Summer misting
Last summer I mentioned the practice of ‘hamisu’ which is the misting of bonsai during hot summer days. This light topical watering wets the foliage, trunk, pot and first half inch or inch of soil. It refreshes the tree.
If you water the trees in the morning on hot days, they will often need this lighter watering once or twice following that. This is especially true when the temperatures rise above 90 degrees F. Hamisu is most effective when the sun is lowering in the sky.
Be careful watering too late in the day when you have fungus problems. There is juniper tip blight, Phomopsis, to be concerned with, for instance. Any water on the foliage should dry before night sets in during the warm months.
Michael
2 Comments
Hi Mike,
I appreciate that you write frequent “tree care” posts besides the usual “styling” pieces.
I´ve had some problems with tip blights recently and was wondering what fungicides you used to control them? Sometimes it seems you end caught up in a cycle of pruning away affected branches but the nasties just keep popping up.
Would love to hear your comments on this.
Best regards,
Juan
Hello Juan, hope things are well down south—
I have been controlling Phomopsis tip blight with Daconil and a copper fungicide called Liqui-Cop, although I think any copper fungicide would work. I try to trade them off in rotation to avoid disease mutation and resistance problems. Some use a systemic fungicide with good results, but I have not tried those. It is probably best to have three fungicides rather than two. So far I’ve managed to control my moderate problems with only two.