Japonicus
Imperial Masterpiece
I wish this was just a bad dream...this is my wife favourite bonsai and the only JWP I have. It's on BP roots.
After an hour of tweezing ^ half a quadrant of soil, some nebari and mostly working on the lower trunk, one side.
another hour and then some heading into 4 hours lapsed, it's evident I have to tread on thin ice and repot.
A couple rotten roots, but mostly the akadama had turned to a thick mud, like spent cat litter (exaggerated).
The thin ice part is the tree is rebounding from a weekend state, and the top half of the soil where a normal
repot would occur, is mud. The Irish moss holds moisture, and robs nutrients.
Manual removal is replaced with fresh growth, but! last year it did go to seed, so I'm hoping, fingers crossed
the moss roots in the following pictures wither and die. I have my doubts.
So with the roots so fine I truly don't see a bare rooting even, fixing the problem, but nonetheless
I truly feel the health of the tree would be further jeopardized by holding off on repotting.
One of these days it'll fit in that bonsai pot...had to go with the oval mica for now.
If the top portion of the soil were like the bottom, there'd be no qualms with waiting another year.
After working the bottom, and a ton of Mycorrhizae that was much thicker than the pics could capture
(all the bottom soil was clumped together with the webbing like fungi)
I went ahead and jetted the top portion of soil, roots, washing as much as I felt comfortable removing.
As you can see, the jetting only revealed more moss roots the deeper I jetted.
Quite a mat of very fine delicate roots this crud is.
Blended some of the mycorrhizae with the new soil and potted it back up.
The roots being interlocked, I won't use round up if this comes back.
I killed an Aspen tree 30 feet away (and all soldiers connected) from another Aspen who's stump I drilled and poured round up in.
This "moss" is not a broad leaf weed, so I don't see trying a selective herbicide either.
I will try the vinegar again...but let's see if this sprouts from just the roots 1st. I bet dollars to donuts it does.
After an hour of tweezing ^ half a quadrant of soil, some nebari and mostly working on the lower trunk, one side.
another hour and then some heading into 4 hours lapsed, it's evident I have to tread on thin ice and repot.
A couple rotten roots, but mostly the akadama had turned to a thick mud, like spent cat litter (exaggerated).
The thin ice part is the tree is rebounding from a weekend state, and the top half of the soil where a normal
repot would occur, is mud. The Irish moss holds moisture, and robs nutrients.
Manual removal is replaced with fresh growth, but! last year it did go to seed, so I'm hoping, fingers crossed
the moss roots in the following pictures wither and die. I have my doubts.
So with the roots so fine I truly don't see a bare rooting even, fixing the problem, but nonetheless
I truly feel the health of the tree would be further jeopardized by holding off on repotting.
One of these days it'll fit in that bonsai pot...had to go with the oval mica for now.
If the top portion of the soil were like the bottom, there'd be no qualms with waiting another year.
After working the bottom, and a ton of Mycorrhizae that was much thicker than the pics could capture
(all the bottom soil was clumped together with the webbing like fungi)
I went ahead and jetted the top portion of soil, roots, washing as much as I felt comfortable removing.
As you can see, the jetting only revealed more moss roots the deeper I jetted.
Quite a mat of very fine delicate roots this crud is.
Blended some of the mycorrhizae with the new soil and potted it back up.
The roots being interlocked, I won't use round up if this comes back.
I killed an Aspen tree 30 feet away (and all soldiers connected) from another Aspen who's stump I drilled and poured round up in.
This "moss" is not a broad leaf weed, so I don't see trying a selective herbicide either.
I will try the vinegar again...but let's see if this sprouts from just the roots 1st. I bet dollars to donuts it does.