Bonsai may be an old, even ancient pursuit, but somehow it
finds ways to be a new and different
experience every growing season.
I’ve dealt with the same pests that every plant grower has
wrestled with. Aphids seemed to be the the big problem, every year the little suckers fins the soft new growth
of the quinces, cotoneasters and crabapples and can make a mess if they are not
dealt with swiftly and severely. Scale shows up once in a while as well.
Thirty years in bonsai, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a
Japanese beetle on any of my trees. But they are making up for it this summer
with a real effort. There was a grape arbor behind my parent’s house, and every
summer it would be covered with Japanese beetle. It got to a sort of sport, in
the cruel innocence way of kids, to ‘flick’ the bugs of the leaves one by
one, appoint for each bug, double score
for beetles that wee mating, and an extra special recognition for those with
strong enough fingers to flick the pets hard enough to disable. I find myself doing the same sort of damage
control on my bonsai now. It’s an irony that I’ll make an effort not to step on
bees or will shoo a spider out of the house rather than squash it, but I feel
no sorrow at the satisfying snap of a crushed Japanese beetle.
Sometimes the ingenuity of a pest can be the fascinating
thing about dealing with them. Every
gardener has had to deal with rabbits, and if you’re serious about raising lettuce or spinach you’ve probably got a
fenced area to do the growing. I put in
a double row of bush beans this year, and expected my only trouble would be
from slugs. Once the beans had put out one set of true leaves, I thought all
danger from slugs was past. Imagine my surprise and anger when I came out to
the backyard to find two rows of beans stems-no leaves! The rabbits had added
another green to their menu, and kept coming back for it. As the bean plants tried to keep growing, the
rabbits made return visits to clip of the next flush of fully formed leaves.
The beans pooped out after three ties, and the rabbits moved on to other items
in the back yard. One of the common names of Dwarf Jade is Elephant Bush, since
they are relished by these animals in
their South African native range.
Well, its not just large herbivores that appreciate this
plant, but smaller ones too. I was giving a few of my dwarf jades a trim and
decided to take of a rather thick well formed branch. Every bonsai grower knows what that means-a ready to go
new tree! Dwarf jade set from cuttings
with no real effort, so I put the trimmed piece in the dirt under my potting
bench intending to deal with getting
into a container once Id finished other projects. Two days later ( this is not a real problem,
I have had dwarf jade cuttings sit on a bench several weeks and root well when
potted-some advocate for this method of starting cuttings to avoid rotting in
damp medium) when I came to deal with the cutting in question, I was shocked to
find it was missing every single leaf!
Some hungry little bunny took the time and courtesy to nip off each and
every succulent green leaf leaving all the stems intact.
If you, like me always thought of rabbits eating grass and
an occasional carrot. It can be surprising how wide ranging their diet can
be-and what heights and lengths they will go to get it. There is a row of cork barked elms of some
sort that line a long stretch of road in a residential development not far from
me. They set seeds in the fall, and it’s easy to go gather a handful or two in
early spring, after Mother Nature has stratified them for me. I had a growing flat full of these seedlings going well, with maybe 3 or 4 true
leaves and put them out on the front porch to get some air and sun. That porch
is a concrete rectangle with two sides
facing the house, the other two surrounded by flower beds. Its two steps up
from the ground to the porch top, and the trees were at the end of the
rectangle opposite the steps.
One morning I come out to check the little elms, and found
that every single one had been mowed down to about ½ inch above the soil level.
Some how that rabbit knew they were there, and then either climbed the steps
and crossed the porch to get to them, or
leapt up almost three feet , if it decided to skip the stairs. With all the lovely green chemically enhanced
grass that my neighbors make sure is available, why would the varmint take such
effort to chew on some sticks?
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