I have learned a lesson: growing trees in the ground either leave them be or pay some attention. These red gums tell the story.
The whole set got badly attacked by caterpillars in autumn, and they haven’t really recovered.
The summary is that the red gums are pretty worthless materials, from several problems:
First, that they were too tightly packed
Second, they were in a corner and heavily leaned to the light
Third, trying to fix the first two problems had me making some rather careless prunes
Forth, poor roots (but I think that was luck?)
Let’s look at some details.
The U-Trunk
Twin trunks, lots of weak branches that all come to one side.
Uncovering the soil, which I could mostly just brush away.
Turns out there was a significant tap root at play.
Look at the whole thing, which is when I started wondering what to do with it.
The best I could say was that there was plenty of movement.
Trying to bring the roots into a plantable shape.
There’s just nothing here for the size of the tree.
This isn’t worth the space to work on.
I’ve been listening to some bonsai podcasts recently that have mentioned the importance of the trees you don’t keep. It’s all opportunity cost of my time and my space. This one went into the green waste.
The Tuning Fork
Well, that’s one way to respond to a cut. If I’d been watching closer, I could have stopped that.
I mean… yeah.
The left hand top.
Eventually we get to the right hand top.
Not much happening at the base.
I could fix the tap root, but the rest would take a lot of work.
Again, this went to green waste.
The Step Ladder
I would not buy this from a nursery.
If this had had some lower branches, and the main prune had been more careful, then this would be much better material.
Weak nebari if I’m being generous.
Also in green waste.
The Survivor
…and the one at the back.
I’m not sure how I got here, but there’s one major chop, and then a tree.
Pretty weak.
Barely ok – not ridiculously high above, a reasonable trunk, and the new growth is doing a lot of work.
I decided to plant this as a literati style. It’s not great, but I’ll try to wire some more movement in and see how it goes.
I suspect I’ve got some sunk cost fallacy going on here. But let’s see.
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