My Greatest challenge ever

[Andrew Legg]

Big brther's watching you . . . . ooooooooo o o o o oooooooooooo

[Webos]

Got the manual, It's going back together tomorrow.. Should be interesting . After that I'll be replacing all of the distributor bits. Learning a lot! Wanna pull my engine apart for me?! Actually, I can do that..you can put it back together.

[alpineart]

Got the manual, It's going back together tomorrow.. Should be interesting . After that I'll be replacing all of the distributor bits. Learning a lot! Wanna pull my engine apart for me?! Actually, I can do that..you can put it back together.

Hi Webos , mate i have 3 water cooled 2 stroke engines apart in the shed still waiting to put them together . I do have a manual , just cant find the time

Cheers Alpine

[alpineart]

Well to top the day off

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i managed to get another monster Juniper potted into a training box

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.Now where did the day go , missed it by that much not enough time to do 2 , tomorrow's another day . Now i seem to have more space in the scoria beds for for new stock

Cheers Alpineart

[alpineart]

Another leisurely day all done and dusted and another big Juniper all boxed up

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.This will most likely be a candidate for a multi shimpaku grafting exercise .Only a couple of big mothers left , just need to find some time to make a box or two .

Cheers Alpineart

[alpineart]

Well i managed to find the time and opportunity to get the rest of these monsters sorted .

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They have shimpaku inarched/grafted Shimpaku

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onto 2 of them

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and inarched the original foliage back onto itself in 16 places

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to keep the sap flowing even though the are back budding

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just thought i would give them a hurry up .The largest blue Juniper Chinensis is still in the ground as i need a 1200mm long pot or box to cater for the root mass and 3 ground layers still attached to the main trunk . All have survived and are growing well , back budding is beginning . Only 1 casualty and that a 1.8-2.1m ground layer but it may begin to back bud over this season . Now these will get a tickle up over the growing season and more grafts will be added from the stock already inarched onto the new hosts .

Yes i will be splitting several trunks down the middle as the are powerful enough to render them huge even when split hence the Shimpaku has been grafted onto the trunks that will be split . A man can change his mind every now and again , crikey i do it all the time . At this stage i should end up with 4 large Shimpaku , 5 large Blue Chinensis and 8 Large green Juniper Chinensis or Sabina's , all from 8 very large collected trunks , then there is another 18 ground layers . I will be layering the tops off some of the extra long trunks as well .

Cheers Alpineart .

[kcpoole]

You are a busy Boy as usual
time for a or 3 yet?

Ken

[Haydenmc]

feel free to ridicule me for lack of knowledge, i dont understand why you have grafted shimpaku in one spot and the original foliage, do you plan to split this monster into loads of smaller trunks? and thus the grafts give you several advance trunks in various flavours - as it were. Was this the plan from the beginning or did you at one stage think you might try and train something massive?

[alpineart]

Hi kc , mate Karen has been a great help this weekend , sorting all the sand trays out and replacing the sand with scoria . Then loading all the pines , junipers , Maples and Cedars back onto the trays . Even managed an undercoat on the reno started 3-4 months ago .

Hi Haydenmc , grafting Shimpaku onto one side of the growing trunk and utilizing the original foliage gives me 2 different junipers . Iplan to split the big trunks down the middle giving 2 150mm x200mm plus single trunks . With the Shimpaku grafted onto several branches/stubs they will fuse and grow eventually becoming totally Shimpaku foliage .If any original foliage appears its simply rubbed off as it sprouts . As the Shimps fuse and grow on they will then be grafted again increasing the amount of Shimpaku foliage until no Chinensis is left .

The shimpaku will produce all the future branches , the original stubs will be carved reducing the chances of the Chinensis overpowering the Shimpaku . Its no good putting 1 graft on a 200mm trunk it will take 10-15 years to develop a decent canopy , so i have multi grafted onto the stubs which are still green but have no foliage . Basically the same as i did with the "JBP's 4 for $40" topic . I created branches where there were none and created older tree's from almost naked trunks . Hope this helps .

Cheers Guys Alpine

[alpineart]

Well after all the work that it took to collect these juniper's only one trunk survived

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. This has powered on and has a layer set which has struck roots and growing well

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. Not too eager to sever it , i will keep it in place for another year. Plenty of back budding on the 350mm base so it will survive to see a Bonsai pot next year .Time to think about a basic design of the layer as it is very congested and in need of some serious thinning out . I have constructed another Phoenix graft from a smaller ground layer collected , it remains in the grow bed , it too will be potted up next year if it survives the contortion it has just undergone .

Cheers Alpineart

[Josh]

That's a real shame only one survived, they were awesome trunks but I guess that's the game we play. Am very interested to see this one progress. I guess the up side is you now have more room to collect some more trees

Josh.

[Webos]

What do you think this one had that the others didn't? More foliage? More feeder roots? Better position?

I've found that they need to keep a lot of foliage to keep pumping energy up through the foliage. I've also found that they hate to be dug then put in a dark spot. They also seem to hate being moved around after they've been dug...

I dug one about this size about 6 months ago and it is now putting on a lot of new growth, but it killed off a lot of its own branches in order to keep life in others..

Good luck with this last one,

Adam

[alpineart]

Hi Josh , mate there will be plenty of phoenix grafts to be done , that's the only upside .This should make for a very nice tree in years to come .

Cheers Alpine .

[alpineart]

Hi Webos , mate the radiant heat was the big issue here , a broken leg the second issue and no help was the third problem . All the material in the wet beds , 19mm - 3/4 black marbel scoria is what they were placed in all survived . The wet beds are 100mm deep and plastic lined , the survivors were under shade cloth or protected from the heat be it radiant or direct .

Most were left to long in the extreme heat that i had to endure , hence they were moved around and some were re-potted adding to the issue . If i was a fit fella at the time i would have thrown out 100 pines just to get these in the scoria beds . Last season i lost 5 trailer loads of material heat was the main problem .

I had an issue a few weeks ago with a big potted juniper , with temps here in the high 30's the temp inside the pot was 45 degrees and it just steams or cooks the root mass . Plenty of things i can blame but i take responsibility for all of them . Next time things will be done differently .

Cheers Alpine

[alpineart]

A new phoenix graft in progress

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These are 3 of the surviving ground layers , over 2 metres long they will be tortured into shape , they could be layered also and used for Phoenix graft/ Tanuki .

Cheers Alpine