collected Casuarina

[Craigm]

This is a Casuarina which I collected/saved from an area being cleared for a housing estate.
collected June 2015, after collection I remove 100% of the foliage and any branches which aren't seen to be needed.


here it is showing some regrowth,
casuarina obesa


in Junes 2016 I gave it a light branch wire out, this gives some direction to new growth.


some time back I made a small video explaining Casuarina foliage,

Last night I rewired the Tree , slowly building primary branching.
Beginning to take some shape,



Being Summer here in Aus it'll grow well for the remainder and we'll see what next year brings,

thanks for having a look, enjoy your day!
regards Craig.

 

[fredman]

Looking good. You are doing great work Craig. Good to see something different to. Be sure to keep this updated plz.....

 

[milehigh_7]

Thanks man super helpful!

 

[Craigm]

Thanks gents! will do.
With Casuarina in development the goal is to encourage strong new shoots because these are what will
become future branches.If strong shoots are not growing it'll be hard to build the structure of a Casuarina.

 

[milehigh_7]

If you have not, please post info about repotting and root care... Thanks!

 

[Craigm]

If you have not, please post info about repotting and root care... Thanks!

What I have noticed along the way is Casuarina can be slow to grow new roots,they can usually
sustain themselves for long periods from only a small amount of good roots.So until a decent rootmass
is available repotting should be either infrequent or done with an amount of care so as to look after the
fine roots which are developing.
Once a decent root ball has been built repotting is a fair bit safer and easier.
I have repotted in many seasons but repotting in warm weather when they are growing strong is
probably the best,allowing regrowth soon after so as not to promote any root problems through winter.
Aftercare by not allowing roots to dry out and also not too much direct hot sun.
Reducing Foliage at repotting time can have great benefits but they don't always need it.

it's 38degrees C here today but i repotted this one below,
shouldn't be any drama's as long as i look after it.I didn't remove foliage.
You can see that it has many Fine roots but has no real rootmass.

spreading out the roots radially/laterally and fill over them.

Hope this helps some,
cheers. Craig

 

[milehigh_7]

What I have noticed along the way is Casuarina can be slow to grow new roots,they can usually
sustain themselves for long periods from only a small amount of good roots.So until a decent rootmass
is available repotting should be either infrequent or done with an amount of care so as to look after the
fine roots which are developing.
Once a decent root ball has been built repotting is a fair bit safer and easier.
I have repotted in many seasons but repotting in warm weather when they are growing strong is
probably the best,allowing regrowth soon after so as not to promote any root problems through winter.
Aftercare by not allowing roots to dry out and also not too much direct hot sun.
Reducing Foliage at repotting time can have great benefits but they don't always need it.

it's 38degrees C here today but i repotted this one below,
shouldn't be any drama's as long as i look after it.I didn't remove foliage.
You can see that it has many Fine roots but has no real rootmass.
View attachment 127778
spreading out the roots radially/laterally and fill over them.
View attachment 127779
Hope this helps some,
cheers. Craig

Helps a more than I can say!

 

[Craigm]

As I mentioned in the vid about twisting foliage.If you use scissors it leaves alot of dead ends,
not so bad if your going to remove all those later but they look pretty bad.


But if you learn how to Twist the cladodes correctly you can avoid dead ends altogether.
Especially when refining a Tree you will need to understand this .

below is correctly twisted cladode and near perfect regrowth with no dead ends.

cheers.