Apr 12 2011

Accent

Spent a few hours in the sun this afternoon tidying up around the garden and cutting grass. I decided enough was enough and got the camera and scissors out and trimmed back some very strong Spring foliage on my trees.

To keep this diary up to date I’ll split up the days work into a few posts. First up are a few accents. The first one is a weed, but a pretty weed.

Next up is one of my attempts at kusamono. It’s made up of hosta, dwarf aquilegia, dwarf Iris and a bit of mud rock. Most of the stuff is still emerging but the aquilegia is ahead of the game.

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This is a tray of potted hostas that my mate Stephen gave me. About half of them are well on their way. The other half are just starting to poke their noses out. Three different varieties.

Apr 11 2011

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.

Apr 11 2011

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.

Apr 10 2011

Walking on Sunshine

Had my usual Sunday morning walk today and what a day it was. Only problem was all the fair weather walkers clogging up the beach!! The second part of the walk was in the woods and it was less crowded and a lot cooler. Here’s a few pics from the day including some inspirational uro’s and deadwood.

End of the Blackthorn Flowers along the coast

Mill Pond sea

The way ahead

Two brothers on the beach with blackthorn flowering behind

Drill Rig getting tug boated into Belfast Harbour for some work.

Some nice uro and hollows on a beech

waiting for the last bit to fall then it'll be a uro

Deadwood on a hawthorn hedge

more of it.

Emerging ferns

Some unusual bark on a Sycamore

A windfall beech thats had a little wood removed for logs.

Another nebari for my collection

Apr 8 2011

Corky Haircut

This litle Cork Bark Elm has responded really well to a repot. This it a week or so ago.

It had fully opened since then but I wasn’t happy with the length of some of the internal branches. I want to build up a fine ramification and some of these are too long and straggly. I decided I needed to take it back in quite hard to eliminate the strait bits and force some back budding. This is it today.

Apr 8 2011

Just back for our club night.

I was at our monthly meeting of the NIBS tonight. Yet another busy night. Great to see people either working on trees or just enjoying a friendly chat and sharing ideas. Mario travelled up from Dublin and was half an hour late. He got a bit of stick for that but he had a good excuse with a bomb scare on the main Dublin road at Newry. I had really hoped that all that crap was behind us!!

It was nice to see a few of the trees previous worked on coming back and looking really well. One of the newer members turned up with a little larch grown from seed I think. She’s had it 15 years and it was pretty old when she got it. There must be 4 decent options in it for a nice tree.

This is the Larch.

Phil giving it a look over.

A few other shots from the night.

Ben looking over his new acquisition, a nice little larch from Willowbog. I was impressed by his willingness to get stuck in.

My son Matthew gulping down the BPM, that's all he needs, more energy! He's really starting to enjoy bonsai. Fingers crossed he'll stick at it.

Apr 6 2011

It’s back!

Every year my Common Juniper gets it’s usual flowering of rust fungus. It usually occures in February. Last year it got a major dose of fungicide and I had crossed my fingers for this year.

This was it yesterday. 😦 It’s just starting and hasn’t got to that jelly like state yet. I have kept it in the tunnel and on the dry side. It usually goes nuts after a heavy shower.

The general health of the tree is very good. It was repotted in the Autumn and spent the Winter in the poly tunnel. The problem with the rust is that it seems to cause the tree to throw the odd branch. Here’s an example.

Guess I’ll keep trying different fungicides and keep my fingers crossed.

Apr 6 2011

Coral Bark Maple

This is my Coral Bark Maple ‘Sango Kaku’. It was my first Maple bonsai attempt going back to 1994.

I bought it as a garden centre tree that was very root bound and probably over worked it in it’s first few years in my care. It was slow to grow and weak on many branches. It sat in a corner for a year or so and then it was planted out into open ground for about 8 years. Even in open ground it didn’t do much for a long time. It was just starting to gain vigour when I had to clear the ground.

In ground 2004

Two years later and this is where I’m at with it. It is overly tall at the moment but I plan to increase the overall width of the tree. I’m building up the branch structure from the inside to ensure short inter-nodal length and good ramification. I’m not after a quick fix bonsai maple . You see these all the time and when they’re bought the new owner ends up not being able to live with the faults and cuts all the branches off and starts again.

Summer 2010

April 2011

This shot shows the original chop wound on the tree. It’s almost totally healed over. The other little patches are Lichen.

Another chop nearing closure. I’ll reopen it this year to speed the process along.

This is a virtual of the overall size I’m aiming for with this tree. Hopefully with a smaller leaf and more definition and negative space.

Apr 5 2011

Chinese Elm Progression

Here’s a link to a set of progression photos on the IBC forum. Well worth a look to see what was achieved over 6 years with this tree. I constantly try and talk club members into removing heavy mis-shaped branches and roots from large imported Elms. This chap took the bull by the horns and did it all.

Chinese Elm Progression

By way of credit, this is the guy’s website. It’s in Spanish but Google Translate takes care of that. Check out his Pyracantha if you get a chance. Click on the logo to visit.

Apr 5 2011

What the Hell is it??!!

Just for Mike, I thought I would add another one for the day 🙂 🙂

I was asked to trim a bonsai for a guy about 16 years ago and I took cuttings. I have no idea what it was. It was known as a Chinese Hackberry but I have yet to see a picture of one remotely similar to it. I planted a few of them in open ground for 8 years and they thrived. Now that I’ve a few of them in training at last, I’m hoping to figure out what they are.

The wood is hard and even a small tree feels heavy!! The bark is a dark grey and the cambium layer is very thin, similar to a beech. The leaves are ovate and have a slight silver furry feel to the back of them. It’s very prone to throwing up suckers from the base. Here’s a few photos of new growth today. The tree isn’t great and I have a better one, but it’s not open yet.