$15 of fun with an obscure Azalea

[Ces]

Hey guys,

Had nothing to do with my established trees today but had the itch to do some work... Had to go to a big box hardware store for something and came home with this sad looking Azalea cultivar that I've never heard of (sorry about the quality of the phone pics).

twin shiraz as bought.JPG

foliage 2.JPG

tag.JPG

I thought of a twin trunk style for this tree, so i gave it a haircut and some wire. The small wire was used just to make sure everyone was getting an adequate amount of light. One thing I learned today... Heavy wire = pliers. Almost all of the branches left on the tree will not feature in the final design but it has buds shooting back from old wood all over, so I'm confident I can cut it back hard in the future.

after haircut.JPG

The I went investigating the roots (I looked just under the surface at the store an was quite happy) and found this...

rootbound.JPG

I tried raking it out but with only with a small amount of success. Any suggestions as to how I might fix this? Wire tourniquet at the next repot perhaps?

Anyway, I put it in a new pot with a new medium, placed a wedge between the trunks to try and create some more space between the trunks and watered it in with seasol. The wedge changed the planting angle of the parent tree but that can be fixed in the future.

new pot.JPG

I left the top a little long and will let it grow freely in an attempt to increase the girth of the parent trunk but it will chopped shorter in the future.

The daughter tree... I'll just control its growth for now. The trunk wiring only moved the trunk a little so when it establishes itself in the pot, I'll use a guy wire to move it into a more desirable position.

A little bit of fun in the afternoon

Let me know what you think.

[kcpoole]

Interesting foliage colour for this time of year Do you know what the flower colour is?
good plan Let the foliage on the larger trunk go made for a year or 2 and see how much growth it puts on.

Ken

[Ces]

Interesting foliage colour for this time of year Do you know what the flower colour is?

Ken

Hey Ken,

As far as I can tell, the foliage is this colour year round. The tag said that the flowers would be a deep red wine colour... haven't seen it flower yet so I'm not sure. However when I was removing branches from around the main trunks the cambium layer was green as usual but would then stain a shiraz colour. Should be interesting next spring though...

[Ces]

Any suggestions with what to do with the root ball. I realise now that it looks like I have reduced the root ball down to nothing. Outside the frame of the photo there is a large mass of feeder roots that have been relativley well combed out.

The pic I put up is intended to show that the plant probably became extremely root bound in its seedling pot, creating a dense circle of relatively thick roots that reaches about 2 cm from the base of the trunk. All the other roots emerge in a much more natural form from this tangled mass (presumably growth from the its first repot).

Anything I can do? or do I have to live with it?

[chrisatrocky]

This variety has been around for a couple of years that I know of. The flowers are single dark pink not impressive nor abundant but, its not grown for it flowers its grown for its red colourful leaves.

chris

[kcpoole]

Probably not much you can do with the roots.

Tease them out and them pot up. Over teh next few repots, Remove the crossing and ugly ones.

Ken