Wires_Guy_wires
Imperial Masterpiece
1. Know how and what. Learn how to keep a plant healthy and thriving before you search the edges of weakness when trying to slow a tree down. We want to push things into bonsai pots fairly soon, but usually it's better to get to know a plant for a year or two. See what makes it tick, what contributes to health and vigor and what doesn't. I still believe there is no bad soil. There are bad waterers and there are good waterers. Knowing how plants work and how to keep them happy is maybe the most important part of gardening all together. Knowing your shit can help you do a proper diagnosis, argue whether a decision is good or bad, and generally prevent a lot of problems before they happen. Knowing how to identify and tackle issues is a different type of sport all together.
2. Climate conditions & choices - a tree should be chosen, based on what you have to offer. If all I have is shade, it wouldn't make sense to buy conifers that love sunlight. In shaded parts there is a higher spore load in general, simply because there's more fungal growth due to higher humidity levels; a spore that lands on a sunny needle doesn't germinate until 4-10 hours after it gets wet IF it gets wet, but chances are that the wind blows it away and/or the sun sterilizes it. A spore on a damp needle will germinate within 4-10 hours whether there's rain or not due to high humidity. Gardeners all around the world, myself included, love taking plants and then try to mimic the conditions it natively grows in.. All to find out that this is near impossible in some cases. Perfect example is my father in law who likes to think he's an excellent gardener. Every year I donate some cannabis seeds to him, expensive ones too! And he manages to get the worst possible outcome. "You really spent 15 euros on a single seed, and this is what you get?!"
Absolutely not. I get a crop that stops me from going to a dispensary for three consecutive years. Because I know they require full sun and large containers from start to finish. He puts them in the shade, overwaters them constantly, transplants them every week into small pots and then complains they don't want to grow.. His idea of gardening is that plants should grow where he plants them, whether the plant likes it or not. Plants, all of them, are programmed to survive. The harder we make it for them to do so, the more time and energy they'll spend on just surviving and at some point there's that tipping point of no return. We have to make use of what we have, instead of trying to fix what we don't have. If we have shade, we should pick shade loving plants. If we have sunlight, we can do whatever we please. If we have sunlight and heat, we can pick only plants that can survive both. And so on.. If you only have bonsai substrate, don't do bonsai. Do something containerized, whatever, instead of fighting an uphill battle against a man-made problem.
Don't get me wrong, I love challenges! I want as many people to try whatever they want and I love seeing them work it out. But at the same time, be realistic and acknowledge that something might not work because the conditions just aren't right. Either make the commitment, or don't. I gave up JBP because I simply cannot provide whatever these finicky basterds require. I'm still growing 7 or so other species of pines.
3. A diverse and solid microbiome. I'm pretty serious about this. My soil mycorrhizae make antibiotics for my plants, stuff so complex that we humans have only catalogued a couple thousand of the millions there are out there in nature, and the mycorrhizae evolve alongside the pathogens they fight. I can make a pretty safe estimate that every microbe in the world can kill at least 4 of its competitor species/families. Given that there are a couple thousand different species in every teaspoon of soil - many of which we can't even grow in a petri dish - you can imagine the vast numbers of unexplored materials.
The pathogen tries to find a way through defenses, and the symbiont/biome ups the ante by raising those defenses and producing new or different types of antibiotics. Covid is a fine example of how a new viral strain with some cute mutations can evade a working vaccine, now imagine if you have the pfizer researchers AND factory AND FDA AND vaccine administrators all set up in your fridge. The virus mutates, finds a new method of infecting you, and the next sip of water you take is already filled with something to stop the infection. Fungi don't like killing their friends, so they produce something with sniper rifle-like precision: kill this pathogen, and this pathogen only. We humans can get a bottle of mancozeb and kill everything all together, and take all defenses down with it. We've created a glass bubble for our plants; everything from the outside now has the potential to kill it, simply because there are no defenses on the inside anymore. Whatever's left will fight a tribal war to the death, instead of stabilizing as a diverse community. I haven't used any antibiotics for my plants in the past year and the cases of needlecast and tip blight have sunk to zero. Cedar rust is still present in two junipers, simply because I have a flock of sparrows crapping all over them the entire year, but it's not inside the 'old' wood anymore, only in the new twigs that I have plenty of and can just cut off. In a sense, antifungals from a bottle create more issues than they solve.
(4) Knowing more than just plants and techniques
I've studied chemistry, biochem, plants as well as fungi and micro-organisms. Not everyone has had that luxury, so I love jumping in and helping out. But these fields - although related - all work differently and should be seen as different entities that all have different conditions and situations that make them useful. Sodium bicarbonate sure kills powdery milldew, but it also kills plants. Potassium bicarbonate kills powdery milldew but it doesn't kill plants. Knowing the difference between 'baking soda' and 'baking soda' can mean the difference between saving and killing a plant. Feeding beer to a plant like the monks in Japan do sometimes, can be beneficial. In some cases it can suffocate the soil and cause serious yeast issues - never use homebrew or stuff that's still actively fermenting, use heineken or mass produced stuff instead. Why? Because of how yeast works and how dead yeast doesn't.
Mechanical damage and fungal infections can look alike, but there are subtle differences; in mechanical damage a plant tends to drain the foliage for nutrients before it kills off a patch in a leaf. In fungal infections, the vascular tissue closes off to stop the spread, and it looks entirely different. Different colors have different meanings, even the smells can be an indicator. I don't blame anyone for falling short on those fields, absolutely not.
Combine all three and you're rock solid. Add the fourth and you can relax on number 2.
