Alpineart's Blog

This type of landscape / mountain scape came about last year after collecting a smaller olive . I flat cut the base and disposed of it in the compost heap . It sprouted numerous shoot however is was not a good sized piece worthy of the work involved . This butt has huge character and will with a lot of work hopefully become a very nice living mountain . With 2 natural hollows that will become lakes and possibly even a waterfall could be added with the  aid of a mini solar pump . I re-washed the roots and carved off the excessively log roots back to stubs removing about 10-15 kg of weight . A quick tidy up of the bottom flat cut and its off to the scoria bed to grow on to become Mt Alpineart . I have no doubt it will sprout shoot hopefully the will grow in desirable positions to become a mountain forest or hillside scape representing the natural area’s olives grow . The old bark will add character to the rugged hills and no doubt moss will be added along with a few mame coniferous trunks as well .

Cheers Alpineart

These were spotted in the front yard of a subdivided block here in town . A small excavator had done the hard work and removed them , all i had to do was chose a few good trunks load them up and bring them home . Not as easy as it sounds , they look small from the roadside until i took a closer look . A mix  of Olives , Citris , Oleanders which i decided to leave behind , Crepe Myrtle , Callistermon and a couple of others were available . I will positively identify them after leaf out Due to the size of the trunks i need some serious help to load these up into the ute .The 2 big olive are estimated at around 300-400kg , no hope for a few blokes to lift these , so a trolley and ramps were used to move and slide them into the vehicle . The big trunk was a real struggle , many thanks to a passer by who saw the delema and stopped to offer another pound or two to get it into the back of the ute . With 2 loads safely home i washed the soil off  the olives in preparation for splitting 1 down and flat cutting the bases . While this lightened the load the are still too big for 1 man to lift . Idecided to split this one into 2 smaller bases The bases were cut  down to 300mm x 400mm and 500mm x 400mm and 600mm x 600mm mm when flat cut , . Now with 3 large olives to play with in the future these will simple go into a scoria bed to allow them to grow the new roots required . The other trunks will get a quick work over and be potted into plastic pots to recover from the removal . All in all a very rewarding day , wont have to worry about fattening them trunks just need some foliage .

Cheers Alpineart

This is one of 2 large Spruce purchased from Melbourne .I decided to set air layers using the open pot method that is always used here as the results are far better than sealed wrapped methods i have employed in the past . It much quicker to set and to maintain an open pot as watering is simply dome when the host required watering , simple squirt with a hose . These were layered in February 2011 and maintained during that period . The smaller trunk had an infestation of curl grubs and unfortunately never recovered with new root growth , I do believe if it was left on for another season it would have in my mind sprouted new roots as the callous was very healthy . I severed this layer off and removed the custom fitted pot from the trunk to reveal the excellent root mass produced using a grow medium of soft red scoria and pin bark at 80%-20% ration . This is a blend somewhat similar to my own bonsai mix . I do vary the ratio slightly for different species from Deciduous to Conifers . After removing and combing the roots out a simple trim of the roots and the removal of 7 branches the new trainer is then potted into a large shallow bonsai pot . This could have been removed from the base in Autunm as the root ball was well developed . I have place a coated wire over the upper whorls and around the pot to stabilize the tree to prevent the wind from toppling it over . With so much thick foliage it would be like a wind sail and definitely be blown over . For now i can sit back on this one and concentrate on the base which is basically ready for it first major wiring and shaping. The original trunks has had a major cut back of the root mass using a handsaw the raked out to selectively trim the roots . It was trimmed when the layer was set . The second trunk needs a good work over also . Cheers Alpineart