Garden Twines vs Wire

[Nishant]

Hello Friends,

Just thought of checking on this. Is there any specific reason why copper/alluminium wires are preferred over garden twines. Garden twines can be much better in certain respect that it comes in range of thickness/hardness and comes with a plastic coating on top of metal, possibly iron. The price is quite cheap as well and you can buy of the colors so as to comoflouge.

The plastic coating could well serve as protection from winter low tempratures. The copper/alluminium wire can, I believe, damage some cambium when it gets very cold.

Please share your thoughts & experience.

Thanks.

 

[fredman]

I use this as guy wire..

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Garden twine or wire is way more rigid and tends to cut into the cambium more than copper does during both application and removal.
Copper is only rigid after it's set. Alu stays kind of soft.

I do my guy wiring and wire my trees into my pots with gardening wire. But other than that, I prefer well annealed copper or alu for wiring branches and trunks. It's just less of a hassle.

Cheap galvanized iron wire can be useful though, if you heat it up well, it tends to oxidize on the tree and basically removes itself by falling apart within a year or two.

 

[penumbra]

The copper/alluminium wire can, I believe, damage some cambium when it gets very cold.

Apparently not so. Just a myth according to bonsai heresy.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Wiring allows much more controlled bends in branches, on multiple planes. Guy-wires generally allow movement in one direction, and it’s often bowed if not applied correctly.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Apparently not so. Just a myth according to bonsai heresy.

I always wondered how copper as a great heat conductor would become cooler than the ambient temperature.

 

[leatherback]

I always wondered how copper as a great heat conductor would become cooler than the ambient temperature.

It doesnt which is why it is a myth. Like many things in bonsai.

How about this one: Never water your trees in the evening as your tree might drown during the night due to lesser evaporation.
Came across that from a grower with 30yrs experience..

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

It doesnt which is why it is a myth. Like many things in bonsai.

How about this one: Never water your trees in the evening as your tree might drown during the night due to lesser evaporation.
Came across that from a grower with 30yrs experience..

Well, duh, the trees are asleep at night! I've heard they swallow roughly 40 spiders a year during their sleep.

 

[Clicio]

It doesnt which is why it is a myth. Like many things in bonsai

"Never water in the sun" is the one that killed more trees of dryness in the summer than "droplets acting like lens will burn your leaves".
Yes, some ferns will suffer, but we don't keep ferns as bonsai, do we?

 

[Nishant]

The d

I always wondered how copper as a great heat conductor would become cooler than the ambient temperature.

The difference is that specific heat and conductivity of metal will be more than air. So say if there was to be frost the wire will draw out more heat and more quickly than air does. This is only to explain why even though everything comes to ambient temprature but plants may need time to adjust to ambient temprature, not as fast a metal would require them to do while being alive.

Imagine you were to put out in a jacket made of metal in winter days. You will be dead in a few hours but not otherwise.

 

[penumbra]

"study, done by Dr Louise D Albright at Cornell University, measured the temperature both over and under the wire on a branch. Dr. Albright was able to show that a wire left on in cold weather did the opposite of chilling the branch, in fact surprisingly it functioned as an insulator to the bark."
Bonsai Heresy, page 222



'

 

[Nishant]

The tree branch was keeping the temprature up. Metal can never serve as insulator.

 

[penumbra]

The tree branch was keeping the temprature up. Metal can never serve as insulator.

and yet it did. This was presented to the International Symposium Bonsai in 1985 and has been verified by others since. You don't need to accept it, I am just presenting it.
I have learned to never say never.

 

[Adair M]

It doesnt which is why it is a myth. Like many things in bonsai.

How about this one: Never water your trees in the evening as your tree might drown during the night due to lesser evaporation.
Came across that from a grower with 30yrs experience..

Watering JBP at night puts water on the foliage which aids fungus diseases like needlecast. I always try to water early enough that the water will dry off the foliage before night fall. I also avoid wetting the foliage, if possible, when I water.

 

[Nishant]

and yet it did. This was presented to the International Symposium Bonsai in 1985 and has been verified by others since. You don't need to accept it, I am just presenting it.
I have learned to never say never.

I dont deny the temprature readings that were taken. What was the reason will need more scientific study. If metals can behave as insulators in such ordinary setting: Such a finding will mert nobel prize.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I dont deny the temprature readings that were taken. What was the reason will need more scientific study. If metals can behave as insulators in such ordinary setting: Such a finding will mert nobel prize.

I have never heard of this study, and it raises tons of questions in my mind. The likely solution is that copper or aluminum, despite being good conductors, are still significantly more dense than air, and so they serve as heat sinks in cases where the air temperature is dropping, and they will be slightly cooler than ambient temp when the air temp is rising. But realistically, given the rate with which air temperature changes even with the approach of a winter storm, we're talking a small percentage of a degree difference - and that is without taking wind into account. So you could argue that copper wire would lag the changes in temperature (ever so slightly), but it would not ever lead changes in temperature (ie get colder than ambient temp when the air temp is falling, or warmer than ambient temp when the air temp is rising). And this is only for changes in temperature. Measure the temp of copper wire that has been sitting overnight in static 0 degree winter air, and it will be 0 degrees.

Now if you had a copper wire that extended 5' into the ground, it is possible that you would be able to transfer some of the ambient soil temp up into the branches of the tree like a heat pump. But it would certainly be inconvenient, expensive, and of questionable impact.

(Guess who just read a book on the science of different kitchen cookware )

 

[leatherback]

Watering JBP at night puts water on the foliage which aids fungus diseases like needlecast. I

Of course!

But the argument here was really that the roots would be too wet overnight because of reduced evaporation, leading to drowning roots.

 

[sorce]

Erase ridiculous opinions, and we're left with the Laws of Physics. The properties of the materials, and their effect on the tree.

We don't get paper cuts from a the wide, velvet jacketed spine of a book, we get paper cuts from the single peice of paper.

Don't give your trees paper cuts.

Consider if you'll show them in that state.

Done.

Hell with opinions.

Sorce

 

[sorce]

According to my "a tree won't hurt itself" theory, you technically can't give a tree a paper cut!

"A tree won't hurt itself" is why I use leaves or twigs, needles or branches from a tree to clean itself. The pressure, like the when we press a price of wire to a branch to see if the wire will work, is such that the leaf or twig will always fold before damaging the tree.

So picking off scale, aphids, etc, can be done safely with a piece of the same tree.

The tools we need are always among us.

Sorce

 

[leatherback]

So picking off scale, aphids, etc, can be done safely with a piece of the same tree.

So you are suggesting.. Cut a branch to remove scale?