Do the Oaky cokey!

I picked up a couple of English oaks today, £5 each! I know they are pretty slow to develop but English Oak are one of my favourite trees outside of Bonsai.
The guy who stocks all the trees at my regular garden centre let me have a look out back. He had a few things which had been damaged at some point in the past so he chopped em down and left them to see what happened about 2 or 3 years ago. The result is as shown below. I tried to have a bit of a dig to check the root flare etc but it was a bit of a pain, and I thought for £5 each I'll see what I can do with them. Looking forward to re-potting them in spring and seeing what's going on down there.

Plan is to re-pot them this spring and leave them - I anticipate needing to root prune a whole lot, and hoping it isn't a giant knobbly knuckle root situation that involves lots of hacking to get something into a shallower growing container. If the roots aren't too bad I MIGHT do a lower chop on one of them at the same time and see how each of them respond.

First one



Second one - The top portion is a big section that died after being cut back. Looks to be some nice flare on this one but I just hope it doesn't taper back down to a massive knotty ball as I have seen on some of the Hornbeams I collected last year.

Besides the English oaks there were 4 Turkey oaks, the leaves are much smaller and they seem to grow a hell of a lot faster than the English variety. These were cut back at the same time as the English oak more or less, and haven't been trained with wire or anything besides a bit of selective pruning. As you can see compared to the English oaks they seem to have grown more naturally into a classic upright 'tree shape'.


I'm definitely going to grab myself one of these trees next time I'm there, just couldn't decide which one to take with me today. Anyone got a favourite of these 2?


My plan would be to chop it down lower and start again. Alternatively I've heard air layering is really hit and miss on oak, but I would be real tempted to try and air layer the top off at one of these points to make something of what's grown up top, then when it comes off chopping the trunk down low again.




This is the second Turkey oak. The base from what I could get down to looks pretty nice and flared.



Thanks for looking!

I love oaks! Need to start decidious oaks some day.

Totally jealous and such a good price too, English oak are some of my favorite bonsai!!! Haha I would buy them all and I like your idea of layering the tops off of them. I'll be watching this thread!

Great score!

Yeah there is one left which I left for @Sn0W ! Quite a nice beech there as well and a red Oak but I know the leaves are quite a lot bigger.

the first one i would chop low to the cluster of branches at base and build a broom oak. they all look suitable for broom styles, be even better if there were a nice set of roots or just wide spread at the base. the turkey oak is a candidate to layer higher up for informal broom another broom...

seen these

Josh's Garden May 2012 by Ian Young, on Flickr
IMG_7031.jpg FRONT. by Ian Young, on Flickr

IMG_7045.jpg BACK. by Ian Young, on Flickr


http://ibonsaiclub.forumotion.com/t6140-shohin-english-oak

an elm, but same informal broom concept, i recently saw you post some hornbeam material, this is the kind of thing you could try
Josh's Garden May 2012 by Ian Young, on Flickr

hornbeam
DSC_0086 by Ian Young, on Flickr

i recently chopped one of my own hornbeams, it has an exceptional root spread and will be a very good informal broom in time


saw these on FB, same concept to give you an idea



my own elm, at some point in its life was also chopped and re grown
IMG_5819 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

chop chop chop

the common theme here is that all those fantastic trees were chopped at one point

you just need to decide what size broom you want and will it will look in proportion. you get better at making these decisions by looking at better trees

oaks develeop a course growth habit and need to be kept in check and pruned well to avoid long nodes and ugly branching, just for future reference.

Nice material to start with Cattwooduk and good examples from Bobby, this looks interesting, I'm watching.

Thanks Bobby, it was some of your work on hornbeams and elms I've seen here that I was giving me the inspiration of what to aim for. I know I need to chop them as a first step, just waiting for spring so I can start working on all my new material! I think oak are quote late to wake up if last year was anything to go by.

I will grab one of the turkey oaks as well and attempt an air layer of the top the cut the trunk down a little more. My first question is which way to go about it - air layer the top and then when it comes off I will need to get under the soil to see what the flare is like to determine how far up the trunk to chop.
I would need to remove the layer at a time when I either give the tree a good long recovery before being re-potted and chopped again. Or I leave the layer on until spring so I can then lift the remaining trunk and determine where to chop. I hope that makes sense? My worry would be exhausting the tree by taking off the top and then it tries to put on new growth to recover which I then remove again with another chop. All this depends on whether the top layers at all in the first place of course!

I'll do the chop once I've seen the roots as you say - to determine eventual size and where the front might be. My second question is do I do a horizontal or diagonal chop? As far as I know diagonal is to increase taper and direction change in the trunk? A squared off chop would be beat here for a broom style?

Thanks for the replies

i dont read too much into that, i just chop based on where there are existing nodes on the trunk, in other words the tree tells me where to chop in some cases.
i did a slanted chop on this beech because of the existing left branch and some visible nodes on the right
IMG_6479 by Bobby Lane, on Flickr

i did a straight chop on the above hornbeam just above existing nodes and i expect to get a load more popping around the cut. a straight cut gives you the option of editing at another time depending on where nodes pop up. you might do a slant cut and nothing pops at the tip.

When do we make like a locomotive and rip the rails?

Noke!

Sorce

I've always assumed you can chop when you remove the air layer, someone correct me if I'm wrong but I would cut the air layer off at the point I wanted to chop and then just remove the excess trunk below the air layer roots

Yeah that's right I think I just framed my question wrong. It was more can I get away with removing the air layer and re-potting at the same time, which I'm feeling may be too much.
If the top bit which gets removed has been pumping energy into making new roots then the existing ones haven't built up the usual store of energy, so to then remove their solar panels and then root prune them I think would be a bit abusive.

That's just how it would work to my mind anyway but could be wrong.

i dont really do layers so cant comment tbh on that aspect.

So of the two English oaks I managed to get one of them out the pot to see what I had a few days ago. I was really running out of time as the buds were swelling for a few days and I ended up doing it in my shed until 1.30am because it was literally the only time I had spare. The leaves have now all pushed too far on the second English oak so that one will just be well fed to build strength through the year and then I'll sort it out in Autumn or next spring, hey gives me another one to play with later!

The root ball was pretty tough going, it's got a really wide spread at the bottom so I took off as much as I dare for now. There is also about a third of the circumference which has no roots growing out at all, so I took off a slither of bark in that area in the hopes that it might stimulate some growth there?
It's going to be a long game project, I reckon I'll give it a good couple of years to recover before I lift it again to see what the roots are doing as it's a very one-sided mess down there at the moment. For the £5 it cost it'll be interesting to see how it responds at least so I know what I can get away with on the second one. Also good practice in terms of sorting out the various issues I think I have with this stump.

you could also try packing some spag moss in where there wasnt much root and then top dressing the surface with chopped spag. you know oaks tend to build up a little mycorrhizal fungi in the roots/soil, so i wouldnt have bare rooted completely as you did. will probably be ok, might take longer to recover though. also, i would of sprinkled a little root grow on the roots during re potting
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057WV...=9045891&hvtargid=pla-384435581497&th=1&psc=1

find it helps trees to establish quicker, especially when bare rooting

good flare the base though

What the hell, I attached 3 pictures of my oak I repotted, and even when I edited it they were showing as my pictures? Now I come back and it's showing 3 pictures you posted ages ago Bobby?!
Edit: now showing the pictures I posted again? Something was freaking out a bit for a few minutes!

BobbyLane said:

you could also try packing some spag moss in where there wasnt much root and then top dressing the surface with chopped spag. you know oaks tend to build up a little mycorrhizal fungi in the roots/soil, so i wouldnt have bare rooted completely as you did. will probably be ok, might take longer to recover though. also, i would of sprinkled a little root grow on the roots during re potting
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057WV...=9045891&hvtargid=pla-384435581497&th=1&psc=1

find it helps trees to establish quicker, especially when bare rooting

good flare the base though

Click to expand...

I hadn't realised they were a species that built up mycorrhizal fungi or I feel like I did know and just forgot! I'm guessing it's a bit later to tip it all out and stick some root grow on it now then refill? Or at least removing some of the soil from the bare area and packing in some spag moss?

At least I've learned this for the next oak I have to repot from nursery, thank you.

Every time I load this page one or two of the last pictures I posted are showing as ones Bobby posted earlier on in this thread? It seems to randomly change which ones it is swapping over but I've not seen this happening on the forum before!

i would leave it now, guess you could scrape back some top soil and sprinkle some root grow on any visible surface root and wedge some moss in.

@Bonsai Nut what's going on with my post above haha, keeps randomly swapping the pictures around!?