I find it hard if if not unreasonable for anyone to abandon a major component of bonsai culture simply because "they" are doing something wrong and refuse to identify that problem. Rather than correct that issue they walk away and settel for a lesser solution. I recently discovered whan all of a sudden I started losing trees, good trees that the problem was two fold: One was the use of sand that was too fine and the other was the use of a screen cut for the drain holes that happened to be of the same dimension as the sand I was using. what was happening was the sand was washing out of the soil and settling iinto the holes in the screen effectively enough that the holes in the bottom of the pot of a sudden refused to drain. A few trees drown because of this.
