Tilia cordata No.1 in progress

During last weekend repotting session I did the change of pot for this small linden. Now it is sitting in Luboš Škoda pot as you can see from the pictures. The tree was collected from the wild by myself in August 2009. 

It was just one month and one year after my first daughter was born. Well, as you can see in the picture, she was assisting me with fixing mesh on drainage holes with wires, and my son was taking pictures with remote control of the DSLR. Just nine years apart. Hm. I'm getting older, it seems.   

Actually, 2009. 

Tilia cordata No.2 in new pot

Linden repotted last weekend into its first pot. Pot made by my friend Daniel Tarcak, the amateur potter with potential for sure. The tree is, unlike most of my trees, from finger thick nursery material I got from uncle years ago, and field grown for a few years.

Larix decidua in new pot

We had nice warm spring Saturday so it was a good time to do some repotting. Larch deserved new pot so it has one now from Luboš Škoda kiln. The pot was not purchased for this larch and it is obviously a bit bigger than needed but it was best I had for the tree right now. Pot is much shallower than previous one, so I covered the top of the substrate with moss to use whole depth of it for potential root growth. 

Cornus mas "Vesna"

Last week it looked like spring is here. Well, weather forecast this week shows quite opposite and for the large parts of our country, we are expecting unusually frosty time for the upcoming week. Nevertheless, my "Vesna" have different opinions on when to start flowering. Since few days flower buds start opening. 

So, I decided last weekend it was time to do some reporting. I got a couple of new pots recently and one of them, from Tomas Snovicky I used for this dogwood. This is yamadori tree collected from wild some time before 2009 (not by myself, so I do not have the complete track of its origin). It was collected from stony grounds and a couple of stones were embedded between massive anchor roots still. I repotted it a couple of times in last decade but took a lot of caution not to kill the tree and I managed to do only minor structural reductions of big roots. Still, step by step. The health of the plant has the highest priority. Now I managed to remove a considerable amount of old thick roots which prevented me from potting it into more desirable position and into the shallower pot before. So Roots are gone, one and half of the stones are gone. One stone completely, the second one is still part of the composition and I think it will stay there. I just hit the last stone with a hammer from underneath and it broke down into two pieces. The tree is now sitting in its new pot in slightly tilted position to the right on the front picture. It is much lighter as well due to removed rocks, few handfuls of old soil removed. And finally, I used lighter particles in the substrate composition. I'm testing pumice, it is lighter and has nice colours. Hopefully, the tree will have all flowers open and I hope to take decent pictures in next couple of days.

Tree

I use to run around this tree very often, I see it during all seasons. It is old pear or at least I think it is. Must be quite old. It is majestic and it looks impressive without foliage now. Interestingly, it look much thinner and younger on this picture taken with phone camera only. Nice to see and learn something about the structure of the real trees. 

Happy New Year 2018

Winter

On November 17th I did my winter storage for the trees. It is my tradition since few years. On that date we have holiday celebrating end of the communist rule in our country in 1989. Now we have freedom, even if we still have to fight for it and communist are back in different furs. 

Anyway, I put all my trees down from shelves and cover them with wood chips, sawdust. Cheap and effective. After that I ordered additional winter cover and watering. It arrived tonight. 

Cornus mas "Attila"

As I promised few days ago, here are the pictures of the dogwood after applying couple of guy wires and quick editing just by pruning unnecessary branches. I will wire it in early spring next year, hopefully tree will be repotted into ceramic pot in case one suitable will find the way into my garden. 

Fraxinus ornus "Jan"

Couple of days ago tree still had its foliage, then came night frosts and all leaves were gone. It was time for few decent pictures. So, here you can see it with remaining autumn foliage and then without as all leaves were removed. Right time to evaluate structure improvement since last season. Couple of necessary edits were performed in the crown already. 

Cornus mas "Attila"

There are the first and there must be last. Last tree with foliage in garden is Attila obviously. Was green up until recently but two frosty nights brought some purple on the leaves. So when I was doing winter storage for all trees I managed to make few pictures. As it is common with dogwood, just after first frosts leaves are dropping down at the moment you touch it. All were down in 5 minutes. When taking pictures I saw places to be edited and therefore few branches were shortened and guy wires applied. No pictures after work this time. It was already too late and too dark. Ill post them later this week hopefully. 

Larix decidua after little edit

Couple of guy wires were added to bring branches into better positions. I did even more bud doing last bends on apex branch I broke it. So, some wires were removed and branch was rescued with rafia and tape.  

Malus

My sme les. Pridaj sa aj ty.

I just saw the video of the campaign in the paper. It never stop amaze me how fast we are able to cut down forests. I go to the woods as often as I can, and I know those images from my own perspective. We have to stop doing this genocide to our nature before it is too late. 

What our government is allowing to be done to the forests in National Parks is just crazy....

Link to the campaign page could be found here if you would like to support it. 

Thanks.

Cornus mas "Vesna"

Sometimes weather is against us. I wanted to take pictures of nice foliage on Vesna for some time but it was staying green for way too long. When colors started to appear leaves started to fall off quickly. So no really good shots of this cornus this autumn. Just few details. Last night we had first frost so in few hours all foliage will be down and tree will be stored for winter this coming weekend.