First nursery stock of the year..

Went to get some potting soil this morning and managed to find a couple of trees to play with.

The first two I have been on the lookout for quite a while now and finally found some worth buying.
These are Leptospermum scoparium, they can be tricky but I have wanted one forever so will be giving it a crack at least. Looks as though there is plenty to work with at least.


Also I grabbed something that I thought I never would, a bloody Juniper, stricta I believe. No idea what to do with it so I guess some reading is on the cards.

Always nice to see new material, and new people. Good luck and study as much as possible.

Never heard of the first species but love to see you try!
As for the juniper i got three juniperus chinensis "stricta" but they are needle type junipers and geneticaly grow in a conical shape so looking at yours its a different type then the stricta's i got

Cheers guys.

There are some great example of Leptospermum around, they are NZ/Aussie natives although these are supposed to be one of the harder ones to keep alive, they are a stunning plant in their own right too, I may only use one or I may go back and grab some more. lol

As for the Juni, well I have never really paid much attention to them so it's all new to me but these ones seemed larger than the normal ones they have, coupled with waiting for spring to break it was an impulse buy.

Starfox said:

Cheers guys.

There are some great example of Leptospermum around, they are NZ/Aussie natives although these are supposed to be one of the harder ones to keep alive, they are a stunning plant in their own right too, I may only use one or I may go back and grab some more. lol

As for the Juni, well I have never really paid much attention to them so it's all new to me but these ones seemed larger than the normal ones they have, coupled with waiting for spring to break it was an impulse buy.

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Hi Starfox,
Well I had to pass a comment when I saw the NZ manuka ( Leptospermum). Nice trunk, flaky bark and wood is as tough as nails ( Jin’s will last forever).
Here’s my piece of info (maybe interesting) that here in NZ we have a North Island and a South Island and Manuka only seems to grow better in frost free areas but its relative, the Kanuka ( soft to the touch where as Manuka is prickly) grows better in the South Island where we get heavy frosts.
One other FYI is that Manuka seems to get an insect infestation, can’t remember which sorry, that shows up as a black sooty mould. This insect will slowly kill off its host plant.
Lastly ,unsure but gut feeling, is that Manuka don’t like their roots being disturbed so caution is urged
Charles

P.S. great pick up on the trees, and the mass of flowers makes this really showy.

Hi,

Thanks for the comments, definitely the bark is interesting and coupled with the flowers they are a stunning tree. Up until now I have only found pencil thin 3ft high ones trained and topiaried to look like a lolly pop. I was stoked to find these today as I have admired them for a while and had no luck from seed. I can say for sure these are the prickly ones, as a rule we don't get frosts here but this year has been bad and we have had fatalities I think but I won't let it happen again. I'm guessing these ones have been grown locally for a while so hopefully they are adapt to the climate.
I'm always on the lookout for bugs, not seen a sooty type yet here but not to say they don't exist here, fingers crossed, like I need bugs to help me kill trees. lol.

KiwiPlantGuy said:

Lastly ,unsure but gut feeling, is that Manuka don’t like their roots being disturbed so caution is urged

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This definitely goes with all my reading, go slow and at the right time of the year which I believe may be now for me or at least a month ago. People have posted elsewhere they have success potting in winter just before Spring or in Autumn so I think I will just shave the bottom off the roots and pot in a smaller pot. No bare rooting or major soil disturbance. The other thing I see is they like to be wet, not so much an issue now but in our long and windy summers I think I will use a water tray..

I just want to go slow and keep these alive, such cool trees. I already want more.

In regards to the Juniper would now be a good time to start thinning it out a bit to see what is underneath or if I plan on repotting it in april/may should I wait until then?

I have also gone off the idea of touching the roots at all of the Leptos for the time being, they are fresh stock so have probably on recently been potted up so on the side of caution it may not be a great idea, I will probably thin them out though and let them recover all season then think about the roots if they seem happy and alive.

Starfox said:

In regards to the Juniper would now be a good time to start thinning it out a bit to see what is underneath or if I plan on repotting it in april/may should I wait until then?

I have also gone off the idea of touching the roots at all of the Leptos for the time being, they are fresh stock so have probably on recently been potted up so on the side of caution it may not be a great idea, I will probably thin them out though and let them recover all season then think about the roots if they seem happy and alive.

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Hi Starfox,
Here’s what I would be tempted to do with the Leptospermum. I think as you have bought 2, you could experiment with one of them, treat like a conifer (only 1/3 cut off leaving lots of feeding roots), and the other one do little root work or nothing. But my concern is that leaving the no-root-work tree for another year you might have a badly pot-bound tree to deal with.
I guess if the tree you do cut 1/3 roots off does “bounce back” happily then all caution advice can be discarded lol.
Anyway, as for the juniper, there are many others more expert than me, but sure you can thin top growth out with all roots intact, but my preference would be to keep your styled tree in a box or large growing pot (7-15 litre) to keep tree growing madly etc. (after cutting 1/3 roots OR half bare root etc and repot into good Bonsai soil etc) .
My 2cents and thinking and opinions,
Charles

Lovely flowers/very juniper like trunk and bark. Best fortune with.
Is avatar of thylacine?

At first glance I thought the the first trees were totally filled with thorns. Figured that would be a grand challenge for sure.

KiwiPlantGuy said:

Hi Starfox,
Here’s what I would be tempted to do with the Leptospermum. I think as you have bought 2, you could experiment with one of them, treat like a conifer (only 1/3 cut off leaving lots of feeding roots), and the other one do little root work or nothing. But my concern is that leaving the no-root-work tree for another year you might have a badly pot-bound tree to deal with.
I guess if the tree you do cut 1/3 roots off does “bounce back” happily then all caution advice can be discarded lol.
Anyway, as for the juniper, there are many others more expert than me, but sure you can thin top growth out with all roots intact, but my preference would be to keep your styled tree in a box or large growing pot (7-15 litre) to keep tree growing madly etc. (after cutting 1/3 roots OR half bare root etc and repot into good Bonsai soil etc) .
My 2cents and thinking and opinions,
Charles

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Hi Charles,
Thanks for the reply, yeah having two is a good thing and my wife likes them and wants to go back and get a couple for the yard so I may end up with 3 or 4 of them. Prediction is the yard ones will more likely die. I think if I get more I will try opening the roots up on a couple and maybe saving one or two for later, still developing a plan of attack but it is good to see how they will respond to different scenarios.

The Juniper is the one that I am worried about being pot bound, the roots are coming out of the wholes and it is very top heavy and will tip over in a breeze so I think it would be good to thin it out before repotting in a month or so. As this is my first Juniper I'm open to anything really.

Potawatomi13 said:

Lovely flowers/very juniper like trunk and bark. Best fortune with.
Is avatar of thylacine?

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Cheers, they are a very cool tree and I think I will need all that luck.
And yeah that is a Thylacine, one of my favourite animals.

Tieball said:

At first glance I thought the the first trees were totally filled with thorns. Figured that would be a grand challenge for sure.

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They are a bit spikey but thankfully no thorns, the Juniper is sharper. lol

In my personal experience with junipers is that they are tough if they are healthy
yours apears to be healthy so thats good to start with

I have barerooted and washed out the roots and pruned the roots and foliage quite harsh on a few junipers like yours in one go in april 2017 they all survived..

As aftercare mist the foliage daily as much as possible.

But most people advice to spread the work over two or three years so to be safe thin it out a bit to get the light and air in and do the half bareroot method

I would say that this is a healthy one, no signs of browning or any old dead foliage.

I have been reading up on HBR method and I think I will go that route but I definitely need to lighten the load a bit up top too. I think it may be a touch too early to do much with now but maybe in a few weeks, our nights are getting back up to 10 deg C now so spring is finally coming.

Starfox said:

I would say that this is a healthy one, no signs of browning or any old dead foliage.

I have been reading up on HBR method and I think I will go that route but I definitely need to lighten the load a bit up top too. I think it may be a touch too early to do much with now but maybe in a few weeks, our nights are getting back up to 10 deg C now so spring is finally coming.

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Yes when the tips start to show fresh green color of new growth over here thats around end of march beginning of april but i could imagine in Spain it will be sooner !
Looking forward to see what pearl will be revealed out of the bush

Starting tomorrow it is going to rain all week but I imagine after that it should start looking better. Think I need to order some more cat litter though so by the time that comes I should be ready to go.

I'm sure there is something in there, what I don't know yet but we shall see.

The Juniper book mentions both possibilities, barerooting and partial removal of field soil when repotting junipers. I went for so much praised HBR repot for conifers last spring and they all grew fine all the season. I'll leave them as they are for one more season and I'll do it same way next time.

I have a very long love/hate relationship with Leptospermum Scoparium, here also known as NZ Teatree or Erika Japonica, @Starfox .
Their flowers were my previous avatar here.
But...
They die.
Suddenly. No wilting, no previous warning, they just die on you.
They hate having their roots touched. Please never bareroot them. Prune half of the ⅓ of the rootball one season, the other half next season.
Don't prune to old wood, they die.
They love sun and cool weather.
They love plenty of water.
If dry for more than 6 hours, they...
Die.
They are lovely. I've seen beautiful NZTeatree bonsai thriving one year, dead the next.
I tell you what I have done: I have been babysitting two of them for the last six surviving months, and I have ordered two more to pickup next Saturday.
Me, I am a masochist.
I wish us good luck.

That does pretty much match up with a lot of what I have seen. In fact I have found one of your posts elsewhere too but sadly it didn't get much of a response.
There is some pretty good info over on Ausbonsai that is a tad more optimistic but yes, it is certainly noted how touchy these can be and to take it easy on them.

It does seem that pretty much any other sp. of Leptospermum is a great choice for bonsai, if I could find them I would try them too.

Picked up another 3 Leptos and another juniper this morning. 2 of them are to appease the wife and are garden bound so that will leave me the 3 most interesting ones.

Starfox said:

Picked up another 3 Leptos and another juniper this morning. 2 of them are to appease the wife and are garden bound so that will leave me the 3 most interesting ones.

View attachment 180194

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And so the juniperus addiction begins