Scots pine progress

I took this image this afternoon as I was removing the old needles.

I've been really busy this year and I have only had time for basic maintenance and fertilising. I am unexpectedly unemployed and have time on my hands to spend some quality time with the little trees.

Last year I hurt the pines with being too aggressive with the fertiliser towards the end of the year. They respond very poorly to high PK suitable for flowering or fruiting plants. I remember killing my first Japanese black pine about 15 years ago in Australia using tomato fertiliser - at the time I attributed this to inexperience.

This year I have used Biogold ( cause you can get them cheap now ) and liquid organic fertiliser. As the needles were hardening off I used a bit of seaweed extract as well. 

I took this image earlier this year after the candles had extended and been trimmed.  You can see how the needles have reduced in size as the tree was more relaxed and had enough light gathering ability.

The wine bottle is there for scale.

2 years ago. The tree was growing aggressively and had very long needles.

4 years ago. The poor thing was starving as you can see from all the flowers on it.

Wild English Juniper

Beech potting

Today I moved this beech over into a proper pot. I am almost settled on the design and I will do the final wiring over the next few days. There is one big branch to be removed - but I am going to do it slowly and make the most out of the deadwood. 

The shape and size of the pot were dictated by the shape of the large roots and depth of the root ball. In addition I wanted a pot with a bit of height to accentuate the windswept nature of this tree. Its positioned up as close to the side of the pot as possible.

I did my usual drainage layer of large hydroponic pebbles.

Once I was done settling it into the pot I reused some of the original bonsai soil and supplemented it with a coarser mix that I prefer. This mix was quite fine and the roots weren't stellar. In my experience the beech grows well in quite a coarse mix. 

I included a lot of organic material (pine bark) in the mix to give the soil flora something to hang onto.

I had a choice of pots and went with the tall one in the end. Nice to have a choice of good quality pots to work with.

Condition of the roots in the nursery pot was not bad. I tried not to disturb them too much, other than loosening the edge of the ball and fitting it into the new pot.