[Dingus] Dawn Redwood (shohin) #1

LittleDingus

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My Mom's from Chicago! I'm all about KC sports though. Being a Chiefs fan and living in raiders/chargers country is no fun. 😆

Anyways... I'm looking forward to see your Dawn Redwood forest progress!

Living in a "great rivalry" town can be a ton of fun...unless you're in the wrong town! I do root for the Chiefs...unless they play the Bears! I've been to a number of Royals games...but usually when they play the White Sox so I still have a hard time rooting for them!

On the forest, I have some concerns over this one :( At the end of the day, it might be too small of a pot for me to manage. I'm thinking the trims I did earlier might have been a mistake for as young as the sprouts are and the size pot they are in. And now I've cut back some even more! We'll see what survives...

I am VERY relieved my other forest survived! It doesn't look like much, but it's only a few years from seed itself. This was going to be the first year I tried to intentionally push it in a direction. After nearly killing it, I think I need to let it recover a bit. These things are weeds though!

I've started enough of these from seed and have enough larger trees that this one is really just stress relief :D I'll be sad if it dies...but mostly I'm just trying to push the limits of how small I can go! They're shaggy looking even at 3'+ so this will never be a show quality planting. But can I even keep it alive?!?

Thanks for your interest, by the way...much appreciated!
 

LittleDingus

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...sniff...

It's not doing so good :(

20210529_132726.jpg

I'm having various issues with most of my dawn redwoods this spring :( Our prolonged cool/wet spring is causing issues with all my outdoor redwoods. All my new crop of seeds is pretty much dead. My older trees are discolored and set back from the cold...they're all leafed out but they haven't started growing at all yet. One of my indoor trees was stressed enough that it started turning white!


...and this forest continues to decline :(

I'm pretty sure the reason for the decline is that I trimmed off too many growth tips thinking that the buds it had developed would pop. They didn't. I should have known better :( Dawn redwoods have this tendency to form these sorts of buds that never really extend. Once they are older, I can usually identify them because they tend to have a more blue tinge. Those buds never grow. The next season usually new buds form underneath those and grow into branches. Sometimes not.

The trees aren't dead...yet anyway. One or two of them looked like they were going to try and throw a new growth bud...but that seems stalled now.

They are inside where the temperature tends to be warm and stable compared to the cool weather we continue to have outside...especially at night. We've had a lot of overcast though...and they haven't been under the lights. My other forest in the same location has been growing fine...but it's much larger. They may wake back up once we start having routine sunny days. They may be at a point where they need a cold period to break dormancy again. We'll see where they are in the fall when I usually plant next season's crop. I may just scrap this effort and start over...maybe limit the number of trunks to 3 instead of 5??

Unless/until it wakes back up...or I decide to toss it completely...I'm going to stop updating this thread.

...the forest does look "old" though ;)
 

Carol 83

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Age 7 months...

...sniff...

It's not doing so good :(

View attachment 377658

I'm having various issues with most of my dawn redwoods this spring :( Our prolonged cool/wet spring is causing issues with all my outdoor redwoods. All my new crop of seeds is pretty much dead. My older trees are discolored and set back from the cold...they're all leafed out but they haven't started growing at all yet. One of my indoor trees was stressed enough that it started turning white!


...and this forest continues to decline :(

I'm pretty sure the reason for the decline is that I trimmed off too many growth tips thinking that the buds it had developed would pop. They didn't. I should have known better :( Dawn redwoods have this tendency to form these sorts of buds that never really extend. Once they are older, I can usually identify them because they tend to have a more blue tinge. Those buds never grow. The next season usually new buds form underneath those and grow into branches. Sometimes not.

The trees aren't dead...yet anyway. One or two of them looked like they were going to try and throw a new growth bud...but that seems stalled now.

They are inside where the temperature tends to be warm and stable compared to the cool weather we continue to have outside...especially at night. We've had a lot of overcast though...and they haven't been under the lights. My other forest in the same location has been growing fine...but it's much larger. They may wake back up once we start having routine sunny days. They may be at a point where they need a cold period to break dormancy again. We'll see where they are in the fall when I usually plant next season's crop. I may just scrap this effort and start over...maybe limit the number of trunks to 3 instead of 5??

Unless/until it wakes back up...or I decide to toss it completely...I'm going to stop updating this thread.

...the forest does look "old" though ;)
This spring has definitely been challenging. We had 40's the last couple mornings. The trops just had to deal, not hauling them all back in.
 

LittleDingus

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This spring has definitely been challenging. We had 40's the last couple mornings. The trops just had to deal, not hauling them all back in.

This one has always been inside...can't really blame the weather.

My brazillian rain trees, however, we don't get some extended warmth soon and they might be a bit behind going into winter...they need to be storing up some energy now!

And, after many years, I've given up on my banana tree this year partly due to the spring being too cool for it after the winter :(
 

LittleDingus

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Age 8.5 months...

It ain't dead yet...

20210718_090110.jpg

New growth! At least on 2 of the trunks.

In my experience, the only thing that can take down these trees is letting the roots go bone dry for too long. Otherwise, keep them in reasonable conditions and they always seem to bounce back! This one would probably bounce back quicker if I kept it outside...but part of the point of this project was to raise it entirely inside...so inside it stays.

I went ahead and cleaned it up :)

20210718_090929.jpg

There are lots of "green" buds everywhere. They aren't new. They have a blue cast to them and my experience is they rarely turn into anything. Often healthy green shoots will form next to them instead. I'm still hopeful the other three trunks get some new foliage soon. If they leaf out again before the endish of the month, they should be able to strengthen enough to get through the winter.

We'll see...

I was going to tear this one apart and start over in October...hopefully avoid the stupid over-pruning mistake this time! But, I think I may just leave it and see what happens instead. I have another similar styled/sized pot that I might start anew with instead.

It's a couple months until October yet...we'll see...
 

Pitoon

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It was looking so good too. Hopefully it comes back with a good flush of growth.
 

LittleDingus

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It was looking so good too. Hopefully it comes back with a good flush of growth.

I think it will...they are a very tolerant species!

This is the smallest I've ever tried keeping dawn redwoods. I usually have at least one forest in the 12"-15" height range. I was too aggressive with my pruning on this one trying to keep them in smaller for the small pot :( I should have left them stay a little wilder...at least this first season and until they got onto a "normal" yearly schedule.

It's become a habit of mine to start seeds in the fall so I can watch something grow over the winter :) Redwoods are a favorite because they do so well under lights and usually don't even notice the extra long 1st growing season. If these look like they might survive the winter, I'll start shohin forest #2 in another pot. Otherwise, I'll restart in this pot...just with a little more care :D
 

LittleDingus

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Age 10 months...

It lives!!!

20210826_165727.jpg

Three of the trunks are starting to look healthy(ish) again. The other two trunks are clearly not dead...but they haven't elongated any new growth yet either.

20210826_165809.jpg

Many of the existing buds have made these festering little flowerette type growths that are hard to see in the picture. They are a more blueish color than green. In my experience those rarely ever elongate. My big trees will sometimes make those this time of year as well. Sometimes they then make a new bud right under them that does elongate...sometimes that happens next spring.

There are a couple of "normal" buds on the remaining 2 trunks that may start to elongate soon. We'll see.

I took a flower clip and "wired" up one of the new branches as a new leader on one trunk.

20210826_165756.jpg

The clip has a wire spring in it so it counts as "wiring", right?!?

The other two trunks look to be sorting out a new leader on their own.

This forest still remains indoors 100% of the time. It sits in a southeast facing window.

For the past few years I had a larger dawn redwood forest that I kept indoors almost year round. Around this time of year I would move it outside to begin the winter hardening process. I don't think I'm going to do that with this forest. It's survived quite a bit of torture so far, I think I'm going to torture it some more and see what happens if I keep it indoors year round. I'm curious if it will still go dormant or get week and eventually die as people are always claiming or...

Part of the reason for that decision is I have just sown shohin dawn redwood forest #2! It's progress will be documented in this thread


in the 2021 forest from seed/sapling contest.
 

LittleDingus

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"He's dead, Jim" - if you have to ask, you're not a fan ;)

But yes, I killed it...intentionally. The realities of the move and how young this planting was made it easier to toss it and wrap up the pot safely in a packing box than to move it. I should have taken a picture...but I was trying to close up a box when I made the snap decision to pitch it and I forgot to :(

I'm going to go a different direction with this particular pot. I'm thinking of a tight 4 tree clump of tall, straight trunks of varying heights. The sort of clump where each tree grows out one corner of the full canopy but they are close enough that nothing grows in the middle. I may or may not document that work on the forum somewhere...we'll see.

But I am re-attempting a shohin sized dawn redwood forest...in a different @sorce pot. One that is more appropriate for a forest as it's more rectangular. I'll be documenting that over on this thread in the forest from seed challenge:

 
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