The way of watering
It’s hard to keep a tree properly hydrated.
In bonsai nurseries, watering is a task often delegated to apprentices. There’s not much to it, except this is bonsai, so of course there is. More than two years into this practice, I still have no clue what I’m doing when I water. My friend Nissan has been doing bonsai for more than a decade. A couple years ago, he told me he was possibly getting a handle on how to water. So please do not take the following as bonsai advice. I don’t want to be held responsible for poorly watered trees.
The general guideline is to water when the first half-inch of soil becomes dry. What does that feel like, though? How dry is dry? What if the tree doesn’t look like it needs water yet? The leaves of my red maple tree, above, are drooping from their petioles. The tree looked thirsty, but the top soil was still damp. Red maple’s other common name is swamp maple; I keep this tree in a soil mix that contains more water retentive organic components than my other trees. It’s a small pot, though, and the roots are still colonizing it after getting pruned this spring.
You see how quickly the particulars spiral you away from the general guidelines. Then multiply those complications by all the trees in your collection. Different species at different stages of development each have their own hydration idiosyncrasies.
I water my outdoor trees every two to three days during most of the growing season. I keep an eye on the weather forecast and have a rough intuition for how moist the soil is in their pots at any given time. Before I water, I check each tree to see how it’s doing, and if it needs water that day. These check ins often turn into grooming sessions where I pluck dead pine needles, trim off deadwood, and clean up leaf litter. My hands open with anticipation as I approach my row of trees. I think I have a better understanding of how a dog feels when it goes on a walk, keeping tabs in on all its spots and sniffing to find out what’s up.
When I first transplanted my trees to the restaurant, I hoped that watering trips would set me into a routine of taking myself out for a walk, like a dog.
It’s a cute routine. Once or twice a week I meet my friend Matt, a neighbor, for an afternoon walk to kibbitz, commiserate, and check on the trees. All the restaurant staff still get a kick out of the whole bonsai arrangement, so I usually have a s’up, boss moment with whoever’s working that day. I always water on Sundays on my way to the farmers market, with my kitchen scraps in hand to drop off at the compost collection bin. The market is its own routine. In the summer, I stop at one stall for a couple quarts of berries that last me a day, another stall for a dozen apples that last me the week, then the expensive Korean stall with amazing greens and gochujang. I may stop at the neighborhood cheese shop on my way back to my apartment. Another cute routine.
The restaurant is closed on Monday, so I usually swing by Tuesday afternoon to check on the trees again. I say hi to my building’s super, who’s invariably outside around 2pm. During the school year I wind up running into a wave of kids sluicing down the boulevard on their way home, and every time I tell myself to leave an hour earlier or later the next time, to remember that our rhythms have locked into sync. I always forget.
I’m not sure how it started, but since the 2020 lockdowns, my day to day life has become parochial. I leave my neighborhood to see friends and family, and venture into Manhattan for the odd meeting or doctor’s appointment, but I spend most of my time in my corner of Queens with the people who live nearby. Back when I had an office job, I felt I had to leave the country at least once a year or my head would start to get screwy. Now, when friends tell me of their destination weddings and whirlwind attempts to eat through some far off city, I get antsy. I don’t know how to explain the change other than my body and mind seem at rest here. They want to be here. Who am I to stop them?
I worry that these desires are the manifestation of some pandemic induced, zip code delineated agoraphobia. I wonder if I’ve become fatally dull. That in my zeal to eat a post-hibernation bear’s worth of blackberries a week, I’ve surrendered some appetite for greater adventure.
The worst part is, for all my focus on routine, some of my trees are in crisis. I clearly missed some watering days on my blueberry tree. The shrub has all but abandoned the new trunkline I sculpted for it, in favor of an inconveniently placed basal shoot, as blueberries like to do. I’ll need to start over on the trunk now. It’ll set the tree back years.
You can see my spruce isn’t doing much better. A fungal infection has manifested along the exposed deadwood. This tree may be a goner.
“A process can’t be understood by stopping it.” That’s a Frank Herbert line I try to keep in the back of my head. All I know for certain is that endlessly analyzing my parochial turn won’t resolve anything. I may just have to live with it and see where it takes me. Water my trees, drink my tea, shop for cheese and berries. Four of my six trees at the restaurant are thriving. Every time I stop by, I get to watch them grow.
Tree reading
The toilet paper in your bathroom may have been pulped from an old growth boreal forest in Canada, a disaster for biodiversity and carbon capture. [Natural Resources Defense Council]
The search for the descendent of a prehistoric tree, shrunk by evolution to a tiny club moss. [Rootbound]