Apr 6 2012

Pleione Orchid Accent

This Pleione Orchid is emerging and will flower in the next few days. Short lived flower but worth it.

Apr 6 2012

The Latest Bonsai Art of Japan Video

It has it all, Kokufu, loads of trees, interviews, YMCA and Peter Warren in a tie!!

Apr 5 2012

Tufa Rock Landscape

I was given this lump of Tufa by Josh about a year ago. We had been talking about rock plantings and I mentioned that I’d been looking for a weathered piece of tufa but could never find a suitable one. He said, ‘Hold on a minute’, disappeared around the side of the garage and came back with this in his hand. It was already mossing up nicely and has gotten better in the last year.

I’m not planning anything too fancy with it. I just wanted a natural lump of stone with a few odd bits and pieces clinging to the rock face so to speak. I have added a few cotoneasters, an elm, a hawthorn, a creeping willow and a flowering current! With the flowering plants and different types of foliage it should make an interesting object to look at in a few years time. It’s still very early days. The cascade cotoneaster isn’t right and will probably be replaced once I find a suitable replacement. Everything else needs to mature.

The Elm clinging to the rock

The flowering current, not the usual one you see in gardens I might add, this is a climbing one that with some leaf removal and pruning in the next few years will make a nice splash of colour on the rock.

A cascading Hawthorn

A dwarf willow that will climb down the back of the rock and create a very nice image on a bare uninteresting part of the rock. I have seen this used before by Stephen, aka bonsai baker to great effect.

The moss is delightful 🙂

I keep it under a bench in the shade to encourage the moss and keep it moist. Ideally I would like another smaller piece of tufa to add to the finished image by making it look like two islands sitting in a water suiban. Aiming for something like this 🙂

Apr 5 2012

Very P1$$ed Off!!

My Chuhin Maple and a few other maples have been eaten by something! The buggers have stripped bark on branches causing either very slow budding or branch death! Could it be slugs, never had this before and of all my trees to eat they picked this one.

The damage can be seen clearly on this little maple that died as a result as it was on the trunk.

Fingers crossed I don’t loose too many branches, only time will tell. It’s already been set back quite a bit.

Apr 4 2012

Snow in the Mournes

I jokingly added a post on April Fool’s Day about there being snow in my garden. Here we are a few days later and it has snowed in many places in the UK. We have been lucky here in Northern Ireland with snow only lying on high ground. I took this photo this morning with my mobile phone when I was working in Newcastle, County Down. White tops on the Mourne Mountains.

This is one taken in the North of England today. After high temperatures last week and spending a little time basking in the sun, we dropped back below zero!

Apr 4 2012

Shohin Japanese Maple

This little maple is about to come into leaf.

I recently read somewhere that if you remove the stipules from the bud as it opens it allows the stalk to dry out faster which causes the inter-nodal length to become shorter. A desirable feature in shohin maples.

Here you see the stipules at the point of my scissors.

This is how it looks with the stipules removed. I will hold judgement on the technique until I see if there is any beneficial results.

Anybody used this technique before?

Apr 3 2012

Yearly Task

This recovering Japanese Maple has a big area of deadwood at the base extending up the trunk. It was extremely rotten when I got it and it requires a lot of attention with wood hardener to keep it as is. I added another coat of hardener a few days ago.

Apr 3 2012

Oak Air Layer Removal

I layered this oak last year and decided to leave it in place over the Winter. All the other layers last year had produced enough root to allow for an Autumn removal. This oak however was lacking in roots at that stage. Some where visible but not enough in my opinion.

Today I removed the cover and was happy with what I saw. The layer was budding very strongly and the roots in the moss were moving again as white tips were showing.

This was my first layer on an oak and was more about gaining knowledge than producing a great tree. Both the parent tree and the layer are nothing special but at least I know it’s worth giving oak a go in the future.