new bougy.

[Mbunro]

heres a bougy i just picked up for 110 on gumtree,
not huge taper but plenty of movement. roughly 1 metre from ground to top of canopy.
hoping to get a number of trees out of this over the next couple of years

going to move into a styro grow box this afternoon and try see exactly what im dealing with.

[Mbunro]

quick virt of 1 tree i can maybe see coming out of this

probably very premature and will likely not be possible once i get in there but what the heck.

[melbrackstone]

looks like a beauty, well done!

[Homer911]

Great find. Its got some nice movement. Keep us posted.

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[Mbunro]

thanks mel and homer.
quite smug with myself ha. most expensive bit of stock ive bought so far so fingers crossed i dont kill it.


ive heard old wood cuttings grow just about as often as air layers on these so going to pot a few up this afternoon also and see how they go.

[Daluke]

Hey. Good pick up. You have lots of options. Was it grown for bonsai?

[Mbunro]

nah apparently it has just been a veranda plant for the last 20 years.
but he said he had been thinking about bonsaing it for the last few years but never got around to learning how.

[Daluke]

One man's loss is another man's gain

[Mbunro]

took it out of its pot and its extremely root bound and had a fat tap root (at least i think its the tap root, pictured below), so i sprayed it with the hose for 10 minutes and had a go at breaking the roots up a little bit.
i wasn't really getting anywhere so i sawed off the bottom third of the roots, and took a little bit off the edges so that it would fit in the box.
Soil mix was,1 part crushed gravel, 1 part propagating sand, and 1 part organic general purpose potting mix. (didnt mix quite enough so used the last part of a bag of osmocote bonsai soil mix to fill in a few gaps also)
going to take a heap of cuttings tomorrow and then just let it get used to its new box and have another crack at getting down to the base and tackling the tap root when im a bit more confident.

if ive done anything wrong or you have any other suggestions, please let me know

[melbrackstone]

Try and keep it in as warm a spot as possible, and cut off a fair bit of the foliage to help the roots recover without having to feed all those leaves.

[kvan64]

It is not fair to advise which big branch to cut as we have not seen all angles. The only recommendation I have for now is to split them in to two plants and cut all the small branches short to create more compact foliage. It's getting warmer now so is the best time to do rootwork as well.
DK

[Mbunro]

thanks kvan,

i ended up halving the foliage by about half last night, there is not much growth anywhere near the trunks so didn't want to take too much off.
as for splitting the trunks, i dont have a chainsaw at the moment so that will have to wait for a couple of weeks until i can borrow one. Also i want to wait for the roots to loosen up a bit so i can have a proper look at the base to work out the best angle to do the cut.

if i can find someone to help me move it later, i mite post some photos of more angles, now that the foliage is thinned out a bit.

[Mbunro]

made some cuts on the right trunk today.
hopefully i made the right decisions.

[Mbunro]

went searching for a nebari and instead i found a hole.
was going to saw between the trunks but now i have no idea what to do.

[kvan64]

Hi. I would still spit it or at least chop one trunk low.