AusBonsai

Leptospermum petersonii

Height 700mm

Cost $17.95

Four seasons nursery Belrose

Purchased as general nursery stock. Hoping to reduce heavily and create something interesting and different.

Squizz

Hi squiz...

Mate, that is nice stock! Great eye there. I intentionally avoided leptos because I hate their finicky status of not responding well after reducing and cutting back hard in an 18 month comp. I admire those that can do it.

Cheers Rory

It was my greatest reservation with this plant. Let's hope I can get it to kick along.

Squizz

My update with this one is also uninspiring.

I gave the tree a cut and quick initial wire. I also have to repot but will wait another 6 weeks.

Squizz

Hi all.

So I have a confession. I have a crazy plan to get my 3 entries moving a bit faster. I am unsure if it will work but I've thrown all my eggs into one basket.

This is the first of the 3. I pulled it out of the pot and raked and teased all the roots out to remove as much soil as possible. I then potted it into a mesh basket with straight zeolite.

Next step was to bury it in my aquaponics system. This is a system I set up about 4 months ago. It is currently a fairly small operation with 5 rainbow trout feeding 2 600x600 drainage pits.

Anyway it's all or nothing I guess. The tree has been in the system about 10 days now and seems to be handling it. I hope within the next 12 months I can get the growth pumping along. Fingers crossed. Squizz

Looking forward to seeing the results!!!

Look forward also to it's progress.

Not amazing growth with this one yet so its the least likely of my three entries at the moment. I think the aquaponics will suit it but its still a little slow.

Squizz

That's strange, I have a Petersonii and I trim it and it just continually pushes heaps of growth.

Hi lane. How long has yours been established. Is it in the ground or in a pot?

I'm new to this species and technique so would like to know what I can to get this tree going.

Squizz

I pruned and potted my comp tree about a month ago, is very slow to get going, buds just starting. New to the species as well, expected better budding, put down to Melbourne weather. Perhaps not if you're experiencing similar.

It was an old nursery bargain when I bought it a year ago, 1.8m tall and about 50-60mm trunk at the base.

I trunk chopped it and it didn't respond as much as I'd expected, I read here from a post by Newzealandteatree that Autumn repotting is fine so i did and found a potbound mess.

Hacked the roots back by about 60-70% and it has powered on ever since, pushed out new growth right through winter.

This spring I have cut it back even harder and carved and burnt for a lightning strike effect, seems fine with it at present and is continually pushing growth.

Hope this helps.

Cheers lane.

Sounds great. Yours is a fair bit thicker and older. May have had more reserves. I picked mine out of the aquaponics system today for a look and it has a lot of roots. It might be ready to boom. Fingers crossed.

Squizz

So a quick update so I don't miss the deadline. This one has kicked on a great deal in this crazy warm weather. The tree seems happy in the aquaponics system. Since the last update the fish have been updated. I now have about 12 silver perch which seem to be happy.