Keels Grevillea discussion post

[Keels]

Morning Ausbonsai peeps,

As you can see I've posted a lot of Grevillea spam This post will be my main discussion post on Grevilleas. I was at a CBS meeting a few years ago when Ruth did a presentation on Grevilleas and I have been hooked ever since. Most of the posts at the moment are boring and uninteresting. As you all would have noticed all of the trees need to do some growing. So it'll be a couple of years before you will see any real advancement towards a bonsai.

I have found Grevilleas more difficult to keep alive then other trees. My first 12 months all of the trees died. I believe this happened as I over fertilised the trees. I just use slow release fertiliser now. The advice I was given was to use powerfeed but I used dynamic lifter instead. I should have listened to good advice

I have found it difficult to locate advanced nursery stock of any type of Grevillea. So I have started with fairly young trees. I've had the opportunity to dig two grevilleas in the past neither survived and I believe this is mainly to do with the amount of foliage I cut off. Plus this was in the early stages of my collecting fetish, I believe if i had the opportunity now that they would survived this time around. I find it's rare to see an ad (Gum tree or facebook market place) selling established Grevilleas in gardens. Canberra pride themselves on being the bush capital of Australia but rarely do they want to get rid of Australian natives from their gardens. Only exotic crap like Gingko's and maples . So if you know a nursery selling advanced stock please let me know, I'm keen to work with more advanced stock. If you looking at selling grevilleas you have been developing shoot me a message as I'm always keen to get my hands on new stock. Just don't tell the misses

I'm going off Ruths knowledge articles and her past presentations on Grevilleas from Canberra bonsai society. I have found that the information has been very useful so far. Ruth's grevilleas are the best I've ever seen but not many other people post about Grevilleas they are growing, developing or maintaining as bonsai. I would love to see them if you are developing Grevilleas as bonsai.

My development post tracker:
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30042
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30043
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30045
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30044
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30049
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30050
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=30048

I feel grevilleas are under utilised as bonsai and I'm hoping to change that

[Phil Rabl]

Good initiative, Keels.

Just one thought on your Grevilleas dying: Grevilleas they are susceptible to proteoid roots so the fertilising regime may be implicated from that perspective. I know Ruth says she has never had a proteoid root problem with her Grevilleas, but maybe that is because she got them used to fertiliser slowly.

[Matt S]

Great post Keels. I'll add a link to my own post on a G. olivacea

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29993&p=292293&hili ... ia#p292293

I've fertilised mine without any problems using Sudden Impact for Roses. This was an air layer so it's always been in my own open mix with the same fertiliser.

Matt.

[Keels]

Good initiative, Keels.

Just one thought on your Grevilleas dying: Grevilleas they are susceptible to proteoid roots so the fertilising regime may be implicated from that perspective. I know Ruth says she has never had a proteoid root problem with her Grevilleas, but maybe that is because she got them used to fertiliser slowly.

Thanks Phil. I can honestly say that i smashed the fertiliser into the trees too heavy and too fast. Lesson learnt. I will be attempting using liquid fertiliser on these new trees and I'll document how i go.

[Keels]

Great post Keels. I'll add a link to my own post on a G. olivacea

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29993&p=292293&hili ... ia#p292293

I've fertilised mine without any problems using Sudden Impact for Roses. This was an air layer so it's always been in my own open mix with the same fertiliser.

Matt.

Thanks for sharing Matt. I'm surprised i missed that post. I'm keen to have a read now. I don't think many people would have air layered a Grevillea.

[gnichols]

I'm trying an aerial layer on a grevillea at the moment. Also started growing a few different grevillea inspired by Ruth. I think it's difficult to find much advanced stock in the Australian native spectrum. I've picked up a mel and casuarina from Bonsai South and a calistemon from Shibui but there isn't a huge amount of material around. Happy to hear any other nursery recommendations?

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[shibui]

Grevilleas generally do not take kindly to chopping below green foliage so that makes it really hard to make something from older stock. That and the myth that Aussie natives won't survive transplant is probably the main reason you don't see any older garden trees advertised for removal.

I have also never had anything older than a very small seedling survive transplant. I would love to see some more trials with different techniques and timing but I have the feeling they just cannot cope with much root loss. More trials definitely needed to find out more.

Even though grevilleas are from proteacea family I've never seen any develop proteoid roots. I have also not noted any real aversion to fertilizer in any that I've grown but heavier doses as mentioned earlier may be a different thing. I have found plenty of other ways to kill them though. Like many other proteacea they do seem to suffer if roots are kept wet for extended periods. A number of my victims have died after root pruning too, lending weight to the notion they don't tolerate root reduction well.

Ruth has certainly done some great work bringing this genus into the bonsai world. Hope to see some other dedicated growers take on the challenges of grevillea as bonsai. There are so many species and now many more hybrids and selected cultivars that there must be some that are amenable.

[Keels]

I'm trying an aerial layer on a grevillea at the moment. Also started growing a few different grevillea inspired by Ruth. I think it's difficult to find much advanced stock in the Australian native spectrum. I've picked up a mel and casuarina from Bonsai South and a calistemon from Shibui but there isn't a huge amount of material around. Happy to hear any other nursery recommendations?

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Fantastic Gnichols. what species or cultivars are you growing? I have no issues with finding advanced stock when it comes to Banksia, Eucalyptus or Melaleuca in 45L up to 100L bags (check out your local wholesale nurseries for advanced stock) but nobody seems to be growing advanced stock for Grevillea that I can find. Shibui does give a few good reasoning in his post above. I wonder if the more hardly cultivars can handle heavy cuts past any green growth

Grevilleas generally do not take kindly to chopping below green foliage so that makes it really hard to make something from older stock. That and the myth that Aussie natives won't survive transplant is probably the main reason you don't see any older garden trees advertised for removal.

I find that myth is alive and well on the social media forums i troll. I always hear talk about how you can't perform banksia transplants but nobody ever talks about transplanting Grevilleas.

I have the feeling they just cannot cope with much root loss. More trials definitely needed to find out more. Hope to see some other dedicated growers take on the challenges of grevillea as bonsai. There are so many species and now many more hybrids and selected cultivars that there must be some that are amenable.

Do you have any pictures of the grevilleas your growing Neil?

I really enjoy Grevilleas and i feel like they are a great mystery yet to be solved in the Bonsai world. See how I go with the trees that I have. I will continue to update as I go.

[shibui]

always hear talk about how you can't perform banksia transplants

In my experience banksias are among the easiest natives to transplant. I dug another 10 or so from the grow beds a few weeks ago. I occasionally lose 1 or 2 but most are looking good so far.
Callistemon, many melaleucas, lily pilly and a number of others have transplanted well too.

Unfortunately no grevilleas on my benches now. I've discovered one person cannot grow everything and the Grevilleas have been one genus I have decided to leave for someone else. Ball's now in your court

[Ryceman3]

Ruth put up an initial post a while back with a focus on her Grevillea development, but then … nothing!
Would love to hear a bit more, look forward to watching your trees develop too Keels.
I have no grevillea (and no space) but like to see what others are up to and get a bit of inspiration.

A link to Ruth’s thread below.
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=23171

[gnichols]

I'm trying an aerial layer on a grevillea at the moment. Also started growing a few different grevillea inspired by Ruth. I think it's difficult to find much advanced stock in the Australian native spectrum. I've picked up a mel and casuarina from Bonsai South and a calistemon from Shibui but there isn't a huge amount of material around. Happy to hear any other nursery recommendations?

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Fantastic Gnichols. what species or cultivars are you growing? I have no issues with finding advanced stock when it comes to Banksia, Eucalyptus or Melaleuca in 45L up to 100L bags (check out your local wholesale nurseries for advanced stock) but nobody seems to be growing advanced stock for Grevillea that I can find. Shibui does give a few good reasoning in his post above. I wonder if the more hardly cultivars can handle heavy cuts past any green growth

Sorry for the delay Keels. Which nurseries are you talking about? Cool country natives at pialligo has a great range of young stock - I loaded up on a bunch of leptos/kunzea a month ago but they didn't have much in the way of mature stock.

I bought a Hills jubilee grevillea from bunnings about 2 years ago. I put 2 aerial layers on it. One worked, one failed. Has a nice mix of white and red (pic)

I'll see if I can find the tags of the other ones this weekend. From memory one of the others was a gin gin gem.

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[Keels]

I'm trying an aerial layer on a grevillea at the moment. Also started growing a few different grevillea inspired by Ruth. I think it's difficult to find much advanced stock in the Australian native spectrum. I've picked up a mel and casuarina from Bonsai South and a calistemon from Shibui but there isn't a huge amount of material around. Happy to hear any other nursery recommendations?

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Fantastic Gnichols. what species or cultivars are you growing? I have no issues with finding advanced stock when it comes to Banksia, Eucalyptus or Melaleuca in 45L up to 100L bags (check out your local wholesale nurseries for advanced stock) but nobody seems to be growing advanced stock for Grevillea that I can find. Shibui does give a few good reasoning in his post above. I wonder if the more hardly cultivars can handle heavy cuts past any green growth

Sorry for the delay Keels. Which nurseries are you talking about? Cool country natives at pialligo has a great range of young stock - I loaded up on a bunch of leptos/kunzea a month ago but they didn't have much in the way of mature stock.

I bought a Hills jubilee grevillea from bunnings about 2 years ago. I put 2 aerial layers on it. One worked, one failed. Has a nice mix of white and red (pic)

I'll see if I can find the tags of the other ones this weekend. From memory one of the others was a gin gin gem.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

I purchased all my stock from cool country natives. They have a large range of Grevillea's which is great when it comes to picking a few to try at bonsai.

[Keels]

I was talking to a friend of mine about Grevilleas and he sent me these pictures of his Grevillea 'Border Red' tree. He's been working on this tree since the Australian Plants as Bonsai Symposium in 2020. It looks like a nice little tree. I really like the leaves on this one. I find the needle grevilleas make my hands really itchy. Anyway just another type of grevillea someone is out there exploring with.

[Patmet]

I've had this Grevillea Rosmarinifolia "Scarlet Sprite" since around mid-late 2019. That was when i was only around a year into my bonsai journey.

It's not something i chose or even would have considered, but my Grandad ended up giving it to me as he knew i was getting into bonsai pretty heavily. It was a tubestock he got from i think bunnings and stuck it in a bonsai pot. He's been a keen gardner his whole life but not a bonsai guy.

Anyway it sat in that little bonsai pot until last year when i gained more interest, and also the skills and knowledge to start working with it.

So far has been getting it back to good health and filling it up with foliage, and also getting it out of the garden soil and into my development mix. It's doing well now and it's almost time to start doing some more work on it.

I've attatched photo's of when i got it, when it was in flower last year, up untill how it looks today. Enjoy

[Keels]

I've had this Grevillea Rosmarinifolia "Scarlet Sprite" since around mid-late 2019

Thanks for sharing mate appreciate it. Looks like its coming along nicely. Keen to hear how it goes