AusBonsai

Hi all,

I cut this stump off my sister's olive tree. It had been cut back (ineffectually) by her landlord and was sprouting like mad (I think that his intention was to kill this larger trunk of the multi trunk Olive tree).
I cut around the base at a 45 degree angle to increase the surface area of the place where roots will come from and to give them a better angle of emergence, soaked in Seasol for 24 hours, painted the cut around the base with rooting hormone and repotted on 3 January 2015. After reading many post on here and also the Wiki on how to collect a yamadori Olive, I cut all of the branches off prior to repotting (there were still on at the time of taking the above photos, but were removed prior to repotting).
Ten days later, on 13 January, I have a few buds bursting from the location of the cuts.

Whilst I had hoped that the stump would succeed and bud back, this seems a little fast - I am sure that there is no new root growth to support such buds and that they must be shooting from reserved energy in the stump.
Given that we are told to remove all growth on our collected Olive stumps prior to repotting and given that we are told that it can easily take months for an Olive stump to root and shoot new growth, should I be rubbing off these buds?

I know that there are a lot of people with collected Olive experience on here, so look forward to hearing.

That piece has no taper and thats what I look for when digging olives. You need a piece with taper and a nice buttress.

i havnt collected an olive before, though from general experience it would be better for the tree to get rid of most, not all, of the buds. you want the stump to be actively growing for it to put out roots, but not more than it can handle, if that makes sense. might be a good idea to use this opportunity to start some major branch placements to make room for future cuts, seeing as though it is quite a straight trunk.

the main thing for now though is to try get it to root, and not lose too much energy on unnecessary growth.

Brian, I plan to carve the trunk, so taper isn't an issue.


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My experience with olive is only remove the growth on collection. Once potted any shoots that grow should be left. All mine have survived well

New shoots on your cutting will help it grow roots so I'd leave them to grow. Only time will tell if you've been successful.

So this is actually a massive cutting? As opposed to flat cutting the base of an existing tree. Look foward to a positive update.

Thanks Sammy and Shibui for the constructive advice.

Yes, Nasura, this is actually a large cutting and not a sawn off base. I cut off right at ground level, but didn't think that digging up the yard of my sister's rental property to get to the root base would have been appreciated...

Updates to follow in due course.

I would also like to see the progression of this, although I can view the pictures. Thank you.


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If it does propagate, in true olive fashion it'll shoot all around the base. So let those grow on and the taper issue will soon disappear.

Just to rule this off - no luck. I guess that I would have needed to get in lower and get some of the base. Unfortunately, it is from a tree at a rental property, so I wasn't able to dig it up good and proper.

No harm, no foul.


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