The Bonsai Blog of Rune Kyrdalen

This pine was collected spring 2007 and is my biggest pine. It will need some serious bending of the upper right branch but eventually it will be a compact super pine. The nebari is superb!

This Lonicera was collected in spring 2007 together with the other one I showed. Here are some updates on it.

First pic is from june 2008, second pic with berrys from august and third and fourth pic from october after the second wiring. I cut it back hard to develop better ramification. This species ramifies very well and already next year I will get much better ramification on this one.

Here are some pics of my Lonicera from this summer, firs pic is from june, the second pic with the berrys is from august and the last pic is after the new styling in october.

When I collected this pine last spring, I didn’t get as much roots as I hoped for so I was a bit uncertain wether it would survive, but I put it in a polytunnel and hoped for the best. Luckily t survived and is growing happily in my garden now. Here are some photos.

[

Here is an update on a pine I collected this spring. It’s a very old tree and I will leave it alone for many years to regain strength before I start any styling.

This is how the tree looked after I potted it up last year. I put it in a polytunnel to keep it out of the sun and wind to reduce evaporation.

This picture was taken today, may 20. 2008. As you can see the new shoots are enlongating and the tree looks very healthy. I cut off 3 branches where the foliage was very crowded, now one can see the trunk better. I always work very slowly with collected spruces. I will not do more work on it for now. I will repot it in august and remove as much as possible of the mudlike peat from the boggy area where I found it.

Here you can see all 5 trunks. They look very good in my opinion! The bark is very old looking and rugged. The mature bark even extends all the way to the top of the tree and some of the branches. I have high hopes for this tree.

I first found this spruce in 2006. It was growing almost at the timberline at about 900 meters above sea level. The foliage was yellowish and it has obviously been growing very slowly and is probably very old. I was very exited when I saw that it has several trunks, it’s very rare to find a good multitrunk spruce like this one.

The tree was growing not far from our cabin and I fertilized it several times during 2006 and 2007, and in the beginning of august 2007 I decided it was time to collect it. I always collect spruces in the late summer, they have a much better survival rate at this time of year than they have in spring. This is probably because the spruces usually have quite few hair roots when I collect them and if I collect in spring, the hot summer months cause too much evaporation from the tree so they dry out before they can produce new roots. In august spruces have a new round of root growth and have enough time to produce new roots before winter sets in.

I was surprised to see that I could actually see new hair roots in the bottom of the root ball when I collected the tree, this is not usual when I collect spruces. This is probably because we had the wettest summer I can rememer last year so the tree had enough moisture to grow more than usual during summer. (see part 2)

This BIG pine was collected about 2 weeks ago

I got a good rootball so the chances of survival are very good

This is how it looks after it is potted up and put in a plastic house. It will stay there over the summer to speed up the recovery from the collection.

Here is an update on the Lonicera in my previous posts. It is in full leaf now and it even has lots of flowerbuds. I diden’t expect it to flower just one year after collection!

This Lonicera was collected last spring. It was cut back to a stump and severly root cut. it was growing in a very claylike soil so all the soil was removed. It’s around 20 -25 years old.

It had no branches or buds after collection and was planted in a wooden box and let grow freely for the entire growing season. It responded extremly well and new shoots appeared all over the trunk. I removed only the brances that appeared on the wrong places on the trunk or where several branches appeared at the same place on the trunk. 

Last autumn I worked on the deadwood and wired the branches and placed them where I wanted them. I did not cut any of the branches back, this will be done this summer when I take off the wire.

This spring there are new buds all over the branches and it’s time to repot the tree. It had grown so many new roots that I couldn’t lift it from the wooden box. I had to knock the sides off it.  It was wonderful to see all the fine roots that had grown. It was no problem to reduce the rootball so it would fit into a properly sized pot, not the final one but good enough for now. From now on the main task will be to develop the ramification.