AusBonsai

Hi! Happy to say that even though I lost the stump and bottom layer of the parent tree, the top two layers seem to be doing ok. I basically left them alone for the year to help the roots establish and they’ve had their first repot since separation.

This is the 2nd top layer, which is flowering and almost looks like a little tree. Even though it has much work left to do, the flowers really make me happy. I’ll cut them off before they fruit so as not to stress the plant.

Last year:



Today:

I repot both of these today into real pots. The larger of the two I had planned for the green pot, however it was far too big for it in the end. Since they were air layers, it’s taken me a few years to get the sphagnum moss off the roots as I was worried about breaking them off. It seems the moss has gone now and the roots were more developed than I thought. The large one will still look good in the blue pot come flowering time in a few years.

Big one:




Little tree (I’ll have to see what it gives me this growing season, because it’s pretty ugly!)






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Fantastic progress. Keep up the awesome work!

They’ve both leafed out. This one giving me a few flowers again this year.


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Why the rush to get down to a bonsai pot?

It’s a tool to slow growth.

Repotting into standard nursery pots will encourage hard coarse growth as long as you feed heavily. Chose a leader and cut back to that.

Daluke wrote:Why the rush to get down to a bonsai pot?

It’s a tool to slow growth.

Repotting into standard nursery pots will encourage hard coarse growth as long as you feed heavily. Chose a leader and cut back to that.

I thought I had done that already…. Coarse hard growth on a crabapple isn’t super easy to work with.


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I wonder if it’ll keep the older flowers until the other side of the tree catches up




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I like the ugly one! Bet it’ll be a keeper in a few years. I knocked off my ugly crab last year with aggressive styling even though it was pretty enough for me.

This years repot. A lot of roots were grown. A lot of roots were cut. I’ve only done the big layer so far.

Big crab before:





After:





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