Mar 31 2011

Recovering from dog attack!

Last September my dog Smudge took a fancy to the apples on this Malus. He waited for them to ripen first of course 🙂

Here it is before he munched them.

and after…

and the guilty looking culprit.

This is the tree today. A few of the more mauled branches didn’t have any tip buds to open. I have been watching it for signs of new buds and today I founds loads. It looks as if it will back bud strongly, perhaps Smudge did me a favour 🙂

The back budding. Looks like a little pair of but cheeks at the bottom 🙂

and some of the flower buds. I was going to remove them but to be honest the tree is responding that strongly, I don’t think I’ll bother for now. I might remove the fruit if that changes.

Mar 29 2011

GAWA

That’s Green and White Army in case you are wondering. I took a half day today as I’m going to the Northern Ireland v Slovenia Euro qualifier tonight.

Got the grass cut first and then had time to take a few photos of a few trees opening quite strongly after repotting. First up is Janet’s Juniper. It’s not Janet’s, it’s mine 🙂 I dug it up from my sisters garden 17 years ago just before she emigrated to Perth in Australia. What was once 4 foot tall and 8 foot wide now looks like this.

This maple that I bought as a rescue job last year is responding really well to repotting. Just have to figure out where to go with it!

My little Chuhin Maple is really pushing this week as well.

with Flash!

My Cork Bark Elm is moving faster than the others in the garden too. I just love it’s new (well secondhand) Walsall pot.

I noticed on the Cork bark that some of the wounds need attention to get them to heal right. The one below is sitting a tad proud and will need carved in a little to allow the cambium layer to roll over without causing an ugly bump.

The one below is healing well but the wood at the bottom needs to be reduced to allow it to roll in.

This one is spot on. You can see it’s rolling in evenly the whole way around the wound. Hopefully covered within the year the way this boyo is growing.

I’ll add the Roddie just to keep up the progression of opening flowers.

Mar 23 2011

Bonsai School Videos

I spent most of yesterday watching through footage recorded at our clubs recent Bonsai School with Willowbog Bonsai. It was hard to do any real editing as Peter was in full flow and, to cut out little segments here and there, would have made a mess of the whole thing. Therefore, I have put together 4 videos showing extracts of Peters talk and demo. I have added the first two here for you to view. The other ones will be added later in the week. I haven’t even looked at the footage from the workshop yet!!

Mar 21 2011

Opening old wounds, in a good way…

This is a Shohin Japanese Maple I’ve been working on for a few years. It has a few major pruning wounds were the height of the tree was reduced. These wounds are healing well but every year I help it heal a little faster. I open the wound around the edge and re-seal it. This forces the tree to produce more callous that it normally would in the year. I have carried out this technique for years on Maples and other deciduous trees with great success.

This is the same tree back in October.

and today.

The wounds in question

This is the wound after the edge has been opened. You can do this with a sharp blade or as I do for speed, a dremel. Care needs to be taken to just open it and no more. No point removing a years worth of callous with a dremel!

I then seal the wound again with cut paste.

To finish off a add a thin layer of PVA glue over the paste. This makes a better seal and helps deter the slugs. I know a few people who add slug pellets into the paste to stop them eating it.

If you keep an eye on the paste it’s easy to tell when new callous is growing underneath. You’ll see a crack appearing around the edge like in this photo below taken from a different maple.