Mar 30 2012

Escallonia Dig

I decided to collect this Escallonia from my Dad’s garden today. I had chopped it back last year in March in preparation for collecting this year. You can see posts about this HERE and HERE.

I forgot to lift my camera and had to resort to the mobile phone for photos. Below you can see my 85 year old Dad hard at work, something he’s done all his life. He’s fitter than I am!!

We also had another helper, Bobby the Robin was in around our feet lifting grubs to feed it’s first brood of the year. My Dad has about 20+ next boxes up around the place!

I’ve still to pot this up and am hoping that a few mates will being coming over tonight to give me a hand!! Photos to follow tomorrow.

Mar 24 2012

10 Days Later..

I took a few photos of the collected trees in the Poly Tunnel and compared them to the same shots from 10 days ago when they were placed in the tunnel. A nice shade of green appearing.

14th March

24th March

Mar 16 2012

Potting Up

On our return from the collecting trip we made a start to the potting up. Well, Phil and I did 🙂 Stephen starts late and finishes early!! He kept talking about needing some sleep, you’d think he had worked all night before coming out collecting 🙂

This was my garage before Phil and I started. I wanted to cry, totally knackered after the weekend away and a full day humping tress down a mountain!!

We started with the Spruce. They were potted into Sphagnum moss specially imported from Willowbog for the job 🙂

We worked until we were seeing double and called it a night. Stephen came back the following day and we finished off the remaining Larch. This is what greeted us in the garage, only 12 Larch left. Not a lot of photos taken here as it was a hassle taking gloves on and off!

The tunnel was emptied out to make room for the new arrivals and we managed to fill it.

It was good to see trees out again after their Winter protection, albeit rather haphazardly dumped onto benches!!

I’ll keep you posted with how these trees progress or die 🙂 I think we should be successful with most. One very nice Spruce had little root and we expect it to die but you never know!!

Mar 15 2012

Tuesday’s Collecting Trip

Managed to squeeze in a collecting trip with Phil and Stephen on Tuesday. We had planned to spread the collecting out over a few years on this site but the land owner moved the goal posts and we only had one day to get what we wanted! This meant lifting way more trees than we had planned for.

Phil and I set out early, Stephen was joining us after he finished work. A few swans followed us West, I thought birds flew south!!

Phil strides out into the site on the hunt for decent Larch.

First one of the day.

We were delighted that the trees could be lifted in few few minutes. They had rooted into the top layer of moss and no tap roots were going into the poor peat soil below. A quick circle with the spade and out they popped.

We then had a closer look at a few of the Spruce and were delighted to find massive trunks. These were trees that had been cut just above soil surface many years ago but a few had remaining low branches that have developed into squat powerful trees. We thought they would be a nightmare to collect but had this first one out in 10 minutes.

We moved on to this even better one. Probably the pick of the bunch. I had looked at this one a few months ago and couldn’t get my hands around the base. It’s as thick as my thigh. The obvious top leader was removed leaving a nicely tapered trunk.

Part of the view. A cloudy but mild windless day, perfect for collecting. Stephen, Bonsai Baker, eventually turned up once the hard work was done and we had enough lifted to fill his car already. We moved on a little further and collected a few more Spruce with lighter trunks.

We humped the booty down to the main Larch area. Dopey and Happy whistling while they work, the other 5 dwarfs will be along shortly behind them 🙂

We them moved to another area with larch and collected what we thought we could handle and fit in the trailer!

Stephen checks out another one, you can see the shari on the trunks caused by the wild goats that roam the mountains here.

Another Spruce.

We get the trees back down to the car and get the trailer loaded up. Phil gulps down his usual Red Bull and Stephen is either eating a Mars Bar or chewing a wasp!! The stone is actually suiseki size 🙂

We had spotted a very nice Lodgepole Pine and went to investigate.

When we cleared the top moss off we found out that the roots disappeared into the rock. The chances of collecting this and getting it to survive are slim to none. We covered it back up and left it for others to enjoy.

Packed up we moved on. Room forHappy in the trailer 🙂

We found another site for Larch lower down. Still Japanese Larch but much redder bark

Phil found another Pine but alas, it was also rooted through rock.

He then spotted a Spruce and got down for a closer look. So tempted to deliver a size 11 boot to the target presented!!

We even managed to spot the herd of wild goats that had helped us with the shari 🙂

Some nice mature forest too.

Phil decides to try a Le Mans Start for the trip home and some potting up 🙂

We even found a new site for Hawthorn! Different land owner but worth further investigation I think!!

I post photos from the potting up tomorrow.

Jan 27 2012

Collecting Garden Trees

Here’s Graham Potter latest video looking at collecting trees from gardens. This probably where many bonsai enthusiasts collect and is a great way to get a cheap bit of material. All you have to do is give it after care and time to establish before working.

Jan 16 2012

Phil’s Chamaecyparis Obtusa

Bar a few minor changes, that should be all the faffing about finished. Hope you like the different theme. I think it suits a photo based blog better.

To get the ball rolling again, here is a Chamaecyparis Obtusa that Phil collected from a garden a few days ago. I was at his place the other night and he insisted on getting the lamp out for a look in the dark. Plans are afoot to get it reduced in height and thinned out.

When he told me he had collected two Obtusa Chamae that where 6′ tall, I expected the inner branch structure to be bare. How wrong I was! Branches to the base on this one and foliage right to the trunk. Best of all, being a landscape gardener, he got paid for taking them out!! 🙂 The other one has been put in a flower bed for a year or so.

The faded original label was still attached. It states that its a Nana Gracilis. I always thought that this was the small variety and the label says a top height of 80 cm. At over twice that height, I think this may just be obtusa.

I love this variety for bonsai but have yet to find one worth keeping for myself. Phil has a decent start with this one, albeit limited style wise. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it off his hands.

Here are a few that appeared on Facebook and other online sources. I have searched a few times to see what can be achieved with this species.

This one belongs to Josh, a fellow club member.

Jan 6 2012

Harold and Kumar go Tree Hunting…

…. lol and we found some 🙂 Apologies for the movie reference, in an odd mood today.

Phil and I decided to check out a site that we thought might yield a few nice Larch and Spruce to collect. Phil had spotted it near one of his fishing spots up in the Sperrins area in Tyrone. Being vague here but you can understand this 😉 Anyway after a rather long and wet hike over 5 miles on rough ground, we found a small patch of trees that fit our needs.

We hadn’t planned to collect anything today. The whole point of the trip was to find the site and gain permission. The trees were commercially planted but no longer viable for harvest due to some very nice goats and sheep roaming the hills. 🙂 They have stripped the bark on many of the trees causing multiple trunks and shari. The Spruce are to be cleared anyway by cutting off at the base!!

Can you call this yamadori? Not really, they are commercially planted trees and is some cases not even that old. However nature and the elements have done some good work here for us in a short space of time. We don’t have the Alps on our doorstep and have to make do with the best we have on offer. As Larch and Spruce aren’t native in Ireland, this is the best we can do with regards to those species.

After finding and photographing the trees we set out to find the right person to gain permission. This turned out to be harder than walking to the trees in the first place. After some detective work, we got the right man and returned to the site with him. A quicker route as he had the key to the locked gate! When he saw what we wanted he was happy for us to remove trees that he was going to have to remove anyway.

The moral of this story, always ask for permission. I’ve asked twice this year for two separate sites and both were happy to say yes on hearing what they were for. Take a bonsai book with you to show examples and keep a big friendly smile on yer face. Works a treat 🙂

Here are the photos of a few of the trees we looked at. First some of the larch. Not the best trees but it gives you an idea of the ground we are collecting from. The trees are right on the treeline of the mountain and are quite exposed.

Phil gets the camcorder out. The deadwood on the ground is the remains of Lodgepole Pine that had been planed there but failed at some point a few years ago. A few survivors still showing here and there.

Typical damage caused by goats.

Trees eaten early on by having there apex damaged result in multi trunk trees. This is one of them but there are a few really tasty looking ones there and for some reason I didn’t snap them at the time.

Some of the Sitka Spruce that have to be removed. Someone told me today that they are spikey buggers. I found that out for myself yesterday!!

This one is interesting. I couldn’t get both my hands around the base of this one. It’s 4 feet tall but after major height reduction, I think it’ll make a powerful tree.

Showing some of the terrain that we had to walk over.

We spotted this Lodgepole Pine and gave it a closer look.

Me for scale. Some nice bark and deadwood on it. A few others were pointed out by the landowner later in the day as the light was disappearing.

Some nice little mountain streams feeding down into the lake nearby.

Stream cut through a peat bog surrounded by heather.

So there you go, I hope you enjoyed the photos as much as we enjoyed our day out. Being caught out in an open area during a cloud burst and having sore legs today was worth it. 🙂

Jan 5 2012

Plum Tuckered Out

I had planned to spend a little time posting pics from a trip to the Sperrin Mountains in County Tyrone today. Phil and I wanted to check out a new site for collecting Larch and try and get the necessary permission to do this.

It was a successful trip but I’m just too knackered to post now 🙂 I’ll add all the photos tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s a pic to wet the appetite.

Nov 7 2011

Dig It!

I bought this folding spade the other day under the pretence that I’ll keep it in the car in case of Winter snow.

My real reason was to add it to my collecting kit bag 🙂

Not bad for £6 🙂

Nov 2 2011

El Tim Blog speaking out

I thought I would mention this Spanish Bonsai Blog that I’ve been following for a while. I’ve just added it to My Favourite Blogs sidebar.

I understand that reading translated Spanish can be a bit of a chore, Google Translate is far from perfect! But sometimes its worth the effort.

If you click on the image link below you will be taken to a recent post about the collection of yamadori in Spain. It is an honest look at the devastation, dare I say rape, of collecting sites in Spain. I have collected yamadori myself, always in manageable numbers with permission. I understand the temptations to go mad and take risks with trees, I’m not blameless in this either. However, the wanton destruction of top quality yamadori as described here is totally unacceptable! Non-collectable trees should be left for everyone to enjoy in-situ.

This isn’t just a Spanish thing either, it’s happens everywhere when there’s money to be made. In my view, it’s bonsai’s dirty little secret. I have no doubt that some day, some news reporter on a slow news day will twig on to this and it will make National News. ‘Bonsai Butchers ruining the environment’, or words to that effect. What a sad day for bonsai that will be! 😦