I can't recall exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of "it has no benefit". I know people asked about it a number of times
during the Q&A sessions but I'm no longer paying for the highest-level plan, so I can't see those anymore. Maybe someone else here can and
will look it up.

Edit to add...probably if one is using "boon mix" it's (charcoal) not really necessary since the akadama has a decent cec. Might be more useful if one
isn't using akadama, but Ryan is 100% in the akadama camp until he can't get any more. Then maybe he'll change his opinion.
 

Shinjuku

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Does he say why???

I've googled to try to learn why charcoal would be helpful in bonsai soil mix, but I haven't found a scientific or chemical reason why it would be helpful to a tree. Chemically, activated charcoal is just the element carbon - nothing more. It's just processed so that the particle size is remarkably small. Maybe excess carbon in soil provides a benefit that I'm not aware of.

If you google "Activated Charcoal," you'll see that it's a fad for people to use activated charcoal for all kinds of health reasons. People put it in toothpaste, smoothies, soap, and all kinds of things. The scientific evidence to support the myriad of health claims is scant at best. The main exception is that swallowing activated charcoal seems to help when a person swallows certain poisons. Sometimes, I wonder if it's a similar fad, not based in science, in the bonsai soil discussion.

Does anyone know of anywhere in the world where trees naturally growing in nature grow in a place that has extra amounts of raw carbon in the soil? And do we know how that naturally occurring carbon affects the trees? Do trees growing in the carbon-rich topsoil following a forest fire have an advantage over trees that grow in a place that doesn't (or rarely) has fires to deposit extra carbon into the soil?
 

coh

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Generally the recommendations I've seen are for regular horticultural charcoal as opposed to activated charcoal. I don't know all the science but I think activated
charcoal tend to grab onto and hold stuff - which is why it is given to people who've overdosed or swallowed chemicals. So in bonsai soil I suspect it might tend to
soak up fertilizer and NOT give it back to the roots. Whereas regular charcoal grabs less but allows it to be released for use by the plant. Maybe I don't have all that
right but it's the impression I've gotten from what I've read on the topic.

Some people make claims about charcoal "sweetening" the soil but I'm not really sure what they mean (and they probably don't know either). To me, it's an organic
component that decays very slowly and has a high cec, so it can bind nutrients and then release them for plant use. Not sure if it has much benefit if you already have
that in your soil but doesn't seem like it would hurt anything.
 

Shibui

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Sweetening in hort terms is the opposite of acidifying. Charcoal (or at least the ash with it) is alkaline so it will counteract any acidification in the mix. You can see that this could be a problem if the mix is already neutral or alkaline.
 

Forsoothe!

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Sweetening in hort terms is the opposite of acidifying. Charcoal (or at least the ash with it) is alkaline so it will counteract any acidification in the mix. You can see that this could be a problem if the mix is already neutral or alkaline.
Ash is specifically minimized in bone char and all other charcoal production processes. The highest quality charcoal is produced in conditions specifically excluding air. The charcoal left-over after an ordinary fire has very high ash content and concurrently very little charcoal because the oxygen level was high.
 
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