Lee Braiden wrote:
Has anyone tried hydroponic techniques with bonsai? I've been
looking at simple things like capillary mats recently, but it might
be interesting to take this further.

Why on earth would you want to? My experience with hydroponics is with
industrial-scale systems; in NY mesclun growers use hydroponics. It's
very good for large-scale production of plants that you want to harvest
quickly, but makes no sense for bonsai, particularly since the biggest
enemy of hydroponics is Oomycete root rots. You can squeak by and
prevent root rots if your crop takes only a month to mature, but
years????

The closest thing to hydroponics in bonsai is that guy who used to be
on TV and grew his plants in sphagnum. Because the matrix was wet and
inert, that would almost count as hydroponics.

If you go a step further, growing bonsai in pure turface with a
nutrient solution is close to hydroponics, since turface is still
inert. However, turface has the advantage of holding water and
allowing natural aeration; the granules also have a cation-carrying
capacity (CEC), so you don't need to fertilize constantly (after
fertilization, the turface will hold the nutrients and release them
gradually).

If you go a step further and add some composted bark to the turface,
you have what bonsai growers normally do. So I don't see the advantage
of hydroponics at all.

Nina