AusBonsai

Never realised just how fast these things can grow if your not looking......and of course I wasn't. Can't find my copy of 'Bonsai With Australian Native Plant's' right now so I come cap in hand seeking answers.

Got this as a 100mm tall starter from the big green shed in November. Four months later it's a 500mm tall tear-away. I just have no idea how to handle it.

I have pinched out the tips a couple of times, otherwise it would probably be much bigger by now. Should I be much more severe in cutting back/tip pruning, should I defoliate, should I burn????? Or perhaps let it go a bit for now to thicken up the base? Can't seem to find a good guide for these things. I really have no idea with natives, my callistemon etc are all just seedlings I'm growing to learn on. So any tips, hints & ideas would be muchly appreciated. TIA!

Note to self: DON'T MISS THE NEXT SYMPOSIUM!

Cheers

A few pics - it is currently in a 300mm pot:

Pinching is a waste of time for this baby, your just slowing it down.It needs to grow... Chuck it in the ground and wait.. Sorry to be a downer

Goff wrote:Pinching is a waste of time for this baby, your just slowing it down.It needs to grow... Chuck it in the ground and wait.. Sorry to be a downer

Problem is I don't have the ground to put it in, I have a balcony....

Probably the best I could do is get the pot off my balcony somewhere, don't know anyone who would let me put it in the ground for a couple of years.

Cheers

I agree. This baby looks like it's just been taken from it's mother.
Just keep feeding it in a largish pot for a good while.

I would consider some wire for a bend or two while you can.
I'd also suggest that you leave all 3 trunks in place to help thicken the base.

You could perhaps only wire one or even two if you want a twin trunk.
I would think it unlikely that you would use all 3?

The rest of advise is good.
Let it continue to bulk up. In the absence of ground I'd say that your pot isn't too bad.
Looks pretty big to me.

Have you repotted it? The last time I repotted an angophora costata it started to shoot and grow into action. You can repot it now, as the weather is not too hot, but do it asap if you are going to. They usually respond quite well to being cut back hard. Unless you are in a rush to thicken the trunk, you can cut back hard after repotting and promote some new growth down low. Personally I believe Angophora Bakeri make better bonsai, but costata has such nice leaves. They both respond quite well to Osmocote Native Fertilizer as well.

Boics wrote:I would consider some wire for a bend or two while you can.
I'd also suggest that you leave all 3 trunks in place to help thicken the base.

Won't wire it for now, if I'm leaving it at someone else's place I might forget to remove it soon enough. What I will do instead is put a few stakes in & tie it off to help with movement. Probably end up as a single trunk but will work on all 3 for now to see which develops later.

bonsaibuddyman wrote:Have you repotted it? The last time I repotted an angophora costata it started to shoot and grow into action. You can repot it now, as the weather is not too hot, but do it asap if you are going to. They usually respond quite well to being cut back hard. Unless you are in a rush to thicken the trunk, you can cut back hard after repotting and promote some new growth down low. Personally I believe Angophora Bakeri make better bonsai, but costata has such nice leaves. They both respond quite well to Osmocote Native Fertilizer as well.

This was supposed to be a slow & steady, a learning process. I wasn't expecting the fast growth - it's already bigger than anything else I have! So time isn't really an issue, size is.

Been having problems with curl grubs lately so was going to pull it & check anyway - it should be fine (50/50 coir/perlite mix in this) but want to be sure. Been using Osmocote Total All Purpose + Trace Elements lately (12 month, N/P/K about 21/0.5/4, though the info on the website is different to the container), should I change? Scott's actually recommend this for a number of natives, including gums, lillypillies, callistemons and melaleucas.

Found my Koreshoff book & it suggest a high nitrogen fert is good. They also suggest removing ALL leaves when re-potting, but is this really needed?

In the book they wrote:Transplants with reasonable safety, if ALL the leaves are removed either by cutting or singeing over a fire.

Might need to pull out the blow torch.

Thanks for all the input guys, really appreciated.

Cheers

No you do not need to remove the leaves when repotting. Whilst the Koroshoff book is a good introduction to working with natives i am sure that Dot would agree it is somewhat dated now. They were indeed great pioneers of using natives but a large amount of research has been done since inspired by their pioneering work.

The difficulty with any of the gum trees (all genera) is that they struggle after repotting until new roots establish. This can be overcome by simply keeping the soil wet for about 3 weeks after repotting. After that normal watering is all that is resumed.

They certainly do appreciate occasional feeding with a high nitrogen fertiliser.

By the way the tree in my signature picture is an Angophora trained as a bonsai over nearly 30 years.

Dennis Mc

Like others have said it needs to grow. I wouldn't be trimming it at all but allowing it to grow.

When talking about size of your bonsai you should be more concerned with the girth of your trunk that how tall a sapling is. A 500mm tall tree with a 100mm wide trunk is a very different thing to a 1.5m tall sapling with a trunk only 20mm across. The first would be the start of a bonsai, the second still in need of unhindered growth to get more girth before a chop back.

Am in much the same situation mate.

I just repotted my gums last weekend, into some slightly larger pots (a little bigger then the one you have), gave the roots a bit of a trim in the process (nothing too drastic), and also gave it them a basic wiring. Didn't remove any leaves, or burn or anything like that, and they're still kicking along nicely. They are only a little bigger then yours, my 'projects for the future'

If you were to burn it, it'd probably just send up a whole mass of shoots from the lignotuber (I think these have them?) and kill off the trunks that were burned. As I say though, I'm still learning so can be wrong

What's the fascination with burning natives that I've read about so many times on this forum? Don't we torture our trees enough?

Waltron wrote:What's the fascination with burning natives that I've read about so many times on this forum? Don't we torture our trees enough?

It's based on the idea of imitating nature & simulating a fire passing through which in turn stimulates new growth. Never actually done it as I'm only just getting natives other than figs.

Cheers

Ok Draco, short run-down on tactics:

FIRST: BUILD A TRUNK FIRST! - grow long, cut back once a year. Metres long. Seriously. Cut back hard, plant at a different angle, do the same for five or ten years. You do not get a thick interesting trunk by keeping something small, constantly small. Ever.

SECOND: develop branches. Any time you cut back the trunk, rub of most of the buds, only leave a couple - they grow longer, get thicker. Wire if you must, but don't even think of horizontal pine-type branches - gums don't grow like that.

THIRD: MUCH later - when you have a solid, interesting trunk, and some interesting branches, then start pinching to increase ramification at their ends. Last stage, not first.

Also, many growers repot in hot weather. Some find the trees sulk if you repot in autumn. Might be different down the coast.

If you search "FlyBri" as author, there are some very interesting progression series to show you how things work.

Sorry about the sermon, but it will save you years in the long run. I wish this site had been around thirty years ago…

Best of luck. Dennis's Ang. floribunda is impressive in the bark, as is Ted's Angophora costata at the NBPCA. Get to see it if you can, and look at it from the back,where you will see all the scars from the grow long/cut back process. Damn fine tree.

Gavin

Regarding fire, young saplings in a fire will most certainly die. Older trees with thicker bark can protect the live tissues beneath when a fire burns through. The fire stimulates epicormic buds that develop along the trunk as a tree matures which in turn transform the tree into a mass of foliage that some then develop into future branches as others die off. To use this as a technique on a young sapling would seem rather pointless. They will not have developed epicormic buds, nor enough thickness in their bark to protect them. As said above, it may just shoot from the lignotuber which is the response of some natives when fire destroys the tops.

Burning has been used by some to harden wood after carving and I have heard of it used to rejunevinate some plants such as grasses and even maidenhair ferns. But as Gavin has said, if you want a good tree, commit yourself to at least 10 years of development before you need to worry about pinching.

Thanks for that Gavin I don't want to hijack... but quick question... how often would you repot if growing in a container like Draco's?