My Cotoneaster has now fully opened.
This is Old Joe, a Golden variety of Yew that I dug from my Uncles garden after he died 4 years ago. It was tall, poker straight and not much to look at but it is my memory of my Uncle, so I’m trying the make the best of it.
I did the basic carving on it last year. This was an attempt to add interest to a very straight and boring tree. After some consideration I removed a tall jin at the top of the tree a short time later. It was just too tall and leaned back too far from the apex foliage.
Today I wanted to try out the new carving bits and decided to do the basic carving required at the chopped jin and maybe do a little refinement work on last years work.
This was it last year.
Today with a little more growth.
This is the chopped jin to be worked on.
Tools at the ready…
The chop after basic carving and a coat of Lime Sulphur.
A little more detail added lower down.
I posted this maple back on the 21st march HERE
(Loving this online diary. Great for checking back when tasks were done.)
Here’s an update on the tree. Every Spring is grows vigorously and has large leaves. I defoliate as soon as they harden off. That’s today.
The next flush of growth will have smaller leaves and a shorter inter-nodal length.
The wounds that I reopened and resealed in March are obviously healing strongly as you can see from the cracks in the cut paste. I’m hoping that by the end of 2012 I have no wounds at all.
I cut 2 Escallonia back at the start of March with a view to collecting them next Spring.
After 2 months this is the growth they have put out. I was hoping to see budding right to the top of each trunk and I wasn’t disappointed.
Last year I bought this Satsuki Azalea on the cheap. I hadn’t got one and was wanting to add a splash of colour to the bench. It had been pruned hard and most of what you see here is new growth grown after I got it. It had only been fed with ‘teabags’ for the last 8 years and hadn’t been repotted in that time.
I fed it heavily from last Summer and repotted it this Spring. The one thing I didn’t know and have been guessing at is, what colour and size the flowers are. Here are the first signs of flowering. They look big, too be expected, and there appears to be a few different colours. The tree has a very long way to go before it looks presentable, but isn’t that part of the fun.
This Cotoneaster has been in my collection since I dug it out of a garden in 1995. It’s nothing special really and I’m not overly happy with the shape of it. I even consider removing all branches and starting again. What I do like about it is the flowers and the deadwood I’ve created.
This was it back in a garden in 1995.
And here in 1996.
and again in 1998. Shortly after this photo a root died causing a narrowing of the live vein and the death of a few lower branches.
Jamie commented on one of my posts yesterday and asked if I worked on trees every day. I replied that it felt like it at the moment and that it mostly depended on my work getting in the way.
This got me thinking about what is required to keep on top of a collection. I’m the first to admit that I have far too much sitting about the place and sometimes my better trees miss out on that next step of refinement. I find the best way to stay on top is to do that little task every day. I’ll water everything and then look for something to do that fits the time I have available.
Today I trimmed back a Cork Bark Chinese Elm, trimmed a few extension shoots from my Korean Hornbeam, shortened in the second flush of shoots on a hawthorn and took a few photos of my Cotoneaster in Flower.
Here’s a few photos from today.
Hornbeam after trim
Cork Bark before trim
After trim
Nebari
Hawthorn Raft trimmed.
I must admit that this blog has highlighted just how much I actually do on a daily basis! 🙂
I ended up with a nice pile of scrap metal yesterday after taking the wire off these two. Both were wired during the Autumn/Winter and they were right at the limit of cutting in. I usually get a bit longer that this but this year seems to be a good one for putting on girth, at least that’s what the bathroom scales are telling me!!
I posted back in March about buying this little Cork Bark Elm. Cork Bark Purchase
and last month on the 8th April about giving it a tight haircut. Cork Bark Pruning
and this is it today. Budding strongly and progressing nicely.
…I hope.
Continuing my manoeuvring to keep my son on the bonsai bandwagon, I spent an hour or so this afternoon working on a tree. When my friend Stephen donated a few of his to the cause, I asked Matthew which ones he liked. He was drawn to this Root over Rock Trident. ( Not really a root over rock, more like a growing against a rock Trident.)
It’s well hardened off already and has extension growth on most branches. I decided to allow Matthew to defoliate it to begin with. Bit early, I hear you say! You might be right, but I find Tridents so strong and vigorous that two defoliations in the year isn’t a problem. I set him to work.
Blissfully unaware of my camera work, you can almost hear the concentration from here.
After defoliation we wired a few branches into place for practice and discussed the shape that the tree will take in future.
I talked about extending the foliage pads on the right, and keeping the left hand side tight to show off the rock and give the tree more interest. I then explained how, in a different pot, some negative space on the right would really help the overall image. I spotted an old Mica landscape pot under a bench and decided to show him what I meant. The pot was big enough to allow me to lift the planting out of the training pot and into the mica one without removing any root.
I told him that he needs to find a similar looking bit of rock or a big lump of moss to fill the gap between rock and root at the base.
I didn’t set out to do all this today, I think we got carried away!! I am confident that this tree will bounce back in a few weeks. I’ll even post an update here to prove it 🙂
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