When do you fertilize your Yamadori?

[Njyamadori]

I’ve started collecting and wondering when should I start fertilizing them . When do you fertilize your Yamadori from collecting?

 

[Lazylightningny]

If they're newly collected you should be fine fertilizing after the buds start opening. Personally, I would hold off until then. "Common bonsai knowledge" says not to fertilize newly repotted or newly collected trees to give them a chance to recover a little. I can't say if this is just another bonsai fallacy or if there is some truth to it. I've always meant to do some experiments, however since organic fertilizers are supposedly not available the plant for some 4 weeks, until bacteria decompose the fertilizer into a form usable by roots. Regardless, I'd hold off.

 

[BrianBay9]

I wait a bit longer than just as buds start opening. I let the first growth come out and harden off, then start fertilizing. I have no good reason to choose this approach though. It just "feels right" to me for some reason.

 

[Dav4]

It depends. With conifers like pines or junipers, I'd start feeding lightly when they show signs of growing (ie. buds swelling or greening up), which means their roots are active. For deciduous trees, I'd wait until the new growth has extended a bit, then start feeding lightly. As the trees show more signs of recovery, you can fertilize more heavily and more frequently

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I apply the logic of the building blocks and fuel.
Photosynthesis provides fuel to restore. But without building blocks, a plant can't restore more than it has stored away somewhere; it'll eat up last years foliage and use the nutrients that are released to build new stuff. That's a waste of fuel in my view. I'm very much against depleting saved storages on weakened plants.

You can fuel the build of a house by hiring sixty brick layers. But if you only have 600 bricks, they'll stop building after less than an hour.
In the remaining time of the year, the walls will get algae growing on them, constant rain, frosts and what not.. And by the time you get your next delivery of bricks, some walls might have toppled over due to structural imbalance.
If you put too many bricks around your building site, workers will have trouble moving around and building will slow down. So the best way of dealing with this is to provide a continuous and steady stream of building blocks: efficiency.

Moderate feeding is something the collectors don't usually practice, but in a laboratory every almost every single type of plant that gets transplanted (read: cut in half, jammed into a jelly paste) gets a full plethora of nutrients and vitamins to jumpstart the grow cycle. This method has been tried, tested, repeated and has been scientifically questioned more than a million times. It has proven to be the most optimal way of handling damaged plant material. Now I'm not going to say collectors are wrong about it.. But they're wrong about it. I alone have done over 40 thousand transplants straight into nutrient-rich mixtures with a 100% survival rate. I don't know any collector that has numbers coming close. I am very willing to debate them on this subject, because there's just so much proof that it works.

I do understand the collector logic "We need the water pathway to be restored first and foremost" but that can very well be done with nutrients being present. I want my trees to restore in 2 years instead of 4.

My collected trees that didn't make it, usually didn't make it because I murdered those roots during the process. They didn't stand a chance either way.

The main issue is that we want to feed heavily when we see light at the end of the tunnel. That's dangerous. That's a killer move. Nutrient burn is a real issue, especially on material that's healing. High salt concentrations can and will drain/draw water from damaged plant structures and will damage them further.
Moderation is key; half or a quarter of the recommended dose. Playing it safe is good, getting a head start is better.

And to be honest, organic feeding might be the less optimal approach; it invites possible pathogenic microbes, whereas chemical nutrients usually don't.

I start feeding collected trees whenever I start feeding the rest as well.

 

[Bnana]

Trees that are suitable as yamadori often had a hard time. Often they grew on a rocky location with little soil or in very nutrient poor sandy soil (where I collect). This means that they often had very limited access to nutrients. If you want them to be healthy and grow, the last thing you should do is plant them in a soil that doesn't contain any nutrients and only give water.
They won't need a lot but I do give a little bit of liquid fertilizer. In my case low N because the Netherlands has a huge N-deposition so N-limitation doesn't exist here. But these trees crave P, K and other nutrients.

 

[Shibui]

Good to see there are others that start fertilizing as soon as possible. I have always wondered about the 'don't feed newly transplanted trees' approach. Now the explanation from @Wires_Guy_wires makes a lot of sense. It is possible that growers are actually not feeding bonsai after repotting to restrict the strong growth usually seen after and this may have then been misinterpreted and applied to collected trees.

I always mix controlled release fert into the potting mix so all my trees have always had fertilizer from day 1 after repotting or transplant and they do not seem to have any problem.
I am definitely on the feed as soon as possible (when leaves are present) after collection.

 

[Alain BERTRAND]

I start feeding collected trees whenever I start feeding the rest as well.

Same for me.

 

[Lazylightningny]

Glad to see the professional horticulturalists dispelling yet another bonsai myth. It never made sense to me to not feed, at least a little, a newly repotted or collected tree.

 

[Njyamadori]

Glad to see the professional horticulturalists dispelling yet another bonsai myth. It never made sense to me to not feed, at least a little, a newly repotted or collected tree.

Yeah I thought you weren’t supposed to then I saw a little blog talking about that you can . The bonsai “professionals” on social media have no actual clue and just are beginners like me .

 

[Lazylightningny]

I'm sure that the advice given to not fertilize newly repotted or collected trees is based in something that happened to someone many years or decades ago. It may be partly due to outdated horticultural practices or soil media. Someone killed some trees, assumed that it was due to fertilizing, and passed on his experience to others, so this advice got perpetuated. New generations of bonsai practitioners were loathe to counter that advice for fear of losing expensive trees.

I'd love to hear from others that did fertilize early and lost trees.

 

[Graft]

I feed my Yardori heavily in the summer and autumn before collection in the spring, then feed them when re-potted. I don't have a lot of data as I have only done a few Yardoris. But so far they have been OK. Just getting my first buds on a huge Nine bark I stuck into a training pot last week. (Could be latent energy in the tree, I guess I will find out!!!)

 

[NamesakE]

I apply the logic of the building blocks and fuel.
Photosynthesis provides fuel to restore. But without building blocks, a plant can't restore more than it has stored away somewhere; it'll eat up last years foliage and use the nutrients that are released to build new stuff. That's a waste of fuel in my view. I'm very much against depleting saved storages on weakened plants.

You can fuel the build of a house by hiring sixty brick layers. But if you only have 600 bricks, they'll stop building after less than an hour.
In the remaining time of the year, the walls will get algae growing on them, constant rain, frosts and what not.. And by the time you get your next delivery of bricks, some walls might have toppled over due to structural imbalance.
If you put too many bricks around your building site, workers will have trouble moving around and building will slow down. So the best way of dealing with this is to provide a continuous and steady stream of building blocks: efficiency.

Moderate feeding is something the collectors don't usually practice, but in a laboratory every almost every single type of plant that gets transplanted (read: cut in half, jammed into a jelly paste) gets a full plethora of nutrients and vitamins to jumpstart the grow cycle. This method has been tried, tested, repeated and has been scientifically questioned more than a million times. It has proven to be the most optimal way of handling damaged plant material. Now I'm not going to say collectors are wrong about it.. But they're wrong about it. I alone have done over 40 thousand transplants straight into nutrient-rich mixtures with a 100% survival rate. I don't know any collector that has numbers coming close. I am very willing to debate them on this subject, because there's just so much proof that it works.

I do understand the collector logic "We need the water pathway to be restored first and foremost" but that can very well be done with nutrients being present. I want my trees to restore in 2 years instead of 4.

My collected trees that didn't make it, usually didn't make it because I murdered those roots during the process. They didn't stand a chance either way.

The main issue is that we want to feed heavily when we see light at the end of the tunnel. That's dangerous. That's a killer move. Nutrient burn is a real issue, especially on material that's healing. High salt concentrations can and will drain/draw water from damaged plant structures and will damage them further.
Moderation is key; half or a quarter of the recommended dose. Playing it safe is good, getting a head start is better.

And to be honest, organic feeding might be the less optimal approach; it invites possible pathogenic microbes, whereas chemical nutrients usually don't.

I start feeding collected trees whenever I start feeding the rest as well.

Awesome response and very informative! Although it makes me a little worried now. So far I have a really good survival rate but this year I am experimenting on applying organic fertilizer (inside coffee filters) immediately after transplanting into an initial pot of pure pumice. Never thought about pathogenic microbes. My understanding was always organic fertilizer was good and helped colonize the soil with the microbiome that helps the trees to grow. Hopefully they go over well anyways.

 

[Paradox]

It depends. With conifers like pines or junipers, I'd start feeding lightly when they show signs of growing (ie. buds swelling or greening up), which means their roots are active. For deciduous trees, I'd wait until the new growth has extended a bit, then start feeding lightly. As the trees show more signs of recovery, you can fertilize more heavily and more frequently

I agree with Dave's comments.
Generally after collecting or repotting any tree you want to wait until they start showing signs of recovery.

In general outside of repotting as stated above, starting up feeding trees in the spring is the same for any tree of the same type (pine, juniper, maple). The type of tree as well as where it is in the development stage is the biggest factors in when you start to feed them.

 

[Bnana]

I wouldn't worry about that. The microorganism living in your fertilizer are unlikely to be a problem to your plant.
On the other hand I do not think it will help your soil microbiome substantially.