Rurumo
Well-Known Member
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it. The bonsai moms we keep as mother plants are a lot different from real bonsai. I'm a huge fan of real bonsai-I visited Japan one time and went out of my way to see some good collections there and it was totally worth it. Besides the temples and temple gardens, those bonsai really made the trip....well, the food and hot springs are right up there too lol. With real bonsai, I would try air layering-there are some great tutorials out there on how to do it. With woody plants/trees, I've had awesome success with air layering, although I've never tried it with a bonsai-mostly just with fruit trees in my garden. As for germination, I like to keep it simple and just focus on the environment. I'll write the long version here since I don't think I talked about it much in this journal yet.
Keeping a stable, warm temp 24/7 is the key thing, as well as keeping the media moist, but not soaked. I germ directly in coco, keep it 78-80 degrees, under a mild light-either a t5 or the led turned down low, kept on 24/7. To avoid possible damping off, I run some .6-.8 EC nutrient solution with Southern Ag Garden Friendly Fungicide through the coco media (loose bagged type, canna/hydrofarm/botanicare), which also lowers its initial EC which is usually right around 1 due to the calcium nitrate buffering process. The Southern Ag inoculates the soil and I've never had a damping off problem since using it, on anything in my veggie garden either. I also add some seaweed extract and Mr Fulvic to that same soil flush (I continue to use both through veg), as both of those are shown in studies to increase germ rates. I soak my seeds for 12 hours in a mild h202 solution 1oz of h202 to 500 ml water, then I take out the seeds, dust them in mycorrhizae powder, then plant in that flushed coco in solo cups. Keep uncovered and keep a spray bottle with water in it handy-at 80 deg the surface will dry out quickly so you'll want to mist it once or twice per day just to keep the surface moist-but you don't want to add enough to soak the inside anymore. If your rh is low and the soil is drying out too quickly, you can get away with covering the cups with zip lock bags just until you see the sprout start to emerge, then take them off-don't cover them at all unless you use the Southern Ag. Those seeds will sprout fast if they are fresh, but might take a few days. Once the seedling emerges, wait until the cup gets light before you feed-this could take a few days to up to a week or more, depending on temps, rh, and the type of coco you germinated in- some fine grind coco brands hold much more water than other brands. Both fine and course grind coco can be treated the same way once the roots fill out, before that point, be careful not to overwater fine grind coco. I begin fertigating as soon as the soil dries out enough-once the sprout emerges, stop using the sprayer and let the roots reach out to find the water-give them a slight wet/dry cycle (let cups get light, but not overly dry) just until the roots fill out their container. Do the same when you transfer from solo cup to a larger pot-the wet/dry cycle helps fill out the root ball. I only feed daily when the roots have filled out whatever sized container/pot, I have them in. I typically feed .8 ec through veg, but plants really vary in the EC that they like, so I start there and raise it if I need to, and occasionally, I have to lower it with very sensitive types-like one of the OGs I'm growing now. I think that's pretty much everything I do/use.
