De-Flowering Today

Bonsai that is 🙂

My big Rhododendron has started to drop some of it’s flowers and to make sure I get all the seed pods off, I removed the rest by hand today. If you do it at this stage, it’s easy to spot the little red tips and the emerging shoots below are easy to avoid. If you leave it until all the flowers drop of their own accord, seed heads are hard to spot, you tend to knock off new shoots and it stresses the tree even further.

Here’s it before.

These are what I’m removing. Some have already dropped the flower petals leaving the seed heads.

and this is it 45 minutes later.

this is under the bench!

I have given the tree it’s first feed and a good watering in.

What a difference …

…a month makes.

This is a quick snap from the door of my greenhouse on 15th March

and another one taken today.