Salt water for japanese black pine

[Paradox]

The post got me to thinking...and I apologize in advance for my slightly off-topic question but... Would it maybe help to mist the foliage of trees such as Monterey cypress and coast redwood (or JBP) with ocean water?

I live literally on the beach. I could pretend the Pacific Ocean was a well and collect buckets of salt water by walking a few hundred feet across the sand. So controlling for things like cost and ease/effort is there any benefit to misting with salt (i.e. ocean) water? It would actually be cheaper than using my hose and just as easy...

Only helpful if you want to kill your trees. See my post above about a storm dumping salt water on trees here and killing them.

Experts: Long Island Trees Suffering From 'Salt Burn' As A Result Of Tropical Storm Isaias

It's a strange sight across the Long Island landscape. Thousands of trees appear half dead.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[Paradox]

Double post

 

[0soyoung]

A friend of mine recently recommended I use slightly salted water on one of my corkbark japanese black pines. Reasoning was they are coastal in Japan, and when they get weak, they need some salt.
First time I heard about it, so would like to hear your experiences/opinions on this.

And you listened to this without laughing in his face?

 

[Nybonsai12]

this seems crazy to me

 

[Scorpius]

I don't think this is something to laugh at. Nothing ventured, nothing gained imo. New ideas always seem crazy up till it's proven.

 

[BonjourBonsai]

Maybe spray a little sea water on the needles to simulate ocean spray but generally I think NaCl would not be a good idea...unless you add black pepper, oil and vinegar to make a salad.

 

[Lorax7]

Just because an organism has the capability to live in a particular environment doesn’t mean that those conditions are necessary for or even helpful to its survival. Deer manage to keep living in the forests around Pripyat. That doesn’t mean that the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl supplies important nutrients to them or is good for their health in any way.

 

[0soyoung]

I don't think this is something to laugh at. Nothing ventured, nothing gained imo. New ideas always seem crazy up till it's proven.

Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out.

 

[Scorpius]

Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out.

Your username is mocking you.

 

[0soyoung]

Your username is mocking you.

Now that is cleaver!

 

[Emanon]

Maybe spray a little sea water on the needles to simulate ocean spray but generally I think NaCl would not be a good idea...unless you add black pepper, oil and vinegar to make a salad.

Yeah I was thinking ocean water would be better (or at least different) than salt water. There is more in ocean water than just water and salt, right? And maybe it is these other organic and inorganic materials that might be a benefit (or detriment) to trees if you just mist the foliage.

Monterey cypress on the coast do tend, on average, to look (subjectively) better than landscape trees of the same species. Granted a lot of this would be due to coastal winds but also, maybe(?), due to sea water spray. By benefit I'm not just thinking in terms of a more healthy tree but maybe the sea water does, as some have suggested, "burn" the tree... the burn, if that's what it is, doesn't end up looking so bad. I'd love to have a tree that is "burned" if it ends up looking like some of the trees I see along the coast. I know of some who use fire to create or mimic interesting features on species that in nature are subjected to fire and regularly survive. Couldn't ocean water be used similarly to prune a tree, if it does in fact burn?

 

[yashu]

Consider that ocean salt spray often occurs with precipitation so the amount of actual salt is further diluted. While it might be worth exploring the idea of simulating ocean spray I don’t think I would want to experiment on a tree that I cared about.

 

[Scorpius]

Now that is cleaver!

I like me a good meat cleaver.

 

[Hack Yeah!]

I like me a good meat cleaver.

How do you know they weren't referring to Beaver

 

[caffeinated]

Standard, non-organic fertilizers are essentialy salts, so you're probably covered anyway. Unless the coastal tree is actually on the beach, at sea level, it's probably not getting any significant amount of sea salt through the spray. The rain is still salt free at the coast.

 

[leatherback]

And you listened to this without laughing in his face?

In general, I like to try and be civil. But yeah, this was one thing where I was really scratching the back of my head. He said a few other things that got me worried.

Maybe I need to just repot it into better substrate. Interestingly, this is one of only 3 trees in my garden planted in Akama.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I believe I've heard stories on podcasts about the japanese plowing entire fields of cork bark JBP because the people have lost interest due to their natural behavior of dropping branches and their generally weak health.
So maybe it's not you @leatherback . Maybe it's just the genetics.

 

[Crazy Diamond]

Just because an organism has the capability to live in a particular environment doesn’t mean that those conditions are necessary for or even helpful to its survival. Deer manage to keep living in the forests around Pripyat. That doesn’t mean that the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl supplies important nutrients to them or is good for their health in any way.

Yes, thats right but not entirely true, some plants just tolerate the adverse conditions like poor soil while others are so adapted and specialized to those extreme condition that if you put them in regular parameters they die, Glasswort Salicornia sp for example can only grow in very salty soil, or the extremophile bacteria

 

[GGB]

Funny timing, I was thinking out loud to a friend the other day about misting JBP with salt water to deter fungi. I personally wouldn’t water it into the soil but I wondered if a salt solution misted onto the needles wouldn’t protect the tree from inland/wet spring diseases. Taking advantage of the natural salt tolerance you know? obviously some of the salt would wash off of the tree and into the soil but I’m not suggesting that I’d try this with anything other than a standard “ocean amount” of salt. And just since it’s been mentioned… I do add some epsom salt and kelp to my water and my trees have never looked better.

 

[Lorax7]

Yes, thats right but not entirely true, some plants just tolerate the adverse conditions like poor soil while others are so adapted and specialized to those extreme condition that if you put them in regular parameters they die, Glasswort Salicornia sp for example can only grow in very salty soil, or the extremophile bacteria

I’m well aware that organisms can become so adapted to a particular environmental niche that those conditions end up being essential to the survival of the organism. My point is that just because an organism has adaptations that allow it to live in a particular environment, that’s no guarantee that those environmental conditions have become necessary for its health. It’s possible that they are, but no guarantee.

For example, Japanese black pines have acquired the adaptation of being able to produce 2 flushes of growth in a season in order to cope with having their first flush of foliage damaged by a typhoon. But, is decandling necessary for the health of JBP? No. We decandle pines in bonsai because it serves our purposes (shorter internodes, shorter needles), but the health of the tree would be better served if it were permitted to keep those candles intact because they cost energy to produce and the tree could have grown more overall if we hadn’t decandled it.