Passage from Bonsai Heresy’s Phase 22 ‘Extra plant food, even more much better’
The seventeenth-century Flemish researcher Jan Baptist van Helmont did something impressive. He showed that it had not been dirt that developed plant cells.
Van Helmont made an easy experiment. He took a huge container, loaded it with 2 hundred extra pounds of completely dry
dirt, as well as grew a five-pound willow in it. For 5 years he offered it only water or pure water. At the end of 5 years he eliminated the dirt, dried it, considered it, as well as located that the dirt was just 2 ounces lighter, evaluating in at 199 extra pounds, 14 ounces. The willow considered 169 extra pounds.He wrapped up that “164 extra pounds of timber, bark, as well as origins occurred out of water just.”
It was a great experiment verifying that plant cells is not the outcome of transmogrifying wonderful portions of dirt right into cells. And also he was primarily ideal, water does account for much of a plant’s framework. We currently understand it is all the ephemerals that develop plant cells: air, limited minerals, as well as water. And also mineral accessibility is boosted by including plant food.
It’s a fantastic, provocative experiment. The success of van Helmont’s willow without input of plant food is a story we must embed the rear of our minds– not to duplicate it, as the majority of bonsai can make use of some plant food, as well as some a WHOLE LOT– however that each tree will certainly have a demand various than the following one unemployed.
Exactly how we use plant food to bonsai occupies the remainder of the phase. A number of phases, really. Among the primary styles is that relaying the very same degree of plant food on whatever brings second-rate outcomes. For we’re not simply expanding willows. (And also few people expand willows whatsoever.)
Bonsai Heresy is located at Rock Light