Ginkgo "The Big Kahuna'

[TimS]

Dropping past one of the nurseries near me on a quest to restock my mix reserves ahead of repotting season almost lead to me missing this tree. I was determined to be in and out as quickly as possible, and had loaded up the trolley and was walking out before i decided to take a quick turn to see if there was anything interesting in as i hadn't been for quite a while. Occasionally, between the masses of $2 starters they get the odd rough bit of material in and it's worth keeping an eye out though often it is overpriced.

Well i spotted the yellow ginkgo leaves shoved to the back corner of a bench, and proceeded to investigate. What i found was a hulking great Ginkgo stump. Clearly field grown, it has a very even flare all the way around the, frankly enormous, base. Moving up there are some very rough cuts where the old trunks had been cut down over the years, and then a profusion of new shoots coming from a good 6 inches below where those trunks had been cut. Expecting to see a price of such exorbitance as to make me scoff, i found it not so much reasonable as a veritable steal for such a big Ginkgo stump, the likes of which make my 23+ year old "Ginkgo Comes Home' thread tree look like a McDonalds straw next to it.

I actually went away that day, but took an horrifically blurry photo before leaving, and forwarded that photo to Mark (MJL) for his thoughts. I imagine they were along the lines of "How the hell am i supposed to advise anything from a photo of such poor quality that looks like it could be submitted as evidence of the Loch Ness Monster?" fortunately he is used to unsolicited messages from me re-bonsai and gave me some good advice about proceeding forward.

Well it was on my mind all day, so i hurried out of work this afternoon, and on the drive home i ducked back in again and snared it. Maybe the whole social distancing thing has got into my head, and the thought of many a long winter night indoors clouded my judgement, but a new project involving the prospect of a wintery embarkation on a free form carving odyssey seemed to be just the ticket.

Slightly less ass-biscuits photos than the inital one i sent to Mark. At the moment it really is just a stump thats more choppy than a lamb buffet aboard a 20ft yacht in the Southern Ocean, but with some carving and some years i plan this to really take on some aged appearance and become something a bit special. It will be drastically cut down in winter and a new tree started again from the stump.

The Big Kahuna

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My hand barely fitting halfway around the base

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[juan73870]

Man, that is a wild score! I dream of coming across such beasts while trawling nurseries often. Pretty much a jackpot moment, I would think. Well done!

[Watto]

OK, I'm officially jealous. Great find/score.

[MJL]

Hey Tim,

Cheers for the thread and the reference. I am stoked that you moved forward with the purchase. Yes ...for the age and potential in the tree tree but mostly because of how much you love these trees. Knowing how you are finding your groove and narrowing your focus to species you love - picking up this tree will provide you years and years of joy. Well played mate.

Tim (and other regulars on this forum) know that I am no expert in bonsai but when you get to know people and what floats their boat - its a bit easier to help or direct people to sources who may have what they want. It's cool to be involved - to bounce ideas around. Indeed, Tim and others have reciprocated such advice for me too. All good.
I'll enjoy watching what happens to Big Kohuna.

[KIRKY]

Fantastic find Tim , you must be itching to start Don’t forget to include us in your travels with this grand stump.
Cheers
Kirky

[greg27]

Awesome find, nothing like a big old stump. Please keep this thread updated, I'd love to see how you tackle this bad boy.

[TimS]

Thanks for the comments all, I’m chuffed to bits to find this tree for the price. It’s a lot of carving ahead of me, but having watched how fast my other Ginkgo stump has progressed and how prolifically Ginkgo will bud on bare wood when put in a grow box, I’m hopeful I can get this on a good heading in a handful of years.

Again big thanks to Mark for giving me the time and sound advice to act on my instincts. There will be plenty of follow up posts especially with the carving. I will take it slow and maybe have a few goes at doing it so I don’t go too far too quickly.

Speaking to the head bonsai guy at the nursery, it sounds like the growers who was doing these ground grown Ginkgo is stopping and was clearing out what he had so it’s unlikely that more will be coming down the pipelines unless someone else wants to put decades into growing trees to get a couple of dollars per year invested back.

I feel like I have found what I have been waiting for with this tree, especially given how slow they are to thicken.

[TimS]

Man, that is a wild score! I dream of coming across such beasts while trawling nurseries often. Pretty much a jackpot moment, I would think. Well done!

They are out there as you see, but few and very far between. I’ve seen Ginkgo stumps for sale at this nursery before but never anything like this. It’s a right place right time scenario for finding the big stumps at cheap or even reasonable prices. So often you can find a big stump but it’s the price of a show quality shohin. To me that makes no sense. I’d rather the refined tree for the money.

I saw a big Japanese Maple stump at another nursery for north of $600 and it had scars of such enormous magnitude they will never look good even if they did heal over. They were so high up the trunk that carving would have meant pretty much carving an entire side of the tree away.

It’s hard at most retail nurseries (not bonsai ones) because they are almost always buying identical mass produced pots of plants, the turnover is so fast that nothing stays around long enough to get any age except for the established trees, and anything that doesn’t sell gets chucked out. Still every now and then you can find something special. Bonsai nurseries seems more about being discerning in purchase I find, lots of the stock looks appealing but maybe only a little of it is really worth investing in.

[TimS]

I gave this bad boy a cut back to day so i could get in and have a better look at it.

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Some better photos of the base. The width at the very base is a little over 20cm across.

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I've included two photos of potential cut points for consideration and the input of the forum.

The first is higher up and would give me the lower arching branch to the left to develop the old mature ginkgo weeping branch look from. The obvious downside to this is the very thick, dead straight, taper-less trunkline that would be front and centre of view. Possibly not the end of the world as i do have some significant growth on the opposide side of the stump (under my arm in the photo below) that extends upwards about 1/3 to 1/2 the height of that main trunk line to kind of off-set it, but it would likely always be the thing you see first being such an obvious straight section.

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The second is obviously right above that lower weeping branch, and wire it up to use that branch as the new trunk line. This would allow for better taper to be grown in, but will magnify the size of that base enormously. Not the end of the world as i'm probably 2 decades away from this actually being able to be considered bonsai. I would have to balance the thicknesses between it and the growth on the other side of the tree mentioned above, which is significantly thicker than this branch is.

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Here is a better photo of that natural weeping look that is occurring on quite a few of the branches around the stump

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I'd like to hear people thoughts and takes on it, beyond simply it is a stump and will be fore the foreseeable future

[greg27]

Ditch the straight IMO. For me, if I didn't get rid of it now it would constantly bug me and I'd end up getting rid of it further down the track anyway I reckon.

[Pearcy001]

Imo you need to put it back in the ground to try and rectify that taper issue. I know it's nice to have an instant bonsai, but I just don't think that can be achieved with material as raw as this so quickly. This is a long term project and I can't see any amount of carving being enough to rectify the difference in taper, without removing the majority of the trunk width - which I believe is the reason you purchased it? Just my opinion and food for thought.

If you don't want to take the long road, cut it shorter, that will at least hide that straight section a bit.

Cheers,
Pearcy.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

[TimS]

I think you missed the part where i said it's 2 decades away from being a bonsai there percy

But yes, you are right that the taper (lack of) is the biggest issue here

[Pearcy001]

100% missed it haha. If you do go with putting it back in the ground it may produce new options, so if you are considering that option I wouldn't stress about leaders for now as either way you're going to be utilising the next section.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

[TimS]

All good!

Let me be totally clear here and now or everyone's benefit, and in no way whatsoever am i taking any aim at anyone here, just making it perfectly clear that I am not suggesting that this stump is at present a bonsai

It is a stump. It will be for a very long time indeed. I am fortunate that (barring health issues *touchwood*) i hopefully have many years ahead to edge this slowly towards being accepted as a bonsai one day.

You will not see me putting this in a bonsai pot come winter, and start trying to pass it off as being a bonsai. Nor will you see that anytime in the near future. It is a project, and will go into a grow box in winter as my garden space is very limited. I will alternately be calling it a stump, or if i'm not progressing as i would like with it i may refer to it as a b*****d.

I also grow Ginkgo by seed and will be trying cuttings too. I'm not trying to shortcut the process here, in fact this is probably the longer and tougher road to go down. It was a steal for the price, i comprehended the amount of work and the long years involved and decided it was worth dedicating the time to. Simple as that!

Again i don't aim that at anyone, just want to be clear that i'm not trying to pass this off as bonsai and set the ship on the right course from here out.

Having said all that, i think it's now clear to me that the only option is to cut down to that lowest branch and start the whole thing over. No point putting 10 years into it and then deciding to cut it back to there anyway as you so rightly point out. I'd be only shooting myself in the foot to leave the straight section.

[TimS]

Cracked on with this bad boy today taking advantage of a mostly rain free day. It's big, it's ugly and it's certainly not bonsai, but it is a start.

Just starting out by moving it from what i think is a 50L nursery pot into a standard poly box that will be its home for the next year at least until i decide it if goes back into the ground. I currently have nowhere for it to be ground grown so the poly box will have to do. I tried to get it into one of my wooden grow boxes but, as you will see below, i had to get drastic to reduce the trunk below the soil and it still wasn't enough to get it shallow enough to fit it into the wooden boxes i have.

I took more photos but they were so bad that there is no point including them.

Pulling it out of the nursery pot i soon realised that this was not going to be a matter of just cutting back a few thick roots and Robert's your father's brother. The trunk itself extended well under the soil line of the nursery pot, so i had to get stuck in with the hand saw. Despite how drastic it looks, it actually didn't cost me a lot of root mass that is actually feeding the plant to do this. It was all structural wood with the odd feeder root here and there, and i think i probably removed more roots that were vital to the tree in cleaning up the excessively high roots than i did with the flat cut.

With nothing else for it and a saw in my hand, i flat cut the trunk to a level that preserved much of the fine root system higher up, but also gave me half a chance at getting it into the poly box. The flat cut was cleaned up after this to actually be uniformly flat i promise!! I spent a fair amount of time removing all the clay soil left over from the field growing; i got in all the gaps underneath and around the base, as well as in between the roots. In the end i had a full 50L pot of soil left so i figure i got 99.9% of it.

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Once that was done i settled it into the box as best i could. This box has dozens upon dozens of 5cm holes punched all through the bottom, but despite that to be extra sure of drainage i used a base layer of 3-5cm pumice, followed by a second drainage layer of 3-5cm lava rock, then a main mix comprising of 1:1:1 my usual easily accessible pre-made bonsai mix from the local nursery, lava rock, and a fine grade Akadama that i'm trying it use up. Hopefully this equates to a balance between a reasonable amount of drainage in so much soil, and some water hold ing capacity for summer too. If there was any doubt about the measurement of the base circumference, this is it in a standard size poly box.

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and cleaned up some of the extraneous roots that were now far too high up on the trunk revealing 1-2 inches extra basal flare.

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In flat cutting the roots, i found knobbly growths that are not unlike those that hang off branches of mature Ginkgo once they surpass 150ish years old. Now those growths from the branches can be flat cut off and rooted (PLEASE DON'T ACTUALLY DO THAT TO A BEAUTIFUL OLD GINKGO THOUGH!), so why the hell not try these as they were only going in the bin otherwise. No expectations, just curiosity for curiosity's sake

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Hopefully this is not too much of a stress for the tree, well less than it appears, as i have left a good amount of feeder roots up top, but only time will tell now how it will respond to this work. I'm not too concerned at this stage as my other "Ginkgo Comes Home" thread stump had far less roots than this did after transplant and pulled through just fine.

I'll go through later and cut off some of the extraneous shoots from the trunk too just to take a bit of the demand off the now reduced root system.