I'm interested in your experience with top dressings.
I've read about how moss can be difficult in our climate and solutions for making it work in the Parameters for growing moss chat. I don't think I'm ready to mess with that, yet.
Still, I am having issues with soil washing away when I water – particularly on store-bought, deciduous trees that have more of a traditional soil, instead of the akadama mix I've used on others. So, I'm looking for ways to cut that out.
I have one tree from The Bonsai Nursery with a kind of sharp, small, black rock on top. I can't tell if it's lava or not, but it seems to work really well without the bulk of chunkier lava I've seen around.
Perhaps the solution is going back and asking what they use, but I'd still like to know more.
What do you use?
You can buy window screen by the roll from Walmart/Ace/HD/Lowes. I'm still using a roll I bought a few years ago.
With your Dramm, you can turn the water flow down on your input from the house, you can turn the spout upside down while you're holding it, and you can practice watering in waves instead of keeping it in one place the whole time.
Kind of like you don't leave a hair dryer in 1 spot for long or you get burned.
All that said, soil will still wash out sometimes.
If you watch through this watering video from Mirai you can see what I'm talking about in several of the clips. They also grow moss pretty well. :)