Repotting natives: hack and grow.

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GavinG
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Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by GavinG »

As discussed in the Native Repotting thread, here are some trunks that are in the process of development. I cut off everything that I think is boring, once a year, then let it grow strongly, and randomly for the rest of the season. Then just keep what interests me - not much each year, but it adds up. These are from 2 - 6 years old. All quite small.
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Kunzea ambigua. I don' know how much of this I'll keep - we'll see.
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Another Kunzea. I like the roots.
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A sinuous Leptospermum obovatum.
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Another sinuous L. obovatum, now dead. It had a nasty slow wasting disease that took months. But you can see the structure clearly...
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Another L. obovatum - very young, but you can see where its contours are heading. Most Leptos seem slowish to thicken, at least the way I grow them.
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A callistemon. Trunk and roots are there, branches not so much, as yet.
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A very young Mulga. The dead right branch will stay as long as I can keep it, as the rest of the tree develops.
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There are some interesting twists in this M. styphelioides that don't show well in the photo - trees that have good movement in 3D can often photograph poorly in 2D. Red shoots are wonderful!
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Fairly obvious design, a bit 2D, but it will end up doing something interesting.
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And something far more graceful than anything I'll ever manage to do, completely unselfconscious.

Gavin
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shibui
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by shibui »

Your work seems to be paying off Gavin and an inspiration to others to try growing some similar.
Plenty of real character in those trunks and I look forward to seeing some of them in pots at some stage.
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MJL
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by MJL »

Excellent to see Gavin- thanks for posting. The pooch looks to be mimicking the some of the curves in your trees too!


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greg27
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by greg27 »

These are great Gavin, thanks for sharing. Do you ground grow at all or just in pots?
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by MJL »

I am massively jealous of the lepto...any good lepto for that matter - just can’t seem to get them to flourish; actually that’s an overstatement- can get them to survive! Any tricks to lepto’s? Maybe I should try a water bath / seems to work for my gums, mels and kunzea.... not sure why I haven’t tried that for leptos.


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melbrackstone
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by melbrackstone »

A fabulous post on how to get the best out of any material! It's something I started doing after first joining ausbonsai and seeing all the amazing suggestions for getting something out of your trees by early intervention, and I reckon it really is the smartest way to get some attractive and different trees in the long run.

I was tootling through various sites recently, and found this old blog. I found his list to be very interesting!

https://phutu.com/what-your-bonsai-coll ... RbXx6EuVZs

PS, love your pup. :)
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Keels
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by Keels »

melbrackstone wrote: October 24th, 2020, 7:47 am
I was tootling through various sites recently, and found this old blog. I found his list to be very interesting!

https://phutu.com/what-your-bonsai-coll ... RbXx6EuVZs

PS, love your pup. :)
Who has time for 40 trees when you have 80 :lol:
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melbrackstone
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by melbrackstone »


Who has time for 40 trees when you have 80 :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
GavinG
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Re: Repotting natives: hack and grow.

Post by GavinG »

Thanks for the replies folks.

Shuibui: - hang on a bit, I'm only 69. No need to rush this pot business...

greg27: for natives, always in pots, although some get roots into the ground they stand on. I tried ground-growing some Mels and Eucs, but they mostly grew one or two roots that went down to China, and didn't survive the digging up.

MJL: Leptos are hardy for me, but they're absolutely intolerant of drying out at all. A water bath may help in summer, but the growth tends to be long and leggy.

Keels: you haven't seen my yard...

Gavin
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