AusBonsai

heres one i collected yesterday while checking on some and scouting for others. the front and design have been chosen so that we only leave whats needed to grow and style plus a couple of strong sacrafices to get the roots growing and recovering. the work will probably start 2 years from now if it survives. in this drought it is going to be difficult to get to many fine feeders close in. i may think about prep others for next year rather than diggn them this year.

interesting side stump...

looks nice and HUUUUGGGGEEEE

heres another that will make a great bunjin canidate.

Howd ya go getting them up? Did they come up with a rootball or did all the soil kinda fall off as you got it up? With Radiatas I always seem to have the soil fall away from the roots much much too easily

nice stuff there ant.
Are you going to keep the first one in it's growing box or put it back in the ground?
Also what style are you leaning towards? i assume you are going to carve the stump into some nice deadwood.

You've been a busy boy! Looking good, got a closer view of the stump?

ketutg it will stay in this box and get styled in it as soon as recovered and strong. the design does not require too much more thickening. yes the stump will be a dead wood feature. a virt is coming.
jezz thats all the photos for now.
thanks guys.

You can bare root radiatas, I've done it myself, collected them with no soil at all, never thought they'd survive when I first tried it, must keep the roots wet though, and it was a cold rainy day which helped, I packed them in locally available moss, best time would be in the middle of Winter for bare root collecting.
Sometimes I have dug radiatas that have no close by roots next to the trunk, the roots of which have travelled a long way from the tree and had to be cut, these have not survived.

greats stuff ant, that's a good lookin base, now all you need to do is get it to fluff up a bit & get some backbudding. you look worn out man, was the diggin that hard a ground. cheers, dave.

broken today dave! the digging was hard work but more was the scouting on foot. 3-4 hrs of walking b4 any digging.

ozzy wrote:You can bare root radiatas, I've done it myself, collected them with no soil at all, never thought they'd survive when I first tried it, must keep the roots wet though, and it was a cold rainy day which helped, I packed them in locally available moss, best time would be in the middle of Winter for bare root collecting.
Sometimes I have dug radiatas that have no close by roots next to the trunk, the roots of which have travelled a long way from the tree and had to be cut, these have not survived.

both were bare rooted and covered with wet needles. not enough close roots is my fear. very few of those. ive got the trees back out in full sun hoping that keeping the roots warm will fire things up. only getting 14 to 16 degrees but wet here at the moment. what will be will be.

ya gotta do the hard yards to find the good trees mate, radiatas with low base movement & branching are fairly hard to find. 99.9 % of them are christmas trees. you've done well. dave.

Looks like the Radiata i had in my front garden

It does look like a great start. I have no experience with these so I'll leave it at that. That turntable looks like a beauty.....I'm in the middle of making one up myself. Yours is exactly what I had in mind........the base looks a little like a barbers chair one of the perks of the trade huh??

Cheers!,
Anthony