dome method for collecting elms

[travislivid]

After my collecting season ended up with mostly cedar elms, These started popping up everywhere. Most notably in my yard! I guess before getting into bonsai i was not as observant. I was about to mow the yard for the first time this year about 3 weeks ago. I decided to go ahead and dig up the larger of the ones I found in the yard before chopping them again.

I ended up with 10 small cedar elms that are only a few inches tall but have trunks up to the size of a pencil. Half are still leafed out and adapting well. The other half have declined with yellowed leaves then dropped their leaves.

On a previous post I got some advise on putting a dome over stressed collected trees. I tried this on 3 of the 6 that seemed to be dying. I left the least favorite ones alone to experiment. I mist all of them daily as a control.

Here is a picture of the best one out of these little guys on the left next to one that was only misted but no dome on the right. On the one on the left you can see where it took a lawnmower chop for the last 2 years and still survives!

The domed ones all lost their leaves but have started budding out again after almost 2 weeks under the dome. The 3 without a dome are good as dead even though they are getting the same care otherwise.

I think next season I will be trying a dome on the larger ones I collect.

 

[travislivid]

I dug up this one that looks like it had a trunk break or die. It had to be pulled because of the fence line. You cannot see because it is freshly misted and dark but the center is all deadwood and calloused over on the sides.The back and side of the trunk are all healthy. If it survives it will make a great candidate for carving out the center in a couple years. I will post better pics in a couple weeks on the elm forum if this guy survives the stress. I am trying to dome it to get it to survive. The leaves have started to dry out so it will be a good test to see if I can get it past the stress. It had alot of fine roots but still seems to be on decline. It is surely not good to collect after leafing out.

I have setup stakes on the corners of the pot and and clear plastic sheet covering it. What seems to work well is to leave it in total shade and in the dome for a day or 2 followed by half a day without the dome to air out a little. Not sure if this is the best intervals but it worked well for the other ones. I think too much dome would be bad and cause rot.
Interested if anyone else has ideas on using a dome to get a collected tree to rebound.