AusBonsai

Very nice! Thanks for sharing

Hi Steve,
They all look great! What has been putting me off trying a Casuarina is the length of the "needles". I would like to try a Casuarina because they do very well here in Qld. How did you get the "needles" to reduce to that short length?
Cheers, Frank.

no idea wrote:cheers Steven...it's interesting that fert is still at full strenght considering the small pot....thx mate

The urban myth of reducing fert in a small pot. full strength all the time

Ken

cheers Ken

Fantastic! Love the casuarina

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Morning all,

Here are some of the little tree's I worked on last night:
I purchased these Pyracantha from Tien at the AusBonsai Market last Sunday.
This next one is a cutting I started in 2010 using the techniques from the thread [Tutorial] How to Develop Dynamic Figs Quickly
Regards,
Steven

stunning trees Steven, would love to know how you get the jade to be so full of foliage.
im struggling to get mine how i want them

Awesome shohin collection you have Steven, like what you've done with the pyracantha all these bonsai and the ones you had at the market day, show your skill and dedication in the hobby. Cheers to you

pebble wrote:would love to know how you get the jade to be so full of foliage.

Hi Pebble,
I just regularly trim it to shape and/or back to 2 leaves on each twig.
Regards,
Steven

Raging Bull wrote:Hi Steve,
They all look great! What has been putting me off trying a Casuarina is the length of the "needles". I would like to try a Casuarina because they do very well here in Qld. How did you get the "needles" to reduce to that short length?
Cheers, Frank.

Hi Raging Bull

Casuarina don't have needles. Pines have needles. Pines are a Gymnosperm (means naked seed and they don't have flowers, but cones). Casuarina are Angiosperms (means enclosed seeds and they are all the flowering plants). The division between Gymnosperms and Angiosperms is very ancient, and they have many distinguishing characteristics. Although Casuarina can look superficially like pines with needles, and their seed pods look like cones, the leaves are not needles and the seed aren't in a cone, but a hard dry fruit.The "needles" you refer to are actually branches and the little rings around them are where the leaves are. The leaves are minute and the branchlets that are green do the majority of the photosynthesising. I have observed pines and Casuarina's growing together in the median strip of the M1 around the Gosford exit, and I am awed by their similarity in appearance at certain times of the year. One of natures beautiful things, that 2 very distinct plants can form strategies of survival that bring their appearance so close together.

If you twist and pull above the ring where you want the branch to end, you will break the branchlet at that point and end up with a shorter branch. These points are called nodes and represents the distance between leaves as can be seen more easily on trees with larger leaves. (Not that it would be hard to have a leaf larger than a Casuarina's). The space in between is known as the internode. New branches will only form where there is a node, i.e. where a leaf is, or used to be. You can also cut to the shape you want, but you will get brown tips where the branches die back to the nearest node. (The same as any tree)

Hope this helps.

Sorry I missed this questions earlier Raging Bull. Dansai has done a brilliant job answering it and a very concise way.

I used to pinch/pluck all my Casuarina but I've gotten lazy and now I just cut. If you are going to put one on show then just freshly trim it to remove all brown tips.

When cutting branches to change direction (clip and grow) it's important not to rely on one branch (needle looking branch) as not all branches will grow secondary branches. Hope that makes sense.

Regards,
Steven

Steven.... i've stuffed up....i wired a Lepto (my first attempt at wiring) in late winter..and forgot where i placed it at the nursery i volunteer at...found it with the wire (2mm) nearly healed over is it a goner ya reckon or she'll be right in a year ?

Here are some of the tree's I worked on last night.

First is a Lilly PillY 'Tiny Trev' that I've been growing from tube stock since 2009. It has been trunk chopped twice with the last one being done 15 months ago. Here is how it looked prior to the last chop:
And following is it today. I repotted it about 2 weeks ago into this wood fired pot by Boris Lomov. It will eventually be in a much smaller pot. The branches on the right weren't trimmed as they need to thicken. Next stage is wiring all the branches.
Another Casuarina in a Penny Davis pot. It's approximately 3 years from a small sapling plucked from the side of a river.
The following Nerifolia was a cutting I struck in September 2012. It spent 3 years in a training pot and has been in a small bonsai pot for the last 2 years. The current pot is an old Japanese one I picked up from under one of the benches in Junichiro Tanaka's nursery Aichi-en in Nagoya, Japan.
Regards,
Steven

These are all great trees Steven. My question relates to the pyracanthas. How did you manage to get them so bent. I've been trying to do the same with some that germinated here but every time I put more than a gentle bend in they snap A few have survived the breakage but will have swollen scars on the trunks where they healed up.

G'day Neil,

No special techniques except I don't water them on the day that I want to bend them. I wire them up then bend, wait an hour then bend them some more.

Regards,
Steven