It a first for me to win something, but at the Willowbog School our club had a prize draw and I won this little Scots Pine in a delightful Ian Baillie pot. Long term for the tree but a nice little bit of material.
Que the comments, Fix! Fix!
Edit: It was pointed out that it was remiss of me not to mention that the tree was donated to the club by none other than Peter Snart of
A very kind and generous gift from Peter indeed.
A great video I watched over on the Capital Bonsai Blog with Ryan Neil talking about pines. A very interesting approach and an easy explaination about why you do it this way or that. Well, not that easy, I had to watch it twice 🙂 It never does any harm to refresh the memory.
I decided yesterday to do a little shuffling of trees that had been collected in the Spring. Well, when I say me, I mean my two sons working under my direction.
Most where still in poly tunnels and I wanted to get them out to harden off a bit. The foliage as you can see here shows that most have responded well after collecting. There was a mixture of Scots Pine, Spruce and Larch.
I’m running rather low on space!! Had to add a few temporary benches to facilitate them.
All squeezed in! With trees visiting on holiday care it’s a tight fit!
I had the pleasure of judging the bonsai entries at the Rose Show in Belfast yesterday. I small local flower show held as part of the bigger Rose Week event at Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park.
The bonsai aspect was small, our club supports the Rose Society by always getting a few entries in to fill the space and add interest for the public. As far as bonsai go, it’s not what we aspire too in our own displays with the usual low tables and cramped space. For that reason and the poor photos that resulted from inside a marquee, I’ll not bombard you with poor quality photos. I will however share some photos taken from within the park itself showing both the roses and some nice trees.
First, photos from inside the flower show marquee during judging. The rest from within the park Rose Gardens and Japanese Garden. When I show the Rose name it’s because is a highly perfumes variety that my wife is determined to add to our garden.
We had a bit of a photo session the other week. Hugh can down to my garage with a better camera and some lighting. The plan was to photograph some trees with a view to submitting them for selection in the Best of British Exhibition next year. You never know a few might be selected but we had good fun anyway taking the shots.
These are some of the trees we shot. Some mine, some Josh’s, some Phil’s and some Stephen’s. Bar the shohin, all show front and back.
I spotted this clump of Pine Sawfly Larvae on one of my recently collected Scots Pines yesterday. I had planned to spray everything this weekend but this encouraged me to spray everything in the garden there and then.
I’m taking no chances from now on after losing the apex of one of my best trees due to an insect attack this year!
It’s hard to beat a mature Scots Pine.
Great spot for a birds nest too 🙂
I managed to take a few video clips during our bog hopping exploits last week. I’ve thrown them together for my pleasure and hopefully yours 🙂
Yesterday saw us potting up the remaining Scots Pine and getting them into the poly tunnels. As usual I had the camera in hand. Some would say that this is a cunning ploy for me to avoid the heavy lifting, that is not the case but is a rather handy bonus 🙂
Phil considering binning this one!!
Phew, he’s only removing some of the grass from the root ball.
We managed to find a few interesting heathers as well.
and some rather nice lichen with red flowering trumpets.
The watering area before placing into the tunnels
Smudge doesn’t care about the Pines’ ‘Just throw the Ball Phil!!’
More watering
Important to keep watering until the water runs clear. The grit is dusty and all the fine particles need to be washed out of the bottom.
The Old Tunnel
and the new tunnel
the rest went to Phil’s place to go on his heat bed for a month or so. These were the trees with poorer root systems.
This was our last collecting trip this Spring. If all goes well we are looking at further collecting in the Autumn.
Here some photos from our collecting trip today, well, actually it’s now yesterday. To knackered to type much about it. I’ll let the photos do the talking were I can.
You can see that these Scots Pines have been lifted from a bog. They are self seeded and when asking for permission to collect the farmer told me that they are all scheduled for destruction as they shouldn’t be there. We are happy to try and save them 🙂
First one of the day.
All trees are bagged and taped up to stop the roots drying out.
Nice bark on some if not all of the trees collected.
Trees rooted into the top 6 inches of sphagnum moss, no roots go any deeper. Trees can be dug out in a few minutes.
I wasn’t the only one snapping away.
A large but nice multi trunk.
Clipping out some dead bits.
Easy to dig out.
Bagged and taped up.
Phil, the heavy lifter 🙂
Stephen opts for a tiny one.
and another small one for Stephen, see the pattern here 🙂
We decided to leave this one!!
Scattered everywhere!
Too big for today but cut back for future lifting.
Literati?
Another tall one but as it was closer to the car it came with us.
Lots of fine white tips to the roots.
Phil wondering why these new gloves don’t work very well. Finished lifting time to head home.
Back in the driveway.
Grit ready and waiting.
Pines in for the potting up session tomorrow, now today!
Phil doing more heavy lifting.
We managed to get the two biggest ones potted up before we finished for today.
More later, off to bed! zzzzzz…..
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