Gardening and bonsai simultaneously, need help

[Ming dynasty]

Hi everyone, I need some help with gardening and my bonsai benches. On top of doing my own research, I’m looking for advice and wisdom to be able to do it properly. This is my second year doing both, bonsai definitely the main focus of the two. My garden area is set-up on the other side of my fence. What should I be aware of interns of…

Pesticide/fungicide: should I have 2 different set nuclear weapons for bonsai and organic/healthy stuff for gardening? If the garden attract pest/bugs, will they move on to my bonsai benches after

is it a good idea to do both? i know there are more factors but i guess idk what idk for now.

any pointers will help, thanks in advance. have a great season yall!

 

[LittleDingus]

I've done both (all 3? What do you mean by "gardening"? Vegetable? Flower?) For years. I rarely use pesticides or fungicides. When I do, it's usually on trees that are overcrowded indoors for the winter.

My biggest problems are deer and squirrels. Deer hedge pruned my purple leaf sand cherry this winter. They also chomped some use and maple seedlings right down to the ground. And rutted on one of my young cherry trees stripping it's bark almost back to the graft. My property is 7 acres in the middle of farmland...there's no stopping the deer!

I do tend to keep my trees together just to simplify care. But a lot of gardening issues can be prevented by understanding how to rotate crops and companion plant.

 

[thebonsaiproject]

I have kept my bonsai both on a concrete balcony and in the middle of a garden. The number of pests and disease on my bonsai was much higher on the concrete balcony, so it was definitely better for my trees to be in the garden. Like you said, I use more organic stuff on my garden because I am a bit more conscious about damaging the soil that all the plants share. I find the garden brings more predators than pests, which helps a lot.

The one thing I found can happen however is the spread of disease from touching infected plants in the gardens then going and working on your bonsai. I would be cautious of that (my garden azaleas have quite a bit of rust and I don't want to spread it!) Have fun!

 

[JackHammer]

Garden:
- Soil comes first. If you have a good size bed, it is probably best to bring in compost.
- Stick with things that you actually eat.
- Stick to fewer varieties. Hardy staples are tomatoes, peppers, beans, carrots, garlic, summer squash, cucumbers. I have planted 30+ varieties in prior years but this year I am just doing tomatoes, garlic, cuces, carrots rosemary, and some peppers.
- If you bring in soil, you probably won't need to weed. If you till up your yard, you will likely have weed problems.
I don't spray and don't fertilize. The rabbits get some of the tomatoes so I plant extra.
I have a welded wire fence with some chicken wire on the bottom for the rabbits. T posts are easy for set up.

 

[Michael P]

I almost never use any pesticide or fungicide in the garden or on bonsai. The only exception is a systemic insecticide on tropicals before they come in for the winter to prevent spider mites and scale. If I can't control pests on any plant, garden or bonsai, with normal good mostly organic maintenance, I get rid of it. No, I have never needed to throw out a bonsai because of pests. Ugliness is another matter, LOL.

 

[GGB]

Im with @Michael P, in all my years in the hobbie I've never used a "nuclear option". In fact now I don't even use any chemicals of any kind. Things pop up and I cure them with completely natural methods or very mild organic solutions like copper or neem oil. That is simply my opinion and my method but my trees are in great health.
Years ago I used to grow all my own produce, I didn't do a ton of research back then, so I did run into pest and fungal problems on certain plants, so I just chose not to grow them. I can't bring myself to poison my own food, despite knowing the farmers are all doing it anyway. Again that is just my way, everyone is different. I'd be a much better veggie gardener now because I realize the importance of sun exposure, air movement and water requirements. If you get those right you should have very little need for devastating bio-cides. And I do believe almost everyone would agree with that.

 

[BonsaiNaga13]

I've had success using omri certified organic pesticides and fungicides on both my garden and my bonsai but both were small scale. My main pests were aphids and green horn worms on my tomatoes and white powdery mildew but they were eradicated with weekly spraying. Most my trees are pre bonsai and seedlings but those are normally the most vulnerable and organics treated them

 

[rockm]

Not really helpful as it's apples to oranges, but I had a friend who's bonsai garden was across the fence from a farm's vast soybean field. He used to get thrip infestations every year (and I mean INFESTATIONS where there were clouds of bugs in the air if you brushed against a tree). The farmer would spray for them, but they'd just cross the fence and eat my friends trees...

 

[Ming dynasty]

Yes th

I've done both (all 3? What do you mean by "gardening"? Vegetable? Flower?) For years. I rarely use pesticides or fungicides. When I do, it's usually on trees that are overcrowded indoors for the winter.

My biggest problems are deer and squirrels. Deer hedge pruned my purple leaf sand cherry this winter. They also chomped some use and maple seedlings right down to the ground. And rutted on one of my young cherry trees stripping it's bark almost back to the graft. My property is 7 acres in the middle of farmland...there's no stopping the deer!

I do tend to keep my trees together just to simplify care. But a lot of gardening issues can be prevented by understanding how to rotate crops and companion plant

I guess

I've done both (all 3? What do you mean by "gardening"? Vegetable? Flower?) For years. I rarely use pesticides or fungicides. When I do, it's usually on trees that are overcrowded indoors for the winter.

My biggest problems are deer and squirrels. Deer hedge pruned my purple leaf sand cherry this winter. They also chomped some use and maple seedlings right down to the ground. And rutted on one of my young cherry trees stripping it's bark almost back to the graft. My property is 7 acres in the middle of farmland...there's no stopping the deer!

I do tend to keep my trees together just to simplify care. But a lot of gardening issues can be prevented by understanding how to rotate crops and companion plant.

I guess all 3 at this point. The wife got me growing her flowers too. The curse of the greens thumbs lol. I’ll have to look into rotate crops and companion plants to understand a little better.

 

[Ming dynasty]

Garden:
- Soil comes first. If you have a good size bed, it is probably best to bring in compost.
- Stick with things that you actually eat.
- Stick to fewer varieties. Hardy staples are tomatoes, peppers, beans, carrots, garlic, summer squash, cucumbers. I have planted 30+ varieties in prior years but this year I am just doing tomatoes, garlic, cuces, carrots rosemary, and some peppers.
- If you bring in soil, you probably won't need to weed. If you till up your yard, you will likely have weed problems.
I don't spray and don't fertilize. The rabbits get some of the tomatoes so I plant extra.
I have a welded wire fence with some chicken wire on the bottom for the rabbits. T posts are easy for set up.

I definitely prefer growing fewer varieties to get a better understanding for them slowly and build up to more. But of course got a little carry away this season due to success from last. Maybe I save the other vegetable seeds for next season.

 

[Ming dynasty]

Not really helpful as it's apples to oranges, but I had a friend who's bonsai garden was across the fence from a farm's vast soybean field. He used to get thrip infestations every year (and I mean INFESTATIONS where there were clouds of bugs in the air if you brushed against a tree). The farmer would spray for them, but they'd just cross the fence and eat my friends trees...

Lol poor guy! Seeing all the reply here, I’m now wishing that I didn’t collect all the diff pesticide and fungicide over the last year. I wanted to have them ready just incase I run into a problem. Maybe I could’ve saved a bunch and put it on an awesome tree. Even more lost now lol back to the research

Thank you everyone for the great input!

 

[LittleDingus]

I definitely prefer growing fewer varieties to get a better understanding for them slowly and build up to more. But of course got a little carry away this season due to success from last. Maybe I save the other vegetable seeds for next season.

It depends on what is meant by "varieties". Biodiversity is your friend

If you plant nothing but squashes...Pumpkins, acorn squash, even cucumbers and zucchini, you've created a utopia for squash beetles! Spread them out and intermingle the squashes with alliums or mints and you've introduced species that invite parasitic wasps to help out with squash beetle control

This is the heart of companion planting. The textbook example is the three sisters:

Three Sisters Garden ” How to Plant Corn, Squash & Beans Together

Revered by Native Americans, corn, squash, and beans are known as the three sisters when planted together.

modernfarmer.com

But the general idea is to develop a population that supports one another. Any time you have something approaching a homogeneous population you've created a utopia for things that live off that population.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Bringing out the nuclear "-icide" options for vegetables is like setting your house on fire to get warm; it makes no sense to poison your food just so you can yield and eat more poisoned food.

A couple of aphids wouldn't ruin the tomatoes. The thrips infestation in my lemon herbs wash off. The spider mites on the mint get boiled out when I make tea or they die from alcohol poisoning when I make mojitos.

I allow pests to flourish up until a certain point as long as they don't damage anything permanently, because why not? The system is thriving here and as long as the predators get enough signals to come to eat, most problems resolve themselves.

 

[JackHammer]

... it makes no sense to poison your food just so you can yield and eat more poisoned food.

 

[August]

Bringing out the nuclear "-icide" options for vegetables is like setting your house on fire to get warm; it makes no sense to poison your food just so you can yield and eat more poisoned food.

Love you for this Wires Guy. Its called pest management not pest genocide! The guys up the food chain gotta eat!

I think its easier to forget that humans make up a relatively small proportion of pest "enemies" just because we so often "go to war" with them.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Love you for this Wires Guy. Its called pest management not pest genocide! The guys up the food chain gotta eat!

I think its easier to forget that humans make up a relatively small proportion of pest "enemies" just because we so often "go to war" with them.

Well, I sometimes reap what I sow though. A couple years ago there were so many lady bugs in the yard that when their larvae entered the pupping stage, I wasn't able to sit anywhere outdoors without ending up with hundreds of orange stains from crushing them. Every square inch of chair, wall or trunk had at least one. And they kept on coming!

I do go nuclear sometimes - maybe once every five years, and I'm not ashamed of that. Sometimes you have to. But most of the times, we don't.

A recent discovery sparked my interest though; I had a gourmet fungi culture that died rapidly and it smelled like candy. I immediately got flashbacks to microbiology class and ID'ed the bad guys from smell alone: Pseudomonas aerigunosa.
I did some googling and found that their family of bacteria produces potent antifungals. So now I'm on the quest for an amoeba, an amoeba that houses the most potent variant of pseudomonas that produces such an effective fungicide, researches named it Keanumycin after Keanu Reeves.
The discarded juices from my fungal culture seemed to have stopped juniper rust. But it's too early to draw any conclusions. Cool to investigate though!

 

[August]

@Wires_Guy_wires we should all hope to reap what we sow! Thats a super cool solution for rust. Makes think about how flora got along just fine well before humans ever dipped their little prehensile fingers into it.

 

[gk11820]

I’m on my third summer of gardening and bonsai side by side keeping my fingers crossed that I can maintain being organic. Haven’t had any devastation from pests yet, birds squirrels bunnies and groundhogs definitely have eaten some of my plants though. I enjoy the ecosystem I’ve created I even have a birdbath in my garden some of the time. I only fertilize some flowers and plants away from the garden and this will be my first year attempting some fertilization on my bonsai, I’m so scared to damage them. Happy to say I haven’t used any fungicide or pesticide in garden or on trees. Only fertilization I use in the garden is compost, I usually keep a compost pile and I also have a SubPod system for kitchen scraps. I constantly add carbon even directly into the garden, seems to keep plants so healthy and thriving that they never have problems.

Love this thread and glad to see some other people keeping it mostly organic and natural. It’s true if we use chemicals and poison we should just buy veggies from the store. Good luck with your gardens this year !

 

[ShadyStump]

Didn't read through every single line of every post, so bare with me if some of this has been covered.

Crop rotation: The standard example is growing peas or other legumes every couple of years at least. Legumes help fix nitrogen in the soil. Down south where you are you'll see cotton fields planted with peanuts every so often, but the peanuts aren't harvested. Just tilled right back into the ground once mature, and then planted over with more cotton.
Other plants do similar things, like buckwheat can help fix phosphorus.
Companion planting: like @LittleDingus mentioned, you can plant certain crops together that will help each other grow. This doesn't just go for soil nutrients, though. Last year I got no lettuce or oregano because bugs would get them as soon as they'd sprout. So this year I'm planting marigolds in the herb garden. Bugs don't like them.

I have only a small garden plot now days, so I can only afford to do so much of this sort of stuff.
I plant my legumes around the garden fence so it acts as a trellis, and the fix nitrogen all around the perimeter, then onions in a row just inside the perimeter to help keep bugs out. The rest is safe in the center, and the soil gets moved about enough every year by tilling to avoid rich/dead spots.
I leave the dead stuff at the end of the season to add mulch/compost when tilling the next year.

 

[Shogun610]

Ja , I have to agree with @GGB , I only use organic sprays as preventative or treatment. Need oil worked well with aphids, Jacks Deadbug helps with works/ borers / beetles , Bacillus Thurengiensis works well for treating fungal/ diseases and also as an immune boost, copper works well for dormancy spray to prevent fungal issues… Lady Bugs and Mantis in the garden also is a natural deterrent