vinegar uses in bonsai

[mboatman]

Hey all. I am coming across a few peoples ideas of vinegar on deadwood and increasing acidity in soils. MY MAIN QUESTION IS: CAN IT BE USED AS A" DE-ALGAE" COMPONENT ON MY COLLECTED ROOT OVER ROCK SUGAR MAPLE? the stone it grew on has an ever thickening green gooey algae spreading over the surface of the rock. It is very untidy looking and i want to eradicated it. Thanks.

[MatsuBonsai]

I've used a very weak solution of vinegar/water brushed on with a toothbrush on my big azalea to clean the trunk and larger branches. It works quite well. I'm not sure if I would recommend it's use in soil, but perhaps others have a different opinion?

Got any pictures of your root over rock sugar maple?

[plantmanky]

I would agree with John on being careful with the use of vinegar. While it's a decent cleaning agent, it also will lower the Ph of your soil and if your not careful, and the Ph gets too low it locks up the nitrogen in the soil making it unavliable to your tree. Another thing about ph being low is that many moss' and alge flourish in that environment defeating your purpose of using it. It's ok to use if, just be cautious and aware of the possible results. If your tree can be turned on it's side while you clean that rock so that the excess drips off to the ground so much the better.

I too would love to see a pic of your Sugar Maple. I've just started working on 3 of them to see how they perform and would love to hear about your experiences thus far.

Randy

[mboatman]

I am very pleased so far but i have not been too focused on leaf size yet. Been fertilizing it heavily to push more growth on the branches. The trunk size is just where i want it. It recovered like nothing happened after collecting it last spring and has been quite vigourous so far this year. Here is a picture of the lower trunk area where the root has grown over the rock. Look closely and hopely you can get an idea of what the aglae problem i have.

[mboatman]

I am sorry. The pic i have will not upload. I am on this forum through my smartphone. It states "the file is too big" so as soon as i get behind a real computer, i will post the pic.

[centaura]

At the Garden where I volunteer, we use a 5% vinegar solution on the trees to help kill weeds, though care needs to be taken. One of the Garden's junipers got sprayed with the vinegar, and got severely damaged. I've never tried it for algae, but I was going to try it this year for cottonwood seedlings. I have a huge cottonwood in my front yard, and every June it looks like its snowed in my yard. The seeds have a 150% germination rate, so I pull them out of my bonsai pots for the rest of the year.

-Cat

[mboatman]

FINALLY BEHIND A COMPUTER!!!
Hopefully this is a good enough pic of the sugar maple "root over rock". It was collected this way.

[centaura]

The other thing with algae, if you let it dry out completely it tends to peel or flake off. If you let your tree dry for a day or so, you should be able to take a brush to the rock and clean it off. Then try applying a 5% vinegar spray to the rock to try to keep the algae from coming back.

-Cat

[mboatman]

It seems to be going away like the way you said it Cat, Flaking. I took a weak solution of vinegar to the rock and its basically clear for now. Its not perfectly clean but its ok for now.