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bonsai is not my hobby
Join Date: Oct-2001
Location: Egling, south of Munich
Country: Germany
Posts: 1,454
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Fish,
sure I understand what you meant. But what you are saying applies only to finished bonsai which are going to be exhibited soon.
I have about a dozen which are candidates for the Gingko eshibit. These are watered individually somehow. Some get less because I do not want the needles to grow. Some get more, because they need a bit more foliage before the exhibit. But this is an exception this year. Otherwise WE have about 500 trees in training.
I only have trees in development really. To develop a tree it must grow because I want to cut off something and I want it to accept the new form.
This watering advice that we are given ONLY applies to finished trees.
Most of the general bonsai advice comes from the day when someone asked this Japanese master: 'What do I have to do to keep this masterpiece alive and just in the shape that it is now?'
Answer 'pinch off eveything that comes out immediately, water as little as possible, feed as little as possible'. They never assumed that we are ever willing or capable of developing our own. They assumed that this is what THEY did.
Commercial bonsai nurseries have everything for sale. Everything must look good enough any time. Therefore they are NOT the example for us.
We have an entirely different situation in our garden. There the question shuold be: 'How do I treat my bonsai collection which is ALL trees in development?' The answer would be: 'I assume that you want to know how to treat bonsai in general. I assume that you want to develop your trees like just about everybody. Well, water them as much as you can, feed them as much as you dare. Let them grow for a while and then cut back severely. Do this for many years until they are finished. Then be much less generous with everything and come back to my previous advice. But you have thirty years to go before that.'
Seriously, I am told by people who were apprentice there for a long time, trees in Japan are watered and fed aggressively.
We know the wrong things about bonsai!!! Not only is the artistic information mainly old-fashioned and not artistic at all, but also the horticultural information is misleading and even wrong quite often.
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