AusBonsai

thats a good idea greth! if rhiannon lifts a few of the seedlings and can keep them alive then it will help with learning how to take care of the tree when it is finally dug! as with the wiring of the young shoots thats not a bad idea either, it will help with the fine wiring techniques, just a tip on that try cage wiring, cage wiring is where instead of wiring up to the trunk, wire around the trunk so it doesnt touch the tree as such, then bend the wire and where the tree touchs the wire on the bending is fine as it has room to grow into, this is a technique that avoids wire scars, it can be a little difficult but it works well and if you can get used to it, it will help wire your new young shoots without breaking them and without the fear of wire scars

the double helix...hmmmm why not! eventually what it will do is fuse together once it grows out, and you will end up with a twisted, gnarled trunk, which you could use one trunk to kill off once fused and have a load of dead wood, but that is way down the track

enjoy


jamie

Is it your uni studies which have fascinated you with the double helix? sounds rather fun and a cool idea, tho you are right, it isn't traditional bonsai, its creative tree-shaping. It will probably take years to get it really working, I personally would spend the time on a tree I can show off as a good bonsai, rather than keep as a personal folly. But i love personal follies and have quite a few things around the place which humour me but will never win a prize at anything. At the moment I am musing on building a Victorian grotto in my garden, but not quite ready to ask my husband for technical help, he may rightly think I have gone around the bend.

@ Jamie; I actually saw the thread (that Steven I think wrote about the Euc?) that demonstrated cage wiring - I wish I had of seen it before I wired my Jac! I've actually spent the last 2 days, and a week on and off before that, haunting the forum as well as reading through bonsai4me.com to try to gain as much new knowledge as I can. Thing is, I'm SUPPOSED to be working on my Uni assignments. I'm finding this whole bonsai stuff addictive.

With the double helix, I figured if I wired them so that there was a fair distance between them it wouldn't be as much of a problem with the strangling unless they got really thick. I dunno, I figured it was probably a silly idea at the time, but I couldn't shake the desire. There one Euc near my train station that's nearly a triple helix that made me think it could be done. I always get the most random ideas and they always end up being too difficult lol (epitomised by a cheetah cross stitch I started a year ago and a year in I'm now going, "what the hell was I thinking?")


Haha Greth - weren't many of the most famous artists considered well and truly 'around the bend'? Sometimes you need to be to be truly artistic. I honestly don't know what it is that has me fascinated with it. I've certainly done a lot of genetics studies at Uni, but I think all that did was equip me with the term "double helix" as opposed to saying, "I wanna do a spirally thing". Maybe reading up on wiring got me imagining random shapes. It probably has something to do with not knowing enough about bonsai to be a traditionalist nor fully comprehending what a waste of time it could be.

good stuff mate if you have the base idea of it you can work from there!

and the other thing is, never hold yourself back to new ideas, thinknig outside the square is where true master piece bonsai come from!
i think it was kimura (not positive but pretty sure) who has a collected tree that basically was growing one way and to turn it into a bonsai he has completely turned the tree upside down! it is in one of lindsay farrs world of bonsai! the tree is absoultely amazing.

so keep thinking outside the square and imagination is a key to new beginnings
and a qoute from our own mr. pup "welcome to the affliction" there is no cure bonsai is addictive and very rewarding

jamie

Rhiannon, I have two embroideries which involve over 40,000 stitches each, another which took me 18 years..
I doubt I would get $20 for them on eBay, but they mean a lot to me.
You dont have to be a traditionalist, but it is a good thing to learn traditional styling, even if you play around with your own ideas on some spare trees. And it sounds like you have plenty of seedlings to play with, go ahead and learn!

I know what you mean, this one I'm doing has (according to my program) 90, 721 stitches. It would be completely unprofitable to make one to sell given the time they take, but the sentimental value is far beyond the monetary one.

I definitely plan to learn traditional styles. As I've been reading I've discovered so much about the ways things are traditionally done, and I figure if I could learn half of what people have been talking about then I'd be pretty amazed. I hope it didn't sound disrespectful what I said about not being a traditionalist, cause I didn't mean that being traditional is a bad thing! I just meant that I have a complete lack of knowledge is all.

jamie111 wrote:i would be cautious on cutting back now even though we have a lot more summer time if it could cause probs if it gets colder, i would just wait i think. JMO.
the other thing is your mum might see a stick like thing in the ground then dig it and throw it out on accident

jamie

Hey all
Why would you not cut basck now?
it is only mid January, and in Syd we have at least another 3 months of growing left to do before it looks like getting into the autumn slow down.
Melbourn although a little cooler would only be a few weeks different.

Just last weekend I Chopped back a very large peach I have in the ground, and plan on lifting this winter. I have done Sevaral large trunck chops and branch prunes on trees both in the ground and pots, and fully expect them to have much growth between now and late autumn.

I have yet to do my late summer defoliation on Deciduos trees as it still far too hot here. I will do them in a few weeks ( beginning of Feb) and they will still have time to harden off before autumn sets in

Ken

ken, thats why i was cautious in recommended a chop back now, otherwise i would of said go for it, i dont know the local climates down there, and how it is, i was hoping someone would pipe in thats a little bit closer to the tree in question!

cheers


jamie

Hmm, decisions decisions.

I read somewhere that if you're gonna cut a tree you should apply cut paste? Where could I get something like that? I'd assume a bonsai nursery would, but I hadn't noticed it last time I was there...

i wouldnt worry about cut paste as it is a tree in the ground, does a tree in the wild that loose a branch have someone come along and apply cut paste ?? it should grow strong enough to heal, plus you will most likely be cutting back a lot further down later down the track once you get it dug up and its healthy !!

if you realy want to use a paste though and dont want to pay massive amounts for it, you can make it, get some cheap plastecine and mix a little bit of vegetable oil in. you dont need much, knead it all together and presto. home made cut paste. as the tree heals it will push it out and off.

jamie

Fair point. I just got concerned cause I kept seeing everywhere things saying "remember to cover with cut paste any time you cut!!!"

Thanks!

Rhiannon wrote:Hmm, decisions decisions.

I read somewhere that if you're gonna cut a tree you should apply cut paste? Where could I get something like that? I'd assume a bonsai nursery would, but I hadn't noticed it last time I was there...

Ok Cool Jamie

Rhiannon, if it were my trees in Sydney I would definitely cut now to regrow before winter.

As for Cut paste, that is like asking for a soil recipe
There are so many opinions that rarely you will get the same answer from a group of people. Some swear by it, Some have never used it and call it baloney. Some use commercial paste in tube and some use the putty stuff. Others just use Vaseline, Paint, Glue, or anything else they have lying around.

As for me, a tree in the ground I will not worry about as it will heal really quickly.
A tree in a pot i will always use the Japanese stuff in the tube. I find it goes on really well and never stains. In fact I find the finish it leaves to be quite pleasing and unobtrusive.
Whether it heals faster or not I do not know, but I believe that trees in a bot are stressed enough with out having to worry about adding disease that might enter via an open wound.

Ken

I was just in Epping a week ago at my cousins wedding

i was talking a walk and realised melbourne has plum trees EVERYWHERE lucky people im so jealous

well my advice is to buy hormone powder and apply it to the roots that have been cut wen u dig the tree up and put it in the shade n dont touch it for a good year ZBUT WATER IT EVERY NOW N THEN

Ken: I'm slowly discovering that immense variety of opinion when it comes to certain topics about bonsai. I guess it's one of those things that you have to experiment to see for yourself and decide what works before for you. I'm still trying to get my head around what soil is best for now. As long as there's no negative side effects of cut paste I might trial it when I cut it down in the pot and see for myself? I wouldn't imagine it would heal it faster, my only concern was to protect against disease.

I cut it back on Saturday, so at least I know how old it is now haha. I'll leave it until Spring, at which time I'll probably post back here asking a billion questions about what could go wrong.


IS2SXC: Where abouts in Epping was the wedding? It wasn't Epping Memorial Hall by any chance, was it?

I bought hormone powder on the weekend as I was experimenting with cuttings from trees abound my place, so there's plenty left over for this one. You;re right - there are plum trees pretty much everywhere around here, there's at least one on every street. Except for near Epping plaza where they pulled out all the exotics and replaced them with Ghost Gums.

Thanks for the advice!

The more and more I look at this tree, the more I'm convinced it's actually a sucker. I haven't dug deep enough to find out for sure yet, but I'm 99% sure it is.

I've been trawling here and the web trying to assess the potential for suckers as bonsais and all I seem to find is people talking about removing suckers from bonsais.

Which begs the question: is it worth digging up/cutting from the mother tree?

Do they grow differently? Are they un-bonsai-able?