BONSAI SOIL vs POTTING MIX: Does it make a difference?

[@Sayef_Li]

Many places in South Asia grow bonsai in simple garden soil with rice husk and sand and they can make amazing bonsais.

[@Nolasusan1]

Rice husk is filled with vitamins for the bonsai tree. Using rice water after boiling is also great to water orchids with.

[@littlebonsaicorner]

One of the most dedicated and informative videos on bonsai I've ever watched. Congrats on your nice maples and thank you!

[@growingwithbonsai]

That is an extraordinarily nice comment. Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[@dracus6877]

Great unbiased video. I cant afford expensive bonsai soil. So i mix my store bought potting mix with some perlite and small pebbles. Seems to work for me. And during raininh season its a good time for my cheap soil to clean and drain from the natural rain water that comes down

[@shuancook9005]

Akadama is £32 a bag of Japanese dirt ✔️👍

[@greenmachinesweden]

Great video as usual. I think the higher levels of fertilizer in the potting mix is responsible for all the difference you noticed. I grow most of my trees in big pots with quite heavy organic soils the first few years. When I put them in shallow bonsai pots I add more inorganic substrates, but are still using more organics than most people. Works good for me in my climate and care. The biggest benefit is that I don't have to water that often.🙂👍

[@growingwithbonsai]

Right, I think the 100% inorganic mixes are great if you have a bonsai nursery with three or four watering sessions a day - for most of us humans, some organic material provides a margin of safety!

[@CristianAyala]

Awesome video! This video answered all my questions. I believe this video should be a 1 million viewed video due to comparison and information. Other videos sound persuasive and deviate from the objective. Keep up the great work!

[@growingwithbonsai]

What a nice comment! Not many bonsai videos get 1 million views, unfortunately. Glad it helped you, though - I don't like to just repeat things I've heard if I haven't tested it myself.

[@raton_garden]

So effective information. Good share 🎉❤🎉❤

[@jet687]

I like your video style! I learned quite a bit 😊

[@AlexBraunton]

A really great, informative video. Thank you for the experiment and results. I'm the same to be honest, if it's young and growing on then I used a compost and perlite mix which works fine.

[@DeciduousSnurb]

I'll show this video to anyone who doesn't understand bonsai and why you would basically use what looks to be "gravel" as soil for a tree. Which for me, is everyone in my family 😆 I don't usually bareroot and cut the roots of my temperate trees during the growing season where I live, maybe you have success with it in Australia. Sometimes when it's my only option I will do it and I loosely cover my newly potted tree with a white plastic bag in some shade. It seems to help them recover. I've been planning a root over rock as well and with a Trident, I hear they make great ror.

[@growingwithbonsai]

Thanks for the comment. I agree that it's not ideal, but I had four weeks in Australia to do everything. No choice :) Fortunately tridents are basically weeds, one day I'll do a video showing how they grow in all the vacant lots where I live in Korea.

[@DeciduousSnurb]

@@growingwithbonsai Awesome, a bonsai growers dream, free tridents!

[@katyb2793]

This was really interesting, thank you!

[@BonsaiCornwall]

Great video mate, I’ve just subbed 😊

[@91lovemusic]

Compost pine bark?

[@treeaddict]

Great info in this video-thank you. Sub

[@animron9365]

You can't draw conclusions based on just two small and young examples! We would need dozens of examples and a multi-year period: at least three years. 18 months is not enough to make any definitive conclusion.

[@growingwithbonsai]

You seem to think I owe you something. The plants are genetically identical and I found out what I wanted to know. But feel free to conduct the experiment you describe yourself.

[@tomlawless4406]

I tread carefully as I love making bonsai’s and I’ll say this with out any opinions, so I’ve got around 30 oak trees at 1 year old now and all of them have grown differently and all of them have the same soil some large some small so bearing in mind that diversity is natures biggest defence in the war against extinction 2 trees displaying different growth rates is not enough evidence.