chansen
Shohin
Memorial Day weekend was spent in western Wyoming at my parent's cabin. I've been wanting to do some collecting in the area for a long time, and I finally found a good time to do it.
Both trees are Rocky Mountain Juniper (I believe. Utah Juniper are also common, but these have the red bark of RMJ and the other more established junipers in the area had blue, not reddish-brown berries).
This was my first foray into collecting RMJ. The first was growing under a fir tree on the side of a steep hill. Luckily it had been raining earlier in the week, so the soil was nice and soft, but not wet and heavy.
The second was sitting in a depression on a rock formation. I have marvelously failed in capturing all of the movement in the lower trunk. It moves away from the viewer before going right and then coming back towards the front. The best part; there's decent nebari under the soil that will be exposed in a few years.
Both had a decent mass of fine roots close to the surface. I retained as much original soil as possible, although some fell away during collection. They were packed down the mountain sides (I modified a Cabela's hunting backpack that is designed to carry out a quartered deer, it worked very well), packed in wet sphagnum moss, and wrapped in burlap. Once I got back to home to Utah, they were planted, sphagnum and all, in 100% pumice. I added a few misters to the watering system I set up; they get a 1 minute mist 2x a day. I'll back off the mist once they look happy (or when someone smarter than me tells me to stop, whichever comes first...).
I had to explore three different canyons to find good collecting sites. There were nice trees in all of them, but some were just too difficult to get to. And I tried to limit my search to canyons where I could take a 4-wheeler. We've got a little trailer I pull behind it. Makes getting them back to the cabin really easy.
Don't forget, the hill is always steeper than it appears from the bottom
Both trees are Rocky Mountain Juniper (I believe. Utah Juniper are also common, but these have the red bark of RMJ and the other more established junipers in the area had blue, not reddish-brown berries).
This was my first foray into collecting RMJ. The first was growing under a fir tree on the side of a steep hill. Luckily it had been raining earlier in the week, so the soil was nice and soft, but not wet and heavy.
The second was sitting in a depression on a rock formation. I have marvelously failed in capturing all of the movement in the lower trunk. It moves away from the viewer before going right and then coming back towards the front. The best part; there's decent nebari under the soil that will be exposed in a few years.
Both had a decent mass of fine roots close to the surface. I retained as much original soil as possible, although some fell away during collection. They were packed down the mountain sides (I modified a Cabela's hunting backpack that is designed to carry out a quartered deer, it worked very well), packed in wet sphagnum moss, and wrapped in burlap. Once I got back to home to Utah, they were planted, sphagnum and all, in 100% pumice. I added a few misters to the watering system I set up; they get a 1 minute mist 2x a day. I'll back off the mist once they look happy (or when someone smarter than me tells me to stop, whichever comes first...).
I had to explore three different canyons to find good collecting sites. There were nice trees in all of them, but some were just too difficult to get to. And I tried to limit my search to canyons where I could take a 4-wheeler. We've got a little trailer I pull behind it. Makes getting them back to the cabin really easy.
Don't forget, the hill is always steeper than it appears from the bottom
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