Harvest Time

Today and over the past few days I have harvested all of my seedlings and placed them in pots in the cold frame for the winter.

I have pruned the older trees that were to large to fit in the frame and I will start to style the ones ready for bonsai training.

Notes:
With the fact that my daughter mixed all of the maple seeds (with the best of intentions) gathered last year and then some grew stronger than others I am still in the dark about which trees produced the best seeds.

I have produced a database and accompanying map of the trees I harvested from last year and will update the database with any new trees as well as the status of their individual seed prospects.

I will not be using a cold frame this year to cover the seeds but instead use a 4 mil clear sheet to cover the seed bed in an effort to keep off the elements and animals but with the hope of not having to build another cold frame. We will see how that goes.

I will be planting the seeds this year in a much more deliberate fashion in an attempt to prevent the large amount of collision between root systems of the seedlings.

This coming year I will be using only a soaker hose to water the seedlings as last year the overhead watering I feel damaged the way the plants grew. There tended to be a very crooked base for all of the plants that were beat down.

2 months later

Seedlings have started to really grow now but root depth is only about 1 inch so far. I am not sure if this is due to the soil that is underneath the topsoil cover or not. This next layer of soil is much denser and is made up of more clay than I am currently comfortable with.

The middle bed is suffering from a lot of seedlings taking a beating from watering. I installed a drip line as opposed to an overhead sprayer to allow the plants a better chance at not being knocked over. Once they get bigger I will let them be watered from above.

I transplanted about 10 seedlings into pots this weekend. Into a sandy loam soil recommended from Vertreess. I used a ratio of 2 to 1 topsoil to sand respectively. Just a test.

Cotelydon Madness

On 3/20 the first sprouts of Acer Palmatum seeds started to emerge from the ground. The Chinese Elm and Oak have not emerged yet but they are testers this year and also were attacked by a squirrel. Who knows what will happen with them.

On 3/22 while inspecting the upper bed and assessing squirrel damage, I also inspected the lower beds which are free from squirrel attack markings. Surprisingly the middle bed was teeming with life as the Acer seeds are now in all out sprout mode. It appears that I have between 30 - 40 shoots in the cotelydon phase already in the middle bed with another 10 remaining in the upper bed after the squirrel attack. Pretty awesome so far.

The lower bed and potted Acer Palamatum trees are also showing signs of growth detailed in the below bad photos. Exciting stuff for sure!

Squirrel Attack!!!!

I made a bad choice this past weekend by leaving one of the side panels open when installing shade cloth on both of my two cold frames. I felt that airflow would be important at this time of year as the trees start off. By installing the shadecloth I can keep the soil moisture and sun at a contolable level instead of fighting the terrarium like experience with the warm weather we have been experiencing.

How the shadecloth will work will remain to be seen but after one day with the side panel off a squirrel snuck into the upper bed and had some serious lunch on my newly sprouted seeds. Devestating. In addition to an unknown amount of Acer Palmatum seeds I may have also lost my Chinese Elm seeds as that area of the bed was also torn up. I also for sure lost all of my Oak acorns. It is my own fault I should have kept all of the sides covered until the trees established themselves.

Shade Cloth

I have recently replaced the 4 mil plastic on the cold frames with the material that I will be utilizing all summer long to protect the plants from strong sun. The "Shade Cloth" that I am using this year is the same material that folks use to prevent weeds from coming up in gardens. It is pretty opaque by design so I will see how well the plants do in the artificial shade.

I chose to switch it this past Saturday 3/20 because we were experiencing pretty hot weather for this time of year and I did not want the plants in the cold frame to suffer from overheating and intense sun exposure. Ironically when I shot the picture it was raining and rather chilly

I also suffered my first squirrel attack detailed in another post. I have since enclosed the three outward facing sides with shade cloth to prevent further squirrel mischeif and then leaving the backside open to help with airflow. It remains to be seen how determined the squirrel will be to get back into the greenhouse with easy access removed.

Germination!

The first Acer Palmatum seed to be observed germinating this year occured on Sunday March 14. I observed it by accident when pulling up a weed that had started growing.

Bonsai Soil Part 2

In order to add the organic component to my Bonsai soil mix I purchased a bag of Pine Bark nuggets from Home Depot in Annapolis. The term nugget defines a piece of Pine Bark no larger than the size of a quarter and about as thin as a piece of poster board. Some other types of Pine Bark mulch bags had pieces the size of a dollar bill and about as thick as your finger. I did not select the larger size because of how I wished to shred the Pine Bark.

I have read many ways that folks have decided to shred their Pine Bark down in size to get to the appropriate size for Bonsai soil. Some suggested using a hammer to break up the mulch. Some suggested using your hands and some even suggested using a cheese grater. I tried each of these methods and was very disappointed in each. The method that I settled on would seem obvious to many, but it did not hit me until I started looking around my garage for other tools to utilize in shredding the bark

It turns out my leaf blower has a mulching conversion extension. Duh...

However one pass through the mulching extension does not do the trick in getting the pieces small enough. Actually I had to pass it through between 4 and 5 times depending on how much got sucked through the unit at a time. If I ended up sucking up too much in a pass the pieces were not nearly shredded enough.

Start

1 pass

3 passes

5 passes

So in order to complete the task I simply filled a gallon bucket halfway and started passing the chips through by sucking them out of the bucket and through the shredding extension. They were caught in the exhaust bag and I just dumped the shredded material back into the bucket and repeated the process 4 or 5 times. In the end I came up with some really rocking organinc soil additive to with my diatomaceous earth.

Before and After

Bonsai Soil Prep Part1

Previously I have discussed the use of Oil Dry as a Bonsai Soil. It can be used either by itself or it can be combined with organinc materials to yield a modified quality bonsai soil. Below are the steps that I have used in Oil Dry prep and what I do with the left over grit.

I created a simple sifter by using a small piece of window screen attached to the bottom of a cut out flower pot. I simply place the Oil Dry into the sifter and shake out the small particles into the blue bucket shown in the picture.

Usually I have to shake one cup at a time for about 3 minutes in order to get through the entire cup and sift out all of the small particles. I save the particles that have been sifted out in the blue bucket  until the bucket is filled.

Once the Oil Dry has been sifted out I take the smaller particles and spread them out onto the surface of the seed beds. Vertrees recommends that a layer of grit be placed over the seedbeds and Diatomaceous Earth is a good choice because it is made of diatoms which are small creatures that have died and their sharp microscopic shells will tear apart any small bugs that will try to attack the trees.


Below is the sifted vs unsifted.

March 1, 2010 Status photos

Pruning Schedule from the Weedy Reader

Pretty Cool Chart on when to Prune

http://www.emerysgarden.com/infosheets/trees_pruning.htm

Climate Plots for 2009 and 2010 so far

Chinese Elm Seed

In addition to the Acer Palmatum seed that I have gathered this past year and sown, I have also sown a small amount of Ulmus Parvifolia or Chinese Elm.

These trees will serve as a year round indoor Bonsai plant. I have had some success in germinating these seeds through non-natural cold stratification using the refrigerator.

This year I wanted to experiment with natural stratification to see if my germination rate would increase. Last time the seeds that I purchased only germinated @ 5 in 35 out of the fridge. This time I bought 3 packs of 35 for $ 3.29 /packet and sowed them along with my Acer seeds in late November in a small end portion of the upper seedbed.

I purchased the seeds from the Whatcom Seed Company. www.seedrack.com