A record snap of my Cotoneaster with berries that this year are actually bursting open!
It’s changed a bit from when I got it a few years ago.
Tag Archives: Cotoneaster
Cotoneaster Tweaked a Little
Maintenance – Cotoneasters
In 20 years of bonsai I have never witnessed growth on my trees such as I have seen in the last two weeks. I spend some time on Sunday getting them back into shape.
These two Cotoneaster have been trimmed multiple times this year and this is the growth in just the last 2 weeks.
After trimming. You’ll noticed I missed a bit. I’m making a few changes to the image in that area and I’ve left extension to allow me to do a little wiring and improvement.
This was in a show 2 weeks ago!
And now.
Flowering Cotoneaster
I’ve had this Cotoneaster for 19 years and this year sees it going through a few changes in it’s pot, deadwood and also a few design changes with some new growth. More on that later in the year. For now I’m just enjoying the flowers. It flowers from the top down for some reason this this was the optimum time for the photo. Another few days and the ones at the top will be gone.
Sumo Chop Cotoneaster
This Cotoneaster was collected from a garden back in January. It’s going to be a sumo bonsai 🙂 Fat short tree with taper. When it was lifted I left a few longer bits on it with foliage to indicate how the health was progressing after collection. It’s doing very well and has back budded onto the trunk. I have therefore removed the unwanted bits and can now they it grow unchecked this year. A longish term project with plenty of carving required to tidy up the cut ends but it’ll make a reasonable image.
That Pot
The pot that I swapped with Stephen a week ago has now found a new tenant. I really wanted to get a tree into it this year just so I could look at the pot on the benches 🙂 I survey of trees brought me to this root over rock Cotoneaster. It’s current matt brown pot isn’t lifting the tree in any way. I wanted something that would help show off the flowers, berries and amazing Autumn colour. This pot might not be ideal, but it close for me. The size was just slightly larger than the old pot and I was able to lean the tree slightly to the right to make the image more dynamic and bring the heavy root to the left more into play.
This was it in the Autumn, so you can see why I wanted to lift the colour of the pot to compliment the foliage.
and before potting
and after in the new pot at a new angle.
Fix Up
I spent some time yesterday afternoon fixing up the trees damaged in the storm. Not an easy task as I’m suffering from a bad dose of man flu courtesy of Mr Snart who spread it to my household last weekend 😛
I potted the large Scottie into a large plastic training pot, roots not touched at all just transferred and give a little extra space to spend the Winter in. I’ll look for a new pot in the Spring.
My biggest disappointment was when I found out that the deadwood at the base of my Cotoneaster had been damaged in the fall from the bench. There was obviously some rot that had contributed to the damage but a lot of the deadwood I lost had been fine! I removed the bit that had been knocked off, it was just sitting there. I decided to go ahead and repot the tree for a few reasons. I could see wood now that was soft and I wanted to get wood hardener on it. This would be easily done during a repot. I had bought a pot for the tree last weekend and with good after care I felt confident that I could repot now.
Here you can see were the deadwood has now gone 😦
This is the tree removed from the pot and the wood that was rotting has been treated.
As you can clearly see, I now have a few problems to deal with. I cannot pot the tree to the same level as before as the gap at the base will be a major issue. I opted to pot the tree deeper to lower the remaining deadwood to the surface level. I decided to mount the soil slightly to assist with this. This will allow me to give further treatment to the deadwood and once the tree is established in the pot and ready for showing, I can add moss to hide any gaps.
Not ideal but the best I can do for now. I have had this tree since 1995 and it’s one of those memory trees that I like to keep around. It’s been a long road! For the full history of this tree, see this case study.
Wind Damage!!
After a crap night’s sleep on Thursday night listening to a pretty bad storm blattering my bedroom window I awoke and went to work. On my return home I thought I better have a check around the trees.
Not good!!
My big Scot’s Pine took a dive off the bench and travelled a good few feet before hitting the ground smashing the lovely Ian Ballie pot 😦 I also lost a few minor branches which I can live with. This is the tree that I was going to use for my workshop with Ryan Neil in January.
On the way down it took a Japanese Black Pine and a Cotoneaster with it. No broken pots but the Cotoneaster has a partially broken branch that I’ve patched up in the hope that it will recover.
I used some sealer and then a wrap around of self amalgamating tape to keep the wound from drying out.
This other Scottie in training also took a tumble. The wind must have had some serious gusts to shift this one from were it was sitting!! Only in a wash hand basin thank goodness!
Lesson learned!!
That’s Better
This Cotoneaster, also on rock, mustn’t be as tasty as the other one. The berries seem to have survived so far.
So Much For a Show of Berries!
This root over rock Cotoneaster has under gone a few changes this year with the top air-layered off and the process of creating a new apex under way.
I at least thought that I would get the chance to enjoy it’s usual excellent show of berries. No, not this year. I’ve been the victim of a raid! All but two berries have gone and I even found some evidence of the thief being there 😕
The two survivors
Spot the evidence, freshly dropped by the look of it. It’s as well I love wildlife 😆
Bonsai Eejit 