If you’re a fan of Gardening Australia as I *massively* am, you will have noticed they are always going on about mulch. Mulch (often in the form of bark or woodchips) gets added religiously to everything they plant whether in a pot or in the ground. This got me wondering whether mulch could be beneficial […] Read more… >
You’ve probably heard the term ‘nitrogen-fixing’ – it means extracting nitrogen from the air. Which doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult, since nitrogen makes up 78% of airref, but in reality plants can’t use gaseous nitrogen. In nature (ie. where nitrogen is not added artificially as fertiliser) plants mostly rely on microorganisms to […] Read more… >
I’ve talked about transpiration in quite a few different posts on this site, but a recent thread on http://bonsainut.com caused me to think maybe I should have a post dedicated to it, so here goes… Transpiration is the evaporation of water from the leaves of a tree. It’s actually a critical process for trees, because […] Read more… >
Most bonsai enthusiasts will have come across the term ‘live veins’ in the context of bonsai. Live veins are areas of living bark surrounded by deadwood. They are often seen on juniper bonsai, where a section of bark twists around the tree in a dramatic contrast to the white deadwood (Sierra juniper are particularly amazing). […] Read more… >
Of course your choice of pot has a lot to do with the aesthetic vision you have for your tree, and I’m certainly not going to get into a debate about ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ trees and pots (hint – I’m not a fan of gendered bonsai!) Or glazed/unglazed (etc). The pot for your bonsai is […] Read more… >
One piece of advice often given to bonsai enthusiasts is that root pruning should be avoided until bud break – usually the advice says you should wait until the buds are just about to burst and then you can repot to your heart’s content. But is there any scientific basis to this? The rationale for […] Read more… >
Lateral roots are ones which branch off from the main root – just like lateral or axillary buds aboveground. Lateral root development is how roots branch and ramify – similarly to stems, which ramify through bud initiation and stem growth. Encouraging strong lateral root development is a goal in bonsai, because we want to create […] Read more… >
Europeans have rather a binary view of when plants grow and when they don’t – growth in spring and summer, and none in winter. Deciduous trees give this impression, but as someone who did not grow up in Europe, I never had a sense that there were such specific times of growth – all around […] Read more… >
So we know what roots achieve for a tree, but how are they structured? To start with tree roots are either woody or non-woody. Woody roots have undergone secondary thickening and are long-lived, like the trunk and branches, and provide the structural framework for the tree.ref The ‘root collar’ is the area on the tree’s […] Read more… >
I had never heard of root exudates before creating this website, but in fact their production is so important to plants that they “invest up to 20–40% of their photosynthetically fixed C”ref in this process. Root exudates are basically substances created by root cells and sent out into the nearby environment – known as the […] Read more… >