Chinese elm(Ulmus parvifolia) rescue

Just before Christmas I had a change to visit viherpaja and check out what kind trees they had to offer.

After 30 minutes of looking and walking around I saw these two trees.
Don't really know why did I pick that exposed-roots tree but the other one had nice bend in the trunk and I found it really interesting.
Unfortunately both were in really bad shape. So I asked one of the employees(I think he was the owner) how much the price could be lowered. I got off 20€ from both trees.




Back in home I re-potted both in to mix of cat litter and sieved cocopeat(something like 70%-30%) and but them in to clear plastic bag to recover.
After week both trees had new buds popping up here and there. Luckily only small branches had died and I would end up cutting almost all off anyway, so it was not a big deal.

For now I'll just let them grow till the growing season starts in here(end of April beginning May)and hopefully they are strong enough to start working with by then.





Here is the bend that I got so excited about :). Not really sure what I am going to do with this. Maybe I will tilt it 90 degrees and make it in to a raft or something.

Heinola allotment garden images

Allotment garden images/
Some images from Heinola, 2009 summer.

Acer tataricum ssp. ginnala grafts

Back in yearly spring 2009 I did two thread grafts on this tree.
It looks like the holes that I drilled have close nicely, but I am not too sure if the cuttings can actually survive on their own just yet.
Could it be that Finnish growing season is not long enough to do this kind of things in 1 year?



Here is the tree today. For some reason this tree has never given me nice fall colours. Don't know what I am doing wrong. Maybe I give it too much nitrogen. Any tips would be welcome. :)

Hoka en images reupload

Two months without blog update! Someone has been really lazy...

I just noticed that my last year images from hoka-en bonsaistudio trip were not in internet any more.
They can be found at: Hoka-en images
There is also a some images there that I took this year and for some reason didn't posting them here.

Still alive

Hi!

I'm still alive and kicking. I have been really excited about normal gardening stuff and naturally it have effected on my other hobbies.

I'll be taking more pictuers on next weekend.

Late spring images

1. Ulmus parvifolia. Lowerbranch had some dieback in winter and it is little weak now. It should catch up with the rest soon :) .

2. Larix, these two trees are "leftovers" from tanuki projenkt that really went bad, and I was going to throw them away. I might add some more trees and make larger group from this one.

3. Chaenomeles japonica, second year in training.

Chaenomeles japonica

Back in 2008 I bought 5 chaenomeles japonica be cause they had really curved branches, trunk. So I thought, meybe the roots would have same kind movement.

Well the first one turned out to be exactly what I wanted!