What Soil to Use for Black Bone Tea Bonsai? Detailed Soil Mixing Methods
Black Bone Tea is a bonsai tree species grown mainly for its foliage. It prefers slightly acidic loam and not only has strong shade tolerance but also strong drought and poor-soil tolerance. Although this tree species grows relatively slowly, its tree form is graceful and highly ornamental. Even in the wild, it is not easy to obtain stump material, and fine forest stumps are even harder to find. As the saying goes, "things are precious when they are rare"; value determines price, and the high price is precisely a reflection of this tree species' value.
Black Bone Tea, also known as black ebony, is a tree species unique to Guangdong and a new bonsai tree species only discovered in recent years. Because this tree has a relatively narrow growing range and grows relatively slowly, making it easy to care for and manage day to day, it has gradually been grown as a bonsai by more and more enthusiasts. So, what are the requirements of Black Bone Tea bonsai for potting soil? What soil is better for growing it?
Black Bone Tea likes fertile, loose, slightly acidic soil, and the soil should have good breathability and drainage with a high sand content. You can use ordinary soil or red soil, then add some coarse sand, vermiculite, coir, perlite and other loose materials and mix them into a growing medium, then mix in some organic fertilizer as a base fertilizer before potting.
In fact, there is no strict standard for mixing soil for this kind of bonsai tree, Black Bone Tea. Practice has proven that even using a mix of half sand and half ordinary soil can keep Black Bone Tea alive; some netizens have even mixed 3 parts sand with 7 parts soil, and all Black Bone Tea bonsai trees successfully survived.
It can be seen that when it comes to what soil to use for Black Bone Tea, the soil-mixing schemes adopted on this issue are all relative. But to make Black Bone Tea grow more robustly, we can decide how to mix the soil according to the plant's growth characteristics, but the general principle is that the growing medium must not become compacted and must remain loose, fertile and well-draining. The soil-mixing schemes for Black Bone Tea are diverse. Only through more experimentation in practice, and by choosing a growing medium more suitable for its growth according to the plant's growth condition, can we do our best, because what suits its growth is the best.