AusBonsai

Hi Taffy,
On checking out your thread re the little fork lift your sending up to me soon I noticed a very nice crepe myrtle sitting on top of it....will this be included???

All jokes aside Taffy, how did you get it to this stage??? If you check out my thread called "So far so good" you will see a photo of my crepe myrtle which has been out of the ground for about 5 weeks. Since the photo was taken the growth has tripled. I do intend to leave it in this same pot for about 12 months to establish properly, but what should I do with the growth. Surely I can't let it go crazy so what should I be doing to control it. Do I start wiring at this stage once the growth had lingified and should I be removing th growth at the base. Please give me some advise as I really want this tree to turn out well. It's not often you get the opportunity to have a trunk this thick to work with, plus it was home grown cheers Loretta

hey loreta, im no expert with crepe myrtles but one thing i have learned is that you need to let the new growth harden off a bit before wiring otherwise the wire just destroys the new branch. once it hardens off a bit you can wire with ease and it will hold its shape rather quickly. alsom defoliate in mid summer abnd you will get great ramification

astroboy76 wrote:hey loreta, im no expert with crepe myrtles but one thing i have learned is that you need to let the new growth harden off a bit before wiring otherwise the wire just destroys the new branch. once it hardens off a bit you can wire with ease and it will hold its shape rather quickly. alsom defoliate in mid summer abnd you will get great ramification

thanks Astroboy,interesting about when to defoliate.
cheers

Hi Loretta

check out http://www.bonsai4me.com it is a great site with heaps of info! if you have low branching thats a good thing these can be used as sacrifices to help thicken the base up. If you search shibui's posts you will find some info on using small sacrifical branches but lots of them, this will allow for faster healing of smaller scars instead of one big one

there is some more info on it in the thread. if you cant find it shoot a pm through to me and i will have a hunt for you

how did you get it to this stage???

Aaah, trade secrets grasshopper - if I told you, I'd have to come up to Townsville and silence you

Actually, it's no secret at all. This was an urban yamadori removed in 2005. This guy had two big clumps of the stuff in his front garden and was fed up hacking them back, only to have them re-shoot (and sometimes the shoots would come up somewhere else along the rather large root spread).

We had to take part of the fence down to get at the things, and then we also found a concrete 'wall' under the surface right against the clumps. They were sods of things to remove - it took us the best part of two days and a lot of sweat and blood. It was rather warm at about 34C with high humidity, and we really sweated over the things

Eventually, after cutting off dozens of large roots, and trying to sever the roots directly under the clumps, we put a chain around the things, hooked to the back of a ute and drove off! THAT made them move!!!

We found out from the owner that they were planted in 1955 - the first plants to go in the new garden when the house was built. That now makes them 55 years old.

When we got them home, we took to them with a chainsaw, axe and crowbar and split the clumps into sections. I have three of them, and at the moment, this one is 320mm across the base, 600mm tall with a spread of 800mm tip to tip. One is 380mm across the base, 450mm tall with a spread of 880mm. The other is 550mm across the base, 600 tall with a spread of 800mm. There were virtually no roots left on these - we had to take most of them off to fit into styrene boxes - my largest one that measures 550mm across the base went into a big black plastic tub. The rest of that year, there was very little growth on them and I didn't know at that stage whether they were going to make it or not. During the next growing season, they all started to put out some growth, but were very slow in doing so. I re-potted them all in 2007, after I got some Bonsai pots to put them in. Last year, they all had a pretty good canopy developing. When they all come into full leaf this year, I think they are all going to look pretty good.

I've re-potted them over the last few days into a mix of 50/50 Diatomite and potting mix - and the largest one has been put into a shallower green glazed pot, but the other two went back into their original Bonsai pots.

I don't have photos yet of the other two since their re-pot, but below are some progression photos of all three.

First is one of the clumps still in the ground.
Second is one after we got it out - notice the chain!
The next two were after we cut the roots right back - what you can see on the bases is just about solid timber.
Next is the largest one in late 2006.
and again in Oct 2008.
Again in Sep 2009.
The next smaller one in 2007.
Next one is the one from my scissor lift - also in 2007.
Finally, two more of the 'scissor lift' one - but closer up.

Nice work Taffy, you've ended up with whats going to be 3 great trees in a few years.I particularly like the second tree,,Good work ,thanks for sharing

Tman wrote:

how did you get it to this stage???

Aaah, trade secrets grasshopper - if I told you, I'd have to come up to Townsville and silence you


You can do that if you like Taf, you're more than welcome, but you'd be flat out shutting me up
What a tree and what a field trip I'd have liked to be part of that adventure, I could have been the coffee and beer girl But my question is ...should I begin controlling the growth from the very start, or should I let it go for a while like some people do with their collected bougs???
Thanks for the great reply and I love the photos, your trees are beautiful ...cheers Loretta

Jamie wrote:Hi Loretta

check out http://www.bonsai4me.com it is a great site with heaps of info! if you have low branching thats a good thing these can be used as sacrifices to help thicken the base up. If you search shibui's posts you will find some info on using small sacrifical branches but lots of them, this will allow for faster healing of smaller scars instead of one big one

there is some more info on it in the thread. if you cant find it shoot a pm through to me and i will have a hunt for you

Thanks for your reply Jamie and I will look into that site you suggest (at work tomorrow ) If I get stuck I'll let you know.
This bonsai is so all consuming. Got dressed for work yesterday, thought to myself "I'll just run out and have a last look at my babies". Took off the heels, put on the old garden scholls and went down for a look. Came back, grabbed my bag and went to work. Yes I did went to work in my old garden scholls

With these three Loretta, I had no choice - I had to let them do their own thing for a while because I wasn't sure they would re-shoot after what they'd been through.

With yours, I'd say yes - control as early as possible. When Crape Myrtle branches set and harden off, they are very tough to bend and go that little bit too far and... SNAP! I've done that with a couple of branches, but luckily I was able to put a splint on them (piece of wire on the broken side, wrapped tightly with grafting tape and a slight bend in the branch to close up the break) and they did repair. Don't forget though, there will always be a weak spot where that fracture was.

Astroboy is right - to a point. Letting them harden off a bit does make it easier to bend them, but you can do it with green shoots as long as you are extremely careful not to bend too far otherwise they will either just break off or kink - which means they will die anyway. The other thing with doing them while still green is that if you accidentally knock a bud or a newly opened pair of leaves while applying the wire, they break away very easily - they are very fragile - and they don't need a hard knock!

The main branch on that tree - the subject of this topic - curves towards the front, and I need to straighten it out quite a bit to the right. Before I attempt it, we've got some Crape Myrtle in the garden, and I'm going to try the wire and inner tube procedure on one of them to see if I can successfully bend a branch of that thickness. I'll bend it till it breaks to see just how far I can push it. If that works, then I'll have a go at moving that branch.

Wish me luck

Well done Taff they look good , not bad three from one thats the way too do it .
Cheers Rod...

!

The main branch on that tree - the subject of this topic - curves towards the front, and I need to straighten it out quite a bit to the right. Before I attempt it, we've got some Crape Myrtle in the garden, and I'm going to try the wire and inner tube procedure on one of them to see if I can successfully bend a branch of that thickness. I'll bend it till it breaks to see just how far I can push it. If that works, then I'll have a go at moving that branch.

Wish me luck [/quote]

Thanks for the info Taf, I'll follow it to the "T". What a good idea to practice on a garden specimen...I still got one other I was going to dig up but I'll leave it and do the same as you. Once I feel I've become familiar enough with it I'll pull it out "Grasshopper will strive to do utmost!!"
cheers Loretta

Coming along really nicely Taffy, well done.

Thanks guys.

Here are a few more photos taken today.

The largest one, pruned/wired and in its new pot (that was an expensive one - it's a Japanese pot). That lower branch on the right, is actually pointing forward, not really crossing the branch above it. Looking at the photo though, I think I can take that one off altogether:
These two are the other one - it hasn't been pruned or wired yet. I've included that close-up of the trunk because I'm not too sure about that top. The original apex died off, and I'm still undecided whether I'll leave it as it is and put some shape into it by carving, or remove it totally and 'V' it from the left branch down to that hole in the centre (it goes right through to the back) and then up again to the right branch. Anybody have some ideas?

Tman wrote:Thanks guys.

Here are a few more photos taken today.

These two are the other one - it hasn't been pruned or wired yet. I've included that close-up of the trunk because I'm not too sure about that top. The original apex died off, and I'm still undecided whether I'll leave it as it is and put some shape into it by carving, or remove it totally and 'V' it from the left branch down to that hole in the centre (it goes right through to the back) and then up again to the right branch. Anybody have some ideas?

DY21Aug101a.jpg

DY21Aug101c.jpg

I know you have to be ruthless sometimes when considering proportion, pot size, style and a multitude of other things but I still have this obsession about retaining as much as I can of the tree...especially when it is quality areas of wood that is years old and would never grow back to the same proportion and character in my lifetime. Now I'm not talking great big ugly trunks or branches...the area you are considering cutting off I consider to be worth keeping only for the simple fact that it is original - years old - and beautiful. Why would I cut that off and end up with a tree only 2 inches smaller.
I would opt for "that" sized tree and make the most of what it has to give me. Now I also realise that alot of people prefer shohin and other specialised types of bonsai therefore it would be neccessary to cut back, but even though they may end up with a fabulous tree I can't help feeling a little peice of history has been discarded. Now how was that for a mouthful, certainly not what you originally asked for, but it's just how I feel about a tree.
cheers Loretta

Because each side is so strong, and there's no middle or top, would it be possible to split the trunk vertically, and get two trees, each going one direction? There's a lovely live vein under the right branches that would possibly stand out more strongly if the bulk of the stump were less.

Just my random thoughts,

Gavin