Melaleuca Linariifolia - Claret Tops

[alpineart]

Hi MJL , mate I don't really care about scrutiny but it does make for the thinking cap to work outside my square . The pot was another purchase from a club member last month , I should be selling not buying .

Cheers Alpine

[Bougy Fan]

Hi alpine hope you are well. Are you posting due to inclement weather like we are having up here in god's country ? Of course the roughs came from NSW - nothing good ever comes from there I think the composition needs more trees for the size of the pot. Another 2 minimum but another 4 would better

[alpineart]

Hi Bougy ,Wanting some good rain but you buggers are getting the better of us . Mate you want more , give me a break , I haven't finished yet.

I have 2 trunks {large cuttings } wired ,but not trimmed and 5 untrained cuttings to add , but not necessarily all of them , jeez you cant do it all in 1 day ,

I'm not that bloody fit . I cant even lift this now its definately a 2 man lift . I hoped to have it finished before the next episode with the hospital in 10 days ,

I'm trying as hard as I can but have been caught out by the bigger boss several times the wife recon's I'm very trying .

Cheers . Alpine

[alpineart]

See I'm not yanking your chain ,

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I want to make up another tray landscape .

Cheers . Alps

[Matthew]

It better rain tuesday and Wednesday otherwise me and the man upstairs might be having a few words. Farming wise i got proberly 10 days of good rain has to come or the years a ride off.

[MJL]

Alpine and Matthew - you blokes are in a different league. Trees, Bonsai and pre-Bonsai bl@@dy everywhere. Makes my little sticks look like .... well .... little sticks!

Anyway - on a serious note:

Matthew - I hope rain comes to your farm and plenty of it.

Alpine - I am not sure what’s taking you to hospital (probably a hernia lifting all your big stock!) but whatever it is - all the best.


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[Matthew]

Alpine and Matthew - you blokes are in a different league. Trees, Bonsai and pre-Bonsai bl@@dy everywhere. Makes my little sticks look like .... well .... little sticks!

Anyway - on a serious note:

Matthew - I hope rain comes to your farm and plenty of it.

Alpine - I am not sure what’s taking you to hospital (probably a hernia lifting all your big stock!) but whatever it is - all the best.


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Cheers
Im watering every bloody day atm and it isent necessary hpt too just damn dry and trees in full growth. Lets hope the auto watering systems are in gear because im in the czech republic atm

[alpineart]

Hi Matthew , good rains are forecast for a couple of days anyway .We certainly need it .

Hi MJL , half a life time of playing with tree's and plants adds up to a lot of stock when your a bit reluctant to sell them . I keep telling my wife there all unique so that allows me to hang onto them .

Plenty here started as sticks , cuttings , tube stock of collected seedlings hence the reason I hang onto them .

I'm praying for a good result from the medics , but sooner or later things will take a turn for the worse and major surgery will be required trying to hold off til' next year .

I hack and chop tree's , so a surgeon should take a bit more care .

Cheers , Alpine

[boom64]

Hi Alpine,
Nice batch of trees coming on there. Looks like your nailing these natives. Could you give us a bit of a rundown on your methods for taking Native cuttings ,time ,mix etc. I love my collected material but most are starting to get to big ,better start thinking about the back..... Best of luck with the Medical Professions.
Cheers John.

[alpineart]

Hi Boom64 , mate no Eddie here with natives , i trimmed these in early summer and basically pushed the cuttings into washed sand after dipping in honey and sat in a water tray in a green house/hot house and maintained humidity . A plastic storage tub from a $2 shop works a treat just leave it under a tree and open 1 end so the heat doesn't build up and cook them during the day , close it at night .

At a guess there was a 50% strike rate from the claret tops , healed cutting worked better than cut cutting .

I took cutting from 2 -8mm from various sections of the trunks pulling the branches off at the forks and trimming the excess bark from the heal .

The original tree's were tube stock sticks wired from time of purchase , some of these cutting were wired from the time I took them to give the movement represented in the 2 bigger cutting grown plants , they were 8mm cuttings .

Still killing a few natives , lost 3 good specimens over the last couple of weeks , just take it in my stride and learn from it .

Cheers . Alpine

[boom64]

Thanks Alpine ,appreciate the info. Cheers John.

[BB Brian]

GREAT THREAD! appreciate all the info.

[Ryceman3]

See I'm not yanking your chain ,

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Hi Alpine, I'm looking forward to seeing what you produce with these trees ... that is an embarassment of riches! So many options, awesome!

[treeman]

I decided to combine all the tree's together in 1 planting with plenty of room to grow

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. These will recover for a while and then rewired for another season .

Cheers . Alpineart

If I can make a point - and of course you can ignore it - I see this kind of tree placement a lot and I feel the need ( ) to say that placing one tree here one there and one over there kind of approach leads to a composition with little resonance and lacking the power to draw you to it. What the hell am I talking about!? All objects have a kind of - lets call it power or gravity. When you bring two objects closer together, there comes a point where their individual gravity is combined. Not so much literally but visually. Therefore by bringing two trees closer together, they now have more resonance which naturally draws the eye. On the other hand placing the object at roughly equal distances they are now competing and not complementing each other. There is no focal point. In my opinion, if you want to create an open type landscape it may be more successful if the tree placement was more in line with this theory. To do that, the traditional approach is to place two trees (one thicker and taller than the other) very close together and one further apart from them so we end up with a scalene triangle kind of arrangement and this will then form the basis for any addition to the composition. The placement of the third (second largest tree) is governed by the size and closeness of the largest and smallest tree. (mother and child if you like)
Creating a good three-tree combination is more difficult than either two or five or more.

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[MJL]

Howdy,

See below - sourced from Penjing: The Chinese Art of Bonsai

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I don’t know if that helps - but it has guided me in the past.


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