Tuesday 19 August 2014

Post 166 Celtis yamadori

The whole growing season has gone by and my celtis yamadori stumps are about to leap out of their blocks for their second season.
I collected these guys in July 2013 and put some of them in the ground to grow and others in poly boxes. During the season I let them grow and then pruned them back to short stubs and allowed them to run again.
With spring just around the corner and some of them starting to produce new shoots it looked time to set them up again with a root and branch prune. I found the ones that were in the ground not too much different in growth from the ones in the poly boxes, but it was much harder to get down there and look at them for early styling.
I have left two in the ground that don't look too prospective and now have all the others in larger containers and boxes above ground for the next season.

They had all produced plenty of roots and filled their containers but not as many as I would have liked in close to the trunk, so I've further reduced the large roots I'd previously retained and repotted them. At some time soon I'll probably evaluate a new soil line and do a drilled hole and toothpick layering to get surface roots where I want them.


 This was the one that had previously been chopped in situ and produced a mass of very strong leaders. I've now got multiple branches developing from these and started to get a fan like flaring happening. It looks like it will be a great fused forest in the future.
 





As you see for the others I'm not interested yet in refinement just focused on getting taper and movement on the new leaders, so I will maintain the grow and cut for quite a few more cycles to come. As soon as they shoot the first priority will be to select which shoots to keep and then point them in the right direction. I would like to stick to the bi-furcation strategy and select only two new branches/leaders for each of those already in place. With them all in boxes now it will also be easier in the coming season to start with a little carving to shape the original chops before the sealing goes too much further. Once there are some new roots to get them stabilised that will be the time. I can see some promise in some of these and am looking forward to the coming season to make something more of them.
I've just removed 8 decent lilly pilly stumps from the garden and have them in boxes recovering. Not many roots between them but the new shoots are still standing up. If they survive I'll have another interesting project coming up.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Happy to hear your advice, feedback or questions