SU2
Omono
So in my adventures over the past year I've made lots of mistakes, one being to put a bougie I really liked into a pure-perlite soil - while it surprisingly avoided chlorosis or any noticeable reduction in growth-rate, it would wilt very quickly which necessitated constant irrigation, like 3x/day a lot of the time (I could literally have droopy shoots within several hours of watering if the day was hot / windy enough, perlite just doesn't hold much and the box was kind of tight so there wasn't that much perlite anyways!)
As you may've guessed, the excessive water (and the excessive light from the brilliant-white reflectivity of the perlite itself) caused a green-algae build-up encircling the lowest parts of the trunk ie the surface//trunk area which, as time's gone on, has begun flaking a bit...am finding areas where there's new bark beneath this algae-ridden bark but often it's a very thin layer between the bad bark and the cambium:
Exhibit A-
(larger POV: and a close-up: )
Exhibit B-
(bigger POV: and close-up: )
So anyways I'm ready to remedy this guy's environment, just built a mesh-bottomed box (my favorite box yet!) that's ~20-25% larger perimeter (same depth) to transplant him into:
(am planning to use some fiberglass-mesh screening around the corners of the box, and likely some (real/pure) silicone around any of the metal-lathe's exposed, rough edges! Still expecting this box will need to be dissembled to safely remove a tree from it...will find out next year I guess!)
This is just 1 specimen that I'm in the middle of 'fixing the living quarters' for, but I've got many with similar problems. I'll brush 3% hydrogen peroxide on w/ a 2mm paintbrush here&there, it keeps the growth in-check but I've found no level of this will banish the mold, seems like once it's taken-hold it's there for good....I honestly wonder if it's not something that, with it being dug-in like this, is almost guaranteed to be the cause of slow-deaths on all the affected trees :/
For right now though, I've got my box made, (mostly) have my substrate ready and am wanting to transplant this guy, and - while I've got all this prime access to the tree's soil-level bark - I can't help but think of whether I should be removing the worst chunks? Obviously not removing so much that I'm leaving raw cambium but some areas just want to come off like I almost could've blown this piece off:
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!! Suffice to say, the new substrate isn't pure perlite, I won't be creating that environment for it to thrive anymore but, if there's anything I can do while in the process of re-potting (aside from a thorough peroxide-brushing!) then I'd really like to do it, I just don't want to wing-it and start peeling bad bark and find that it was badly damaging to the cambium (so far as I understand this, the cambium is not susceptible to this green algae, that it 'partitions-off' such invasions, if I'm off-point there I'd love to be corrected!)
Thanks guys!!
As you may've guessed, the excessive water (and the excessive light from the brilliant-white reflectivity of the perlite itself) caused a green-algae build-up encircling the lowest parts of the trunk ie the surface//trunk area which, as time's gone on, has begun flaking a bit...am finding areas where there's new bark beneath this algae-ridden bark but often it's a very thin layer between the bad bark and the cambium:
Exhibit A-
(larger POV: and a close-up: )
Exhibit B-
(bigger POV: and close-up: )
So anyways I'm ready to remedy this guy's environment, just built a mesh-bottomed box (my favorite box yet!) that's ~20-25% larger perimeter (same depth) to transplant him into:
(am planning to use some fiberglass-mesh screening around the corners of the box, and likely some (real/pure) silicone around any of the metal-lathe's exposed, rough edges! Still expecting this box will need to be dissembled to safely remove a tree from it...will find out next year I guess!)
This is just 1 specimen that I'm in the middle of 'fixing the living quarters' for, but I've got many with similar problems. I'll brush 3% hydrogen peroxide on w/ a 2mm paintbrush here&there, it keeps the growth in-check but I've found no level of this will banish the mold, seems like once it's taken-hold it's there for good....I honestly wonder if it's not something that, with it being dug-in like this, is almost guaranteed to be the cause of slow-deaths on all the affected trees :/
For right now though, I've got my box made, (mostly) have my substrate ready and am wanting to transplant this guy, and - while I've got all this prime access to the tree's soil-level bark - I can't help but think of whether I should be removing the worst chunks? Obviously not removing so much that I'm leaving raw cambium but some areas just want to come off like I almost could've blown this piece off:
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!! Suffice to say, the new substrate isn't pure perlite, I won't be creating that environment for it to thrive anymore but, if there's anything I can do while in the process of re-potting (aside from a thorough peroxide-brushing!) then I'd really like to do it, I just don't want to wing-it and start peeling bad bark and find that it was badly damaging to the cambium (so far as I understand this, the cambium is not susceptible to this green algae, that it 'partitions-off' such invasions, if I'm off-point there I'd love to be corrected!)
Thanks guys!!