Hey everybody.
Welcome back to Appalachian Bonsai.
It's been a very long time since I've done a video for you.
I've got a very special one for you today.
This is going to be
[dog barking]
Part One of a series that is going to be sponsored by Vermisterra.
They're a California company that specializes in worm castings, and they have been very
generous in providing me some of their products that I will be using during this soil test experiment.
Anyway, what I have here are multiple maple seedlings. These were provided my friend
Gary Durney out of Salem, Virginia.
He has been a long time fan of bonsai, specifically maple bonsai.
These were grown from seed.
I have a dozen of them here.
They are trident maples with the exception of these two.
I believe he thought they were trident when he planted them, but it turns out they're
red maples.
So we're going to also use these.
I have two maples that will not be part of this experiment because certain things like
the top of this one died last year
and this one is just really tall as compared to the other ones.
I just want this to be fair.
I'm going to be using my standard bonsai soil as a control and then I'll be using Vermisterra's
products as the experiment.
I think this is going to be pretty interesting.
One of the things about worm castings, or worm poop, which some of you may know if you're
doing any gardening, is they're fantastic for your soil.
They're fantastic for the roots of your plants.
They help provide nutrients in a way that are more accessible to the plant.
They have worked very hard in making sure that their product is top of the line.
They work very hard to make sure that the products are available to you.
But they don't know very well about how it will interact in the bonsai world, so that's
what we're doing today.
We're trying to figure out how these are going to play with our container grown bonsai trees.
So let's go ahead and get started.
To begin it's a pretty chilly day.
It is March 2, 2021.
I've got little labels here.
1a 1b, 2a 2b etc. all the way up to 6, because I have the 12 plants.
I'm going to be planting my control with the 1's,
and then I'm going to do two different things with them.
That's why I have them "a" and "b" and we'll get to that.
And then we'll change it up as we go along and I will explain each soil mixture as I make them.
I'm going to mix up my standard bonsai mix.
I'll be using just a regular measuring cup, because I cannot find my other one.
This is a standard one Cup and I'll be able to determine my portions - my ratios.
We'll do three 3 parts Turface,
3 parts pine bark,
2 parts diatomaceous earth, which has been sifted,
and about half a cup of sand.
And that is the Appalachian Bonsai standard soil mix.
This will be our control.
I will also be adding this into a separate mix, but here we go.
I'm going to begin with my controls.
I'm going to use the red maples here.
This is 1a and 1b.
They're the same age.
Yes, this one is a little bit taller than this one, but we're going to be checking to
see what happens overall.
I'm completely removing the coarse bonsai soil.
This is a mix of Turface, pine bark, there's a little bit of sand in there.
Just going to remove this media from the roots.
Just give that a little shake.
Good.
This is 1b.
Let me set this off to the side.
This is 1a.
Okay.
All right, so these are little terra cotta bulb planters, about two inches deep.
They've got some drainage covers here which will help drainage as well as prevent our
material from falling out of the bottom, and the wire gives us a good place to secure our
trees into place.
1a / 1b, Control, Standard Soil Mix
1a We're going to put 1a in this pot right here.
that was the one that we just removed.
I'm going to begin by putting in a layer of soil here.
This is just a little fine base layer, and then I will add my plant to the bottom.
The roots are kind of going down which is not ideal, so I will spread these out a little bit
And then I'm going to just bend the wire gently over the top of those roots.
I'm not even going to bother cutting it.
I'm just going to lay it down
and get those started.
So you may see right here, it's just a little bit of a bend over without disturbing the roots.
I'm going to add some soil mix on top.
This is my standard soil mix.
I'll take my chopstick and just kind of work it a little bit into the roots,
in between those little fine crevices.
Okay, one more cup of soil mixture.
Give a little bit of a tap on the side just to help everybody settle in,
and that should be good.
We're going to do the same for 1b.
a little bit of a tap,
There we go.
1a 1b
2a / 2b, Experiment 1, Standard Mix + Castings in Tea Bags
All right, so I have 2a done.
This is here.
And I have 2b right here.
We're going to use the exact same mix for these.
okay
This is 2a.
This would be 2b.
Good.
Now the difference in this experiment versus the first one is I'm actually going to add
worm castings in a little tea bag.
These are just ones that I found locally at the Harvest Moon in Floyd, Virginia.
The purpose of using these castings in a tea bag is that they're not in my soil mix, so
there's no chance of them clogging the drainage holes because they're not in the soil.
However, they will still provide benefits to the roots as it rains and gets watered,
and that will leach into the soil itself.
Okay so that's 2a and 2b.
3a / 3b, Experiment 2, Standard Mix + Castings x1
I'm going to make another soil mix, standard as usual,
but I'm also going to add some Vermisterra in there.
3 parts Turface
3 parts coarse pine bark
2 parts diatomaceous earth
and about a half a cup of sand.
I'm also going to add this Vermisterra.
I'm going to give a full cup of this.
Their ratio in their soil mixtures is two parts of your standard soil mix plus one part
of this, so kind of a 2:1 ratio.
This would end up consuming about a third of your mix.
I'm going to add about that much just to start off here.
Mix this up.
Okay, so we have 3a - nice strong healthy roots, and 3b - nice healthy roots.
[dogs barking]
4a / 4b, Experiment 3, Standard Mix + Casting Top Coat
So for this mix, we're using my standard bonsai mix but I'm going to dress the top of it
with Vermisterra.
Okay.
I'm going to give it a top coat, a top dressing of Vermisterra's worm castings.
The reason I'm doing this is because it still provides drainage down at the bottom, it's
just the top part that might get a little bit less drainage, and we'll see.
We might have a best of both worlds in this.
Very similar to the tea bags.
There we go. That's good.
5a / 5b, Experiment 4, Standard Mix + Castings x2
For 5a and 5b I'm going to add another scoop of Vermisterra's worm castings into my bonsai
mix that has already been mixed with the worm castings before.
So we're adding an increased volume of worm castings.
6a / 6b, Experiment 5, Castings Only Organic Used in Mix
Out of my own morbid curiosity, I'm gonna only use the worm castings as my organic media.
First Watering
First Observations
Well, I just want to bring this up since this is the first time watering.
1a drains really really well.
2a and 2b drain really well.
These are the worm castings tea bags.
3a and 3b right here are draining well.
This has 1x worm castings mixed into the soil.
4a and 4b, which was my regular mix but with top dressing, still has water sitting on top,
which you may see.
That might become a problem.
I don't know.
A little sloshing around in there.
5a and 5b, which were just more castings in the mix, looking pretty good, and 6a and 6b,
where it was just castings.
You can still see water just sitting there.
But, we're going to try this out.
We're going to see what happens.
I just want to thank you Vermisterra again for all the products that you've provided
to me, to mess around with and play with.
To all of you viewers, I hope that you will check out this sponsor and provide support,
as they have supported this channel.
This is really going to be good stuff for all of your potted plants, for all of your
gardens, your vegetables, and hopefully we're going to check it out
and see how it works with our bonsai.
Even if the castings in the mix don't work out for bonsai per se, these products are
definitely going to be helping me out throughout this year.
We're going to check back here in a couple of months, when spring is in full flush, and
look at the growth of these plants.
We'll start adding some of these products to them, which is why I have the labels "a" and "b".
We're going to discuss that in the next video.
Check out vermisterra.com.
Let them know I sent you and I really appreciate everybody's time.
Thank you very much, and I'll see you... because there's more to come?
It's been a while, people! 2020 was a messed up year!
I love you.
Thank you.