Now you have watched this, you can’t say you weren’t warned 🙂 That’s why I’m adding another poly tunnel in the garden!!
Category Uncategorized
Stephen’s Garden Colour
I was down at Stephen’s place for a few hours yesterday and took a few snaps of his Autumn colour.
Apex adjustment On Cotoneaster
This is the root over rock Cotoneaster that I air layered the apex off during the year.
Previous posts here:
I was putting it away for the Winter and gave the apex a final adjustment before I did. The new apex was a side branch that I’ve brought up using wire and a guy line. I have been doing this in stages during the year as it seemed prone to crack if it was done in one step.
I am looking forward to developing a new apex on this tree next year. By doing this I feel that I’m making my own mark/improvement on the tree after the hard work of the previous owner.
Is that Autumn Colour at Last?
This Shohin Maple is finally starting to show a little Autumn Colour. The colour last year was fantastic and I’m hoping for a repeat performance. If this wind keeps up, I’m going to loose leaves before they even get a chance to change!
Front
Side
Back
On October 29th last year.
Touch and Go
I think it’s going to be touch and go with this Golden variety of Escallonia. I collected it yesterday from my Dad’s garden. He had dug it up a few days before and moved it to another spot until I was ready to collect. His reason for digged it up was the massive damage caused last Winter. It only had 3 live branches on the whole tree and one little shoot appearing at the base.
This is how I found it yesterday.
I cut back a few of the heavy branches that had no foliage on them. All of them were dead. One of the branches was very tall and I was going to have to cut it off it fit it in the car. This branch however had a live bit at the top. When I sawed through the branch, this is what I found in the heart wood.
You can clearly see that the branch isn’t alive the whole way around the circumference. Escallonia is very similar to juniper in that they have a very defined live vein system in their growth structure. Specific branches correspond with specific roots, cut either off and you loose the other. This left me with two live branches on the tree and one little shoot at the base. Totry and ensure survival, I had to leave both live branches uncut on the tree. As it sits now neither of these branches is usable in any future design but by leaving them I hope to see a bit of back budding lower down the trunk.
I got it home and potted it up. I used a mix of SP Cat Litter, grit and bark. I decided to use bark to add a little more organic material to the mix and aid moisture retention within the pot. This is the bark I used.
and the mix
I selected a pot that would be a reasonably tight fit.
I potted the tree up in the poly tunnel where it will stay until it either dies or shows strong signs of growth next year.
Now I play the waiting game….
Bonsai in the Afternoon
Over the last few months I have started having impromptu bonsai sessions on mid week afternoons with a few friends. This was normally the preserve of a Friday evening but there isn’t enough Friday evenings in a month 😀
My usual freinds attending these afternoon sessions are Stephen and Michael. However yesterday, Phil also joined us. He said he hadn’t had a day off work since April and wanted to play with trees.
Phil worked on the deadwood of this Juniper. It had been carved with power tools a while back but Phil wanted to change this to a more natural looking image by doing some work by hand. It had some basic shaping a few years ago but is now ready for a more structured wiring.
Front
Back
Before [well nearly before. We forgot to take a photo at the start]
After [ well, not quite as he’s still to finish it!]
This is what he left behind for me to clean up 🙂
I brought this yew in to work on. I bought it many years ago as a big garden centre tree in a tub. It got a little bit of styling but it’s health went down hill rapidly! Turns out it was full of vine weevil!! I killed them off but the tree was very weak. I put iy in the ground for about 8 years and it got a few clippings in that time. It still remained weak for much for this period. About a year ago it was dug up and put in this beautiful red tray [not] and has grown well this year. I’m trying to cut back on the number of trees sitting about the place and decided that if I do a little work on this, I might be able to sell it some time next year. Here is the before and after pics after todays work. Major pruning and setting of a basic branch structure.
It’s got 5 trunks if you count the dead one. For some reason I haven’t taken a photo of the actual new front. The tree needs to spin slightly more clockwise to bring all the trunks into view.With some filling out, and some added shari put on the boring straight sections on the trunk, it might actually sell 🙂
I’ll add Michael and Stephen’s work on another post.
Festival international de bonsaï 2011
Found these Short clips on You Tube. Each is a clip of an individual tree on display at the Festival international de bonsaï 2011. Worth a few minutes of anyones time. It’s also worth looking through some of his other videos. His Dexter Intro is superb 🙂
Shohin Cotoneaster
Ben brought this little Cotoneaster along to the workshop last weekend. While Peter was busy doing the deadwood on several Larch, Ben and I had a look at this little fellow. I could have sworn I took a before photo but I can’t one one of it now! Anyway, this is it after we gave the few pruning scars a little bit of refinement with the dremel to make them more natural looking. Some fine wire was added to get the young branches positioned in the right areas. Next year this will fill out rapidly and create a lovely little tree.
Weekend Craic
This gallery contains 2 photos.
Some of the craic over the weekend. Pretty scary face Ben 🙂 I told you to stop picking that moss off my tree!!! Phil’s sound check 1,2! The sound technician working hard in the background Peter cracks another witty one liner, … Continue reading
A few other trees ……
… that were for sale or sold over the weekend.
Japanese Maple
Mame Juniper
Japanese larch
Scots Pine
Japanese White Pine
Bonsai Eejit 