Nursery Mugo Pine

[RickMartin]

I picked this up yesterday.



pics of branches the best i could get.



Rick

 

[JoeR]

You should raise it out of the pot a little and clean the layer of extra soil and needles off so you can see the trunk and nebari and take a picture of the base.

 

[RickMartin]

I will do that tomorrow. Everything I've read these trees like their work done in the summer, but no harm by cleaning it out.

 

[Vance Wood]

I don't know what the deal is here Rick but I don't always get notification of new posts and if I don't religiously go looking for them I don't find them unless someone else brings it up. With a tree like this we are looking at a couple of things. One is that it is not a baby it is at least close to twenty years more or less. Second if you look at all the new buds at the end of the branches: These lead me to believe that this tree was sheared last year and growth probably twice the size it is now was cut off forcing all of those buds at one spot on the ends. The idea in the nursery trade is to repeat this process as often as possible and end up with this impossibly dense mounded up Pine tree. The way the Mugo grow encourages this kind of mistreatment. However; in do that you probably have a pretty nice trunk in underneath all of those branches and that is what you need to concentrate on now. Don't worry about those buds we can deal with them latter, check out the trunk and get me some pictures of it.

The tree is very healthy and vigorous and you can clean it out and could probably do a lot of things to it but wait till we can discuss the trunk before you do any of that.

 

[RickMartin]

OK I'm going to clean it out today and get you some pics of the trunk

 

[Vance Wood]

You can clean out a lot of the undergrowth, dead tiny branches and weak branches. You can clean out the debris that is under the canopy on top of the soil mass. You can clean some of that top soil off but don't dig into the soil mass too much. That should reveal the trunk.

 

[RickMartin]

I got a pic coming up there are a lot of very small branches at the soil line but I'm afraid to take them out..I can see the trunk pretty well by separating the branches and that's how I had to take the pic

 

[RickMartin]

ok i hope this is what your wanting to see Vance.


still need to do somemore cleaning in there also.

Rick

 

[Vance Wood]

That is what you find at soil level? Wow. If you can get your fingers in under those branches and feel around, is the soil loose or do you feel a bunch of roots? I am tempted to tell you to aggressively dig your fingers into the top of the soil ball and see if you can find a single trunk buried under crud, this happens a lot.

I have also seen Mugo where the trunk and root surface can be burried under five or six inches of dirt. This might be one of those guys.

 

[RickMartin]

If you want me to do it I will, but yes that's soil level

 

[Vance Wood]

How loose is the "Soil Level"? Does it skin off eaisly?

 

[RickMartin]

Yeah pretty easy..it looks almost like the trunk is buried down some in the soil..a lot of pine bark in the soil also.

 

[RickMartin]

From the best I can feel, I start feeling roots 2 inches down from the top of soil. Top soil is very lose.

 

[Vance Wood]

With your fingers remove as much of the top layer of soil as you can without tearing into the roots. Most of this stuff is the kind of crud nurseries throw in under the branches when they pot up one of these Mugos. This Mugo was buried all the way up to the joint in the trunk, about five inches.

When you are done let me know what you find.

.

 

[Vance Wood]

From the best I can feel, I start feeling roots 2 inches down from the top of soil. Top soil is very lose.

remove that soil and let me know what you find or what you feel. At this point you might not be able to see the tunk but you may be able to feel it. You can also take the tree out of the nursery container to remove that surface soil without harming the tree. When you're done we will put it back. Disturbing the roots like this wont hurt the tree.

 

[RickMartin]

OK that's on the agenda for tomorrow..going out to eat tonight..I will let you know what I find..very nice tree.

 

[Vance Wood]

I await your endeavors to complete the task. Hopefully we can plug along and get something done before long. I'm kind of pumped at this.

 

[RickMartin]

Ok did the task..this trunk is pretty big. i would say 2" + the nebari was down about a inch so thats as far as i went. here is the best pic i could get and i took alot..lol.




i hope that helps

Rick

 

[Vance Wood]

That's a good starting point. Can you pan back the photo so we can see the trunk and the tree with as much of the junk cleaned out from around the trunk as possible? I know I keep asking you to do stuff but if it were my tree I would be doing this stuff too, at the same time.

Of course you can see the problem here is the fact until the trunk element dries it is all but impossible to really see it because it takes on the same color as the soil.

 

[RickMartin]

i can try..not sure how good this camera is be back in a couple minutes.