AusBonsai

Hey guys,

A mate of mine who works for a tree removal company saved a massive tea tree for me about 2 weeks ago. Not a lot of the rootball came with it as it was just torn out of the ground and it has no foliage, all the trunks were cut back to about a foot and a half.

I got it into a pot of diatomite, gave it heaps of water and have been hitting it with seasol. Does anyone have any exp with tea trees? or any advice on keeping this monster alive? I will post some pics as soon as I can.

Cheers

probably keep it in a shaded spot and cross ur fingers hehe. sounds like you are doing all you can. hopefully it will survive!

I have only had a little success with small tea tree but in general with collecting large stuff like you have. Its a wait & see game that can & often does take months. Keep it stationary, any movement at this stage may damage any developing roots. Just keep watering when needed and hope it comes back. If it gets to a stage that you think its dead, you can check for life by just digging at the bark with a finger nail, see green & its still got life. I have had stuff sit 'dead' n/under the bench for 6-12mths then suddenly bursting into life!


Look forward ot seeing it when its come back to life.

Matt

I collected a few Mels, Callistimon, causarina a few months ago from a Coucil Works. MOst have very little roots too
Soaked them in Season and then potted in Diatomite
Watered and rested and they are now all shooting well so in a year will be ready to do something with
viewtopic.php?f=96&t=4463&p=65331&hilit ... own#p65331

Ken

All advice above is great advice. I'd only add that you should seal the cuts above ground. In a perfect situation if the branches were cut roughly, I'd make clean cuts and then seal, but as mentioned above if it's sat for a while already I reckon it's more important to keep it shaded and still to help new root growth.

Thanks for the replys guys, it's good to see you would do the same thing.

It has been in full shade the whole time and I also have a big plastic garbage bag over it to keep up the humidity.

It lives!

I was having my morning cuppa with my trees and thought I'd take off the bag to have a look at how it's going and it is pushing new growth everywhere, even right up at the chops.

I will have to take some photos when it explodes to share.

Finally took some pics

Seriously Nice Bark!

Just give it some time to make sure it makes it through, and then there will be a great tree in the future.

You are one lucky son of a gun BUT, there's is always one. Do not be in a hurry this could be stored sap, pushing out new growth to try and survive. So keep up the after care, keep the bag off and watch out for insect or anything else, seasol with weak liquid fertiliser very low in phosphorus.

Again nice find, Cheers Pup

Hopefully it will keep goIng strong.

I took that picture this morning and only just noticed it's been 2 months since it pushed new growth, I took the bag off about 2 weeks after the first burst once the shoots hardened up a bit. I'll keep up the seasol and hopefully have some more pics with a lot more growth in the near future.

Cheers, Ben

Awesome Stuff Ben
I love the shapes you will be able to get out of this one

Ken

WOW!
i have a little wind swept styled one, this thing is a behemoth!
WOW!
NS

Yeah it is massive. That's a 510mm pot, I'll take some measurements tomorrow to give a better idea of it's size.

I'll take some more pics from the sides as well, there is some pretty nice movement in those trunks.

Might I suggest keeping the amount of foliage on this tree on the heavy side, and the watering to a minimum as I think tea tree are susceptible to root rot. Can anyone else confirm this?