Part II here
Quick recap : This is a progression of a nursery stock that I am using in a current online competition.
The target is to start with a raw evergreen material.
Start Date 01/03/2013
End Date 31/03/2014
In part I, I just made a basic re-potting.
And in part II, I started to style the plant.
The competition is coming to a close today and so far the techniques I used to nudge the plant has been giving good results.
So that's the starting nursery stock:
Scientific name : Malpighia coccigera
Common Name : Singapore Holly
Acquisition : Vaneron Nursery
Sketch I made and more or less what I'm aiming for when I started working on the material (nursery stock plant )
And today's final submission:
And on with the progression...
In part II the plant was wired and styled to match the design.
Since then I wired the two branches that were growing upwards to fit with the "Windswept style" I am trying to create.
Using total defoliation to encourage new growth
I've been feeding the tree on a weekly basis and its starting to harden the shoots I left on.
There's also a whole bunch of new growth that's starting to appear, but not in the right places.
My main branches and foliage pads are literally stagnant while my exposed roots are budding with new growth once again.
I decided at this stage that it would not be worth wasting a new growth cycle to grow on the roots and that would end up being removed later on.
I went ahead and removed almost all leaves on the tree. I took extra pain to try to remove the leaves without cutting the trunks or branches. I'm expecting this will force more growth in the foliage pads that are in training.
Side note on using a total (or near total) defoliation on a plant:
The defoliation was done under some specific conditions:
1. It was done during the plant's active period - i.e. the plant was already starting to throw new shoots and actively growing leaves.
2. The tree was previously already in a healthy state. Don't perform a total defoliation on an unhealthy plant, it will just weaken it or worst it could kill it.
3. I've been feeding the tree for one month or more before hand. This means that it has been storing food reserves that will then used to create the new shoots. The plant creates food from its leaves (not from the roots), roots and trunks stores the excess food as reserves. If the plant is weak or does not have enough food reserves, performing a total defoliation will just starve the tree.
4. You will need to allow the plant to recuperate and build up its food reserves once again . That means NO FULL DEFOLIATION ANY TIME SOON.
5. This technique works well on broad-leaf plants, but be careful on coniferous plants. On pines and junipers I would suggest not attempt this technique at all.
New growth at last :)
Its always rewarding to see a technique work as it should.
The defoliation did its job. Instead of getting growth on the roots, I got a series of new growth on the trunk and main branches instead.
Time for some planning ahead...
The progression from part I, part II and up to here was done between March 2013 and October 2013, 8 months progression.
Major planning that I needed to consider : repotting and feeding plan.
I still had 5 months before the end of the competition ending on the 31/03/2014 and I had to integrate those two actions into the planning. What I'm aiming to get is some flowering areas for end of March 2014.
So basically I prepared two plans for the coming weeks/months:
I'm going to wait a few weeks to see if it pulls more growth in the right places.
1. If it does I'm going to leave it alone till end of December and re-pot early January, then go for some flowering NPK fertilizer by end of February
2. If it does not I'm going to re-pot it mid-November and start fertilizing heavily with a classical growth NPK in December, then switch to some flowering NPK fertilizer by end of February.
Time to make a blunder!
Well it was going way too smoothly up to now, so I had to make a blunder at one point.
I removed nearly all of the wires applied on the tree, except for those places that seems to still need it, and cut back three branches that were starting to get too much vigorous.
The blunder was to remove the wires at this point. The main trunk had not yet set into the new position and I when I removed the wires the main trunk just slowly went back to an upright position.
This process of the trunk rising up took several days to occur and was so slow that it took me some time to realize what was happening.
And after two weeks or so...
I am not sure if it is related or not, but after I removed the wire the tree started to pull lots of juvenile leaves all over the right places and some where I did not need it but I trimmed those away. It eventually started to flower.
In the end I applied wire on the trunk to bend it back into position but using a smaller wire size this time. I was going to bend the tree back into position, but I held back and waited for after the flowers were gone before doing that.
Well because of the new growth seems like I will be sticking with plan no 1 for now.
Time to wrap it up!
I was a bit late on the schedule I was planning, but I finally re-potted the tree around early Feb 2014.
Basic actions done :
Wired the main trunk, then guy wired it to add more tension to the bend.
Then I re-potted in a crescent pot from Tony Remington.
Final submission
My feeding regime has been successful, the tree has several flower buds just ready to burst open...
Its pretty frustrating lol :)
Every-time I look at it I get the impression that the flower bud has swollen a bid more and is jusssssst ready to open...
I was really aiming for a bunch of flowers for the final submission, but it seems like the flowers are going to be a few days late.
Even though the tree is very much in 3D and I tried my best to give it as much dimension as possible, I realize that the pictures makes it look "flat" if taken only from the sides.
Here are some other shots/angles to give a better "feel" of the tree.
That's it for now for this tree.
The competition end today and will be judged by:
Corin Tomlinson
Rob Atkinson
Part I here
Part II here
