Jun 29 2011

Fungi to photograph

Spotted these little fungi on my Scot’s Pine. Nice little fellows.

Jun 28 2011

Holiday care trees arrive

Those benches I made space on are now full. The holiday visitors have now arrived.

My own display benches are now full.

Jun 27 2011

I’m on a Road to nowhere….

Love this sign from my walk yesterday. Not quite a road to nowhere, just a footpath to Bangor along the edge of Belfast Lough.

Here’s a few more from the walk.

Two trees, one canopy.

Oyster Catchers on the wing.

Spreading the wings to catch the rays.

My dog Smudge in Action!!

The Winter hasn’t had an impact on our native orchids, I’ve seem more this year than ever.

Jun 27 2011

Rigeda Juniper Deadwood

I finally got around to cleaning up the deadwood on my Rigeda Juniper. I defined the limits of the live veins, tidied it up a little with a wire brush and treated with two coats of lime sulphur diluted to 1:5 ratio.

This was after one coat of Lime Sulphur.

and after the second coat. I reduced a long heavy branch at the bottom left and shortened a few branches in the apex that had reached the desired thickness.

This is the back of the tree. The deadwood needs a lot of refining here to improve a very flat boring area. However there is one branch at the back that isn’t connected to the main vein and I wanted to avoid working in this area. To be honest it’s hard to tell where the live vein is for this branch. It may have a slight crossover from the front. Any way, no rush. Tree will be left now for the rest of the year to get used to my garden and my care.

Jun 26 2011

Fuji Cherry Update

I did a bit of an experiment on this Fuji Cherry back on the 23rd of May.

Fuji Cherry Experiment

I hadn’t heard of a cherry being defoliated and this one was prime for it as I needed to de-wire it. This is the tree now over a month later. It was slow at first but has really pushed hard this last week. It’s been in my Poly Tunnel in this time and seems to love the humidity.

I’ll keep you posted with details on how the Autumn colour turns out this year and if it has any affect on the flowering next Spring.

Jun 25 2011

Trident pushing on after defoliation

My Trident is opening nicely after it’s early defoliation. I’ve been known to defoliate this fella twice in a year but after repotting this Spring I’m going to leave it alone now for the rest of the year.

Jun 24 2011

Escallonia Flowering

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of flowering from my escallonia this year in the way of flowering. It was repotted this Spring and had a major pruning back of the finer branches. However, a few have appeared at the top and add a little extra interest.

Jun 23 2011

Flying Visit

While Mario was visiting from Dublin, I popped round to drop off a few things to Josh. He was out but we still managed to get a few photos for Mario’s Bonsai Travelblog 🙂

It was absolutely chucking it down, but we still managed to see all the sights 🙂

Jun 23 2011

Mario’s Minder

Just took delivery of some of Mario’s bonsai while he’s working in Dubai for a year or two. I took a quick snap of each tree so he can see just how big a mess I can make of them in two years 😀

Jun 23 2011

Making Room

I spent an hour yesterday making some room on my benches for some new arrivals…

He’s not getting more trees, is he?

No, just some coming for holiday care. Every year I look after Josh’s collection. I quite enjoy it, more beautiful trees to look at 🙂

This year I also have some of Mario’s bonsai coming. Mario’s off to Dubai and I’m going to keep an eye on about 7 of his trees while he’s away. This should be about 2 years!! Happy to do it, top bloke.

Here’s the space.