Thank you so much for your video to encourage saving water. Have started saving bath and sink water. With this water, its saving so many gallons needed to water my plants indoor and outdoor that would in the past just go down the drain. Thank you
I have placed a 50 gallon barrol to my AC condensation pipe. It generates an incredible amount of water. Have been using it to water all my veggies and trees
I don't have AC, but I do have a high efficiency gas furnace. It collects condensation and sends it to a little pump that sends it over to a drain. I've diverted it from the drain into a bucket for watering plants. Someone said that the water would be too acid, but pH test strips show that it's neutral. I've also used the dish pan & bucket in the kitchen for years, as well as catching cold water in the basin or shower waiting for it to get hot.
Ahh such perfect timing as always, I'm away for a week soon and have decided to move everything in a pot to the shade close to the house, I've also found every tray I have and will put all the small pots into gravel trays, I figure this should help and should mean my very kind mother in law only need to visit every other day to water! Good luck to everyone and their trees in this heat!
In South Africa we sometimes get severe hail - so I have built a hail shelter with mottled sun - it’s a relief because hail last year destroyed the leaves of all our maples and the trees seem to be doing great
Shading and mulching help so much in extreme heat. For trees that are growing and developing, placing the plastic pots partway into cultivated soil with lots of mulch on top saves lots of water. Notice how hot black plastic pots become in direct sun during extreme conditions, some days mine are too hot to touch.
I have 4 water buts, and a well that fills from all the roof rain water . i recommissioned it when we brought the house, but I still have to use the hose now and again, great tips and thank you Peter
If you have a smaller collection of trees like me, best method is filling washing up bowl with water and then submerging eat tree to water them. Can then keep the left over water to use again later in the day
You can also put the trees in a bucket of water and let it soak up from the bottom then gently lift it and let the excess drain back into the bucket, saves a bunch of water that way
Thank you Peter. I’ve put fleece over the soil of my plants, the water goes through the fleece and stops the soil from drying. I put fleece over the tops of my maples. Michaela
Another good thing about using water that you used for washing your hands and dishes is that the soap helps stop/kill aphids that can harm trees and plants
Very good tips and a wide variety :) Striving for frugality will become increasingly important for our future. I find it quite interesting that many of these things were commonly done only some decades ago, but nowadays we have been lured into the illusion that we can take endlessly from nature because most things are available at all times. Greetings from sweltering hot Germany
What peter says about the trees not using water at night, Trees actually work allot at night, just like the human body, night is used to repair and grow. So theres allot of nutrients going around, building wood. The mornings are the time that you notice actual growth compared to the evening before.
With the hobby and activity like bonsai where one is used to large price tags and spending sometimes fairly high amounts to simply maintain status quo, it's a nice reminder that there are many frugal steps one can take when caring for one's plants either on an emergency basis or in the long term.
We catch the condensation from the air conditioner. The plants like that water so much more, better ph and far fewer dissolved solids. We get 3 to 4 gallons a day when it is hot out and that's when the plants need it.
i have just started fish keeping. the waste water is nitrate rich water ideal for growing plants with. have you thought of either fish keeping or maybe using the waste water from a fish keeper Peter? be a good way to aquire water thats going to get wasted.
I noticed how much water just drains through the pots when waterig the bonsai on the benches, I thought of an idea to place a gutter or eavestrough under it so it collects the water in a bucket that passes through.
My totally geeked out idea is to run a pump in to a 55 gallon drum or 5 gallon bucket, connect it to a drip/ microspray system controlled by a moisture sensing timer with a drip tray to catch it all and route it back in to the bucket. Suppose you could hook up a float fill in the bucket too and pretty much never worry about watering.
@@explodedstarmonkey , manual watering is a useful time to inspect plant health but as long as that's still done, this genius idea of yours might free up more time for plant health. Please share if you ever execute this idea!
Hopefully in the future more homes will be built with greywater recovery systems by default, being able to use greywater for landscape watering makes a big difference.
Maybe a silly question, but what makes a "good" bonsai pot. I'm starting my pottery aprenticeship/study in a couple of weeks. So I know that the perception of the object defines what it is most rather than set rules. Also realy love the content
Large drainage holes, and smaller holes to wire the tree into the pot. The more wire and drain holes, the better, for drainage and more options when positioning the tree in the pot. These holes are also beneficial for aeration of roots. Feet also help stability when there is wire running along the bottom of the pot.
Water is a huge issue. Some parts of Sa are running out fast and soon will hit day zero. Capetown had it really bad a few years back it was very had times for a long time, sadly most people forget or dont care once the hard times are over. Hope you guys are okay news here says your drought is one of the worst in a very long time. All the best
My parents use the washing machine water to water their garden, plants are fine with it as well :) Though not sure if it is okay for bonsai who prefer acidic water
If you are a fish keeper, like me.... I used to store all my old aquarium water from doing my water changes for watering my plants/bonsai. Fish poop is good for plants.
@@peterchan3100 I never shopped there until I started working there. Then felt silly for wasting money at other food stores. Thanks for the info on the tree, I'll have to look into getting one. I'm a sucker for unique bark, and that bark is beautiful!
There is some kind of myth about the under tray. Some say it will kill the tree because of rot of roots. I've been using them for 25 years from may to october.
Protip: water your foliage. Trees use 75% of their water just to cool off when temps get high. Lowering foliage temp helps the tree move out of survival mode.
True but u have to add be careful not to do this in the hot sun. Lost a shohin juniper this year by watering the foilage. It was in a 6 inch small pot and burned it to death. It couldnt recoup
@@sophiebell4758 There may be a whole range of reasons why it's not good to water plants in the middle of the day, but is burning the plant's leaves one of them? Dr Karl investigates the physics of plants and water. One factoid that I have been told many times is to never water the garden plants under the powerful glare of the midday sun. The accepted wisdom has been that a water droplet sitting on a leaf would act like a tiny magnifying lens, and by focusing that sunlight would produce scorch marks and burns on the innocent leaf. And if you go looking on the interwebs, about 80 per cent of relevant sites claim that water droplets plus the midday sun will burn the leaf. Finally, after what must be centuries of this widespread belief, some scientists have checked out the theory and done the experiments - and here are the results. Burning a leaf with a water droplet does not happen on a smooth leaf, and is just barely possible on a hairy leaf. Smooth leaves Dr Adam Egri and colleagues from Hungary and Germany carried out both computer modelling, and tests, on real leaves. In their experiments, they used both little glass balls and water droplets. In their first study, they covered the surface of a smooth leaf with glass balls ranging in size from 2 to 10 millimetres. They exposed them to the sun for periods between one and nine hours. And sure enough, there were scorch marks. So it would seem as though there was some truth to the claim that water droplets could burn leaves. Mind you, glass balls keep their shape, unlike water droplets that spread out and flatten. The other difference is that glass bends light about 15 per cent better than water does. So the second study had water droplets on smooth leaves. But, no matter how they altered various factors, they could not get the sunlight shining through the water droplets to burn the smooth leaves. When the sun was shining from directly above, the light would be brought to a focus underneath the water droplet, and inside the body of the leaf. But there was a big blob of water sitting on top of the leaf, soaking up the heat. Any heat that got into the leaf was immediately transferred to the water. Then, as the water got warmer, it evaporated itself out of existence. And once there was no water droplet, there was no focusing of the heat. So there were no burn marks on the leaf - for the midday sun. What about sunlight in the morning and afternoon, when the slanting light was beaming through the water droplet, and landing on the bare leaf just outside water droplet? Could that cause a burn? The answer turned out to be 'no'. Well, when the Sun is just above the horizon, the sunlight is travelling through about 22 times more air than when the Sun is directly above you, at the vertex, around midday. So there's not enough heat to burn. What about the shape of the water droplet? After all, different leaves have different degrees of 'hydrophilia' or 'water-loving' tendency. So the scientists tested leaves from various trees - maple (very water-loving), plane (less water-loving) and rowan (water-hating, or 'hydrophobic'). At the water-loving end (maple), the water droplets were very flattened, while at the water-hating end (rowan), the droplets were fairly spherical. As you would expect, the more spherical water droplets on the water-hating leaves did concentrate the heat better, but not enough to scorch the leaf. So sunlight shining through water droplets doesn't burn smooth leaves. Hairy leaves But what about the hairy plants? The leaves have hairs that are 'hydrophobic' or 'water-hating'. Under the right circumstances, these hairs could catch a water droplet and keep it suspended at the right distance above the leaf, to allow the focus point of the sunlight to land on the surface of the leaf. Because the water was not in contact with the leaf, there was no cooling effect. And the hairs, being water-hating, would repel the water, and so keep it spherical - the best shape to focus the sunlight. But the hairs hate water, and the merest breath of wind would shake the droplets off. The smaller droplets were better at focusing the heat - but being smaller, they would also evaporate very quickly. Even so, the scientists did sometimes see scorch marks produced by water droplets on hairy leaves. How did this 'don't-water-plants-at-midday' story arise? Who knows? But you'd think that after half-a-billion years of bio-evolution, plants (which have adapted to every conceivable ecological niche) would have learnt to deal with a little rain ...
Peter, what about earthworms? I haven't heard you mention them. If you use organic soil and compost, and you keep your trees on the ground then it's a matter of time when the earthworms will crawl into the containers and it's really hard to get rid of them.
@@peterchan3100I have always been afraid that they start eating the live roots after they're done with the decayed material. Especially with seedling or young trees with small rootballs to begin with.
Thank you so much for your video to encourage saving water. Have started saving bath and sink water. With this water, its saving so many gallons needed to water my plants indoor and outdoor that would in the past just go down the drain. Thank you
I have placed a 50 gallon barrol to my AC condensation pipe. It generates an incredible amount of water. Have been using it to water all my veggies and trees
I don't have AC, but I do have a high efficiency gas furnace. It collects condensation and sends it to a little pump that sends it over to a drain. I've diverted it from the drain into a bucket for watering plants. Someone said that the water would be too acid, but pH test strips show that it's neutral. I've also used the dish pan & bucket in the kitchen for years, as well as catching cold water in the basin or shower waiting for it to get hot.
13:28 *Very good containers* reusing , and recycling very nice Peter!! ♻️😳
The Panama hat suits you well, Peter! 😎
Great timing! We've been without (meaningful) rain for more than a month here and this is very pertinent at the moment.
Ahh such perfect timing as always, I'm away for a week soon and have decided to move everything in a pot to the shade close to the house, I've also found every tray I have and will put all the small pots into gravel trays, I figure this should help and should mean my very kind mother in law only need to visit every other day to water! Good luck to everyone and their trees in this heat!
good luck to your trees
In South Africa we sometimes get severe hail - so I have built a hail shelter with mottled sun - it’s a relief because hail last year destroyed the leaves of all our maples and the trees seem to be doing great
Shading and mulching help so much in extreme heat. For trees that are growing and developing, placing the plastic pots partway into cultivated soil with lots of mulch on top saves lots of water. Notice how hot black plastic pots become in direct sun during extreme conditions, some days mine are too hot to touch.
I have 4 water buts, and a well that fills from all the roof rain water . i recommissioned it when we brought the house, but I still have to use the hose now and again, great tips and thank you Peter
If you have a smaller collection of trees like me, best method is filling washing up bowl with water and then submerging eat tree to water them. Can then keep the left over water to use again later in the day
You can also put the trees in a bucket of water and let it soak up from the bottom then gently lift it and let the excess drain back into the bucket, saves a bunch of water that way
I do that With my plants, i absolutely agree With U.
Thank you Peter for this saving water advice .And I keep my maples in the shadow and They feel fine.☺️🌺🌺🌺🌳
Now we know more especially the web site's , awesome tips 👍. Thx for sharing Peter...
I always use a washing up bowl. You use less water than if you just run the tap and like you say, you can put it on your plants afterwards 😁
Thank you Peter. I’ve put fleece over the soil of my plants, the water goes through the fleece and stops the soil from drying. I put fleece over the tops of my maples. Michaela
Merci pour ces conseils pleins de bon sens. Espérons que la pluie arrive rapidement. Cordialement.,
Another good thing about using water that you used for washing your hands and dishes is that the soap helps stop/kill aphids that can harm trees and plants
Very good tips and a wide variety :) Striving for frugality will become increasingly important for our future. I find it quite interesting that many of these things were commonly done only some decades ago, but nowadays we have been lured into the illusion that we can take endlessly from nature because most things are available at all times. Greetings from sweltering hot Germany
Such good advice - for now and perhaps for every year from now on? Water could end up being the 'new gold'?
What peter says about the trees not using water at night, Trees actually work allot at night, just like the human body, night is used to repair and grow. So theres allot of nutrients going around, building wood. The mornings are the time that you notice actual growth compared to the evening before.
J'agree❤️🇨🇦❤️
With the hobby and activity like bonsai where one is used to large price tags and spending sometimes fairly high amounts to simply maintain status quo, it's a nice reminder that there are many frugal steps one can take when caring for one's plants either on an emergency basis or in the long term.
We catch the condensation from the air conditioner. The plants like that water so much more, better ph and far fewer dissolved solids. We get 3 to 4 gallons a day when it is hot out and that's when the plants need it.
there are so many bonsai and the location is wide, so I want to come there 😍
It is a beautiful location if you are ever lucky enough to get to visit ❤️
@@TheBonsaiGarden
I hope I'm lucky and can visit
i have just started fish keeping. the waste water is nitrate rich water ideal for growing plants with. have you thought of either fish keeping or maybe using the waste water from a fish keeper Peter? be a good way to aquire water thats going to get wasted.
Nice Video 👍💚
You can safely water bonsai with soapy water? Edit: Nm Peter has me covered lol
Mercii
Keren brother, banyak bahan bonsainya
I noticed how much water just drains through the pots when waterig the bonsai on the benches, I thought of an idea to place a gutter or eavestrough under it so it collects the water in a bucket that passes through.
My totally geeked out idea is to run a pump in to a 55 gallon drum or 5 gallon bucket, connect it to a drip/ microspray system controlled by a moisture sensing timer with a drip tray to catch it all and route it back in to the bucket. Suppose you could hook up a float fill in the bucket too and pretty much never worry about watering.
@@explodedstarmonkey , manual watering is a useful time to inspect plant health but as long as that's still done, this genius idea of yours might free up more time for plant health. Please share if you ever execute this idea!
It's very hard to keep bonsai trees green in Italy, it's very hot.
Hopefully in the future more homes will be built with greywater recovery systems by default, being able to use greywater for landscape watering makes a big difference.
Maybe a silly question, but what makes a "good" bonsai pot.
I'm starting my pottery aprenticeship/study in a couple of weeks. So I know that the perception of the object defines what it is most rather than set rules.
Also realy love the content
Look at pictures of good bonsai and you will find pots that match those trees. Copy the style and design of those pots.
Large drainage holes, and smaller holes to wire the tree into the pot. The more wire and drain holes, the better, for drainage and more options when positioning the tree in the pot. These holes are also beneficial for aeration of roots. Feet also help stability when there is wire running along the bottom of the pot.
As they say here SAVE WATER DRINK BEER 🤣 great tips peter!
Love it!
Just started watching. I’m waiting for the bit where Peter suggests reusing your bath water 😊
😄😄😄
Everything looking fantastic on the nursery.
Water is a huge issue. Some parts of Sa are running out fast and soon will hit day zero. Capetown had it really bad a few years back it was very had times for a long time, sadly most people forget or dont care once the hard times are over. Hope you guys are okay news here says your drought is one of the worst in a very long time. All the best
Wow Wonderful Bonsai ^^
Thank you for good sharing~
Like 984
My friend, have a good day
My parents use the washing machine water to water their garden, plants are fine with it as well :) Though not sure if it is okay for bonsai who prefer acidic water
If you are a fish keeper, like me.... I used to store all my old aquarium water from doing my water changes for watering my plants/bonsai. Fish poop is good for plants.
Yes - aquarium and pond water is very good. lots of nutrients.
good tips
Nice one Sif Chan you look very Humprey Bogart'ish. Where's the Maltese Falcon?
What tree is that at 2:56 with the insane bark? SUPER nice.
Edit: I saw the Aldi packaging, I'm a manager at an Aldi in the US! 😂
I love Aldi - Best value for money !! I dont use any other supermarket now except Aldi. Thats a Cork bark Oak.
@@peterchan3100 I never shopped there until I started working there. Then felt silly for wasting money at other food stores. Thanks for the info on the tree, I'll have to look into getting one. I'm a sucker for unique bark, and that bark is beautiful!
Love these tips.
There is some kind of myth about the under tray. Some say it will kill the tree because of rot of roots. I've been using them for 25 years from may to october.
You are absolutely right
For Sure!!!!!
Wow...👍👍👍
The latest video posted (defoliating sun scorched leaves?) was marked "private" and I could not watch it and now I cannot even find it.....sad day. 😕
Apologies for that, it is now public and you should be able to view that video without further issues.
@@HeronsBonsaiUK Thanks!!!!!
Le vent fait des dégâts aussi … dessèche le feuillage !
Protip: water your foliage. Trees use 75% of their water just to cool off when temps get high. Lowering foliage temp helps the tree move out of survival mode.
True but u have to add be careful not to do this in the hot sun. Lost a shohin juniper this year by watering the foilage. It was in a 6 inch small pot and burned it to death. It couldnt recoup
Yeah it’s true but you can also magnify the sun and burn even more
@@1sosluke770 thats a myth
@@yoteslaya7296 can u Link Something to that? After my knowlege Its true, because the water breaks the light different.
@@sophiebell4758 There may be a whole range of reasons why it's not good to water plants in the middle of the day, but is burning the plant's leaves one of them? Dr Karl investigates the physics of plants and water.
One factoid that I have been told many times is to never water the garden plants under the powerful glare of the midday sun.
The accepted wisdom has been that a water droplet sitting on a leaf would act like a tiny magnifying lens, and by focusing that sunlight would produce scorch marks and burns on the innocent leaf.
And if you go looking on the interwebs, about 80 per cent of relevant sites claim that water droplets plus the midday sun will burn the leaf.
Finally, after what must be centuries of this widespread belief, some scientists have checked out the theory and done the experiments - and here are the results.
Burning a leaf with a water droplet does not happen on a smooth leaf, and is just barely possible on a hairy leaf.
Smooth leaves
Dr Adam Egri and colleagues from Hungary and Germany carried out both computer modelling, and tests, on real leaves. In their experiments, they used both little glass balls and water droplets.
In their first study, they covered the surface of a smooth leaf with glass balls ranging in size from 2 to 10 millimetres. They exposed them to the sun for periods between one and nine hours. And sure enough, there were scorch marks.
So it would seem as though there was some truth to the claim that water droplets could burn leaves. Mind you, glass balls keep their shape, unlike water droplets that spread out and flatten. The other difference is that glass bends light about 15 per cent better than water does.
So the second study had water droplets on smooth leaves. But, no matter how they altered various factors, they could not get the sunlight shining through the water droplets to burn the smooth leaves.
When the sun was shining from directly above, the light would be brought to a focus underneath the water droplet, and inside the body of the leaf. But there was a big blob of water sitting on top of the leaf, soaking up the heat. Any heat that got into the leaf was immediately transferred to the water. Then, as the water got warmer, it evaporated itself out of existence. And once there was no water droplet, there was no focusing of the heat. So there were no burn marks on the leaf - for the midday sun.
What about sunlight in the morning and afternoon, when the slanting light was beaming through the water droplet, and landing on the bare leaf just outside water droplet? Could that cause a burn? The answer turned out to be 'no'.
Well, when the Sun is just above the horizon, the sunlight is travelling through about 22 times more air than when the Sun is directly above you, at the vertex, around midday. So there's not enough heat to burn.
What about the shape of the water droplet? After all, different leaves have different degrees of 'hydrophilia' or 'water-loving' tendency. So the scientists tested leaves from various trees - maple (very water-loving), plane (less water-loving) and rowan (water-hating, or 'hydrophobic').
At the water-loving end (maple), the water droplets were very flattened, while at the water-hating end (rowan), the droplets were fairly spherical.
As you would expect, the more spherical water droplets on the water-hating leaves did concentrate the heat better, but not enough to scorch the leaf. So sunlight shining through water droplets doesn't burn smooth leaves.
Hairy leaves
But what about the hairy plants? The leaves have hairs that are 'hydrophobic' or 'water-hating'. Under the right circumstances, these hairs could catch a water droplet and keep it suspended at the right distance above the leaf, to allow the focus point of the sunlight to land on the surface of the leaf. Because the water was not in contact with the leaf, there was no cooling effect. And the hairs, being water-hating, would repel the water, and so keep it spherical - the best shape to focus the sunlight.
But the hairs hate water, and the merest breath of wind would shake the droplets off. The smaller droplets were better at focusing the heat - but being smaller, they would also evaporate very quickly.
Even so, the scientists did sometimes see scorch marks produced by water droplets on hairy leaves.
How did this 'don't-water-plants-at-midday' story arise? Who knows?
But you'd think that after half-a-billion years of bio-evolution, plants (which have adapted to every conceivable ecological niche) would have learnt to deal with a little rain ...
what % of shade is the netings?
40%
@@peterchan3100 thank you!
Peter, what about earthworms? I haven't heard you mention them. If you use organic soil and compost, and you keep your trees on the ground then it's a matter of time when the earthworms will crawl into the containers and it's really hard to get rid of them.
Earthworms dont do any harm. Besides the pot mesh should stop most of them from getting in.
@@peterchan3100I have always been afraid that they start eating the live roots after they're done with the decayed material. Especially with seedling or young trees with small rootballs to begin with.
🔥💕👍
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 thanks Peter
👍👌🙂
lov u