Thanks alot Paul, that was alot of detail for me to now digest. At least I have some time till spring to sort out the method I will take
Although if this weather keeps up I most of my plants will continue to grow, even though the night temps are cold all my potensai figs, melaleuca, eucalyptus, sygyzium and casuarina are going strong, love the natives!
And this rain Sydney is having means no watering for a while
Cheers again Paul, much appreciated!
Edit: Spelling
Last edited by bonscythe on May 26th, 2010, 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
Its been a while since I've worked on any figs, those were Port Jackson figs. My memories are that trunks and sub trunks thicken quite dramatically, so much so they tended to look like potatoes. Especially if aerial roots were involved. It was easy to make sumo bonsai. In fact I found them hard to keep skinny, and good branch ramification was difficult because they fattened up so easily. Mostly I ended up with thin whips leaping out of thick trunks and branches. The more I reduced leaf size, the more they would shoot from everywhere else, so that I spent a lot of time pulling extra shoots off. I finally decided that PJ figs need to be big, like about 3-4 feet big. Since I'm more interested in fine ramifications I didn't mourn the figs when they died from frostbite.
The basic guiding principles are that the more apical buds on a branch the stronger it will be, leaves maintain sap flow from the roots as well as determine inter-node length. Light eventually determines how vigorous a branch will be, which is why the insides of proper trees don't have leaves, and why the tops of trees need to be thinned on occasion.
I know about the warm autumn, grapes in Mudgee that had lost there leaves were re-shooting only a couple of weeks ago. Send us some of that rain, we really need it.
Its a shame these types of threads don't get much interest, energy balance is crucial in looking after trees that are past trunk development. In fact, if you get branch ramification wrong it will spoil a good trunk. There are different ways of doing this, I'm sure, but few ever contribute their ideas.
