Ulmus

In wake of the insufficient amount of good news, I went out to the garden to take a few autumn shots of trees. Instead of screaming from my window form helplessness, I'm posting it. Stay strong, be clever and take care of yourself. We shall overcome. 

Ulmus

Ulmus

Ulmus with first signs of upcoming autumn

Ulmus

After first cut back.

Ulmus

Elm was repotted into its first ceramic pot in March. Now pushing new growth. Collected from the wild in 2013, still a long way to go. 

Ulmus

I would like to share a few pictures of this elm. Leaves on sacrifice branch started to yellow and fall off. It was time to cut it off. 

Branch was about 2 m long as you can see it standing behind the tree

Winners of the thickness contest are Mimo and Vlad. Send me your pictures if you like to apply for the promised reward. 

Always try to keep branches close to the potential cutting point so you have some to fall back to. It is much more certain the tree will not drop the branch after cutting back. In case I would not have this branch there I would make the removing in the spring. 

Ulmus

This elm was reported in spring, severely root worked. Due to lack of suitable big ceramic pot, it went back to plastic bowl again. Straighten up to have a better position. An improved soil mix with more pumice, Terramoll and lava since it is lighter than my standard mix with prevailing zeolite. Since march growing nicely, several times cutback of the top and peripheral branches. 

Now only one long sacrifice branch left to thicken lowest branch base. As you can see from the pictures it is quite long now. It is consisting of three shots. As always in bonsai, there is a controversy if the sacrifice branch with one shot only thickens faster or one which has side branches as well. I'm in the camp of " more branches, more foliage, faster thickening". But who knows. 

Anyway, for fun, I took a meter and made measurement if the base of sacrifice branch. It has some 17-18 mm as of today. Let's play the game. Try to guess how thick it will be at the end of October this year when I will cut it off. Write your best guess in the comment section below. Who will be closest to the reality is the winner. The winner can send me pictures of his tree and I will asses it and try to propose how I would design it and why, and I can sketch the virtual eventually. To be fair I will not do any reduction to branch and foliage until last day of October 2018. 

Ulmus

Ulmus

This ulmus is relatively new in my collection. It is developing quite well and it is vigorous grower. Now, top of the main trunk must have been worked with carving again. I did some carving of the stomp some years ago, but it was not sufficient. There have been too many potential continuations of the main trunk, so one of them was cut off and from that sop further down the trunk stomp was carved. On small sub-trunk carved section was too wide at the top, it was reworked as well. Rest of the job was to cut down and shorten many branches at the top section of the tree. Bottom branches were left almost intact, they will left without major cuts this year to gain girth.