My apologies to Sergio for starting a thread on deciduous. As everyone knows, I’m a pine guy. But, for some strange, unknown reason, I also like Zelkova Serrata. Not Chinese Elms, not wing-bark elm, not water elm... Zelkova. I don’t know why.
Broom style. I guess it could be a center line broom, but really, I prefer the good old traditional, boring brooms.
And I don’t have one. At least, not a good full sized one. I have a couple of shohin, but they don’t count.
Anyway, as they say on Youtube, press the “Like” button, and let’s get stuck in...
This tree:
This Zelkova was given to me from Boon. I don’t know exactly where it came from, I suspect one of his client gave it to him. Anyway, when I brought a bunch of my trees home from Boon’s last fall, he stuck this on the truck. Why? To torture me, I suppose. Maybe it’s a test. I don’t know. It’s full of problems. If I kill it, I can probably still use the pot!
Ok, where to start? The top has lots of problems. But, even IF I fix then, I’ll be stuck with those roots. Right? So, let’s ignore the top, and do something about the roots. Would potting it lower help? Yes, and not really. They’re WAY too heavy.
Let’s just start over.
Airlayer!
First step mark where I want to have the root layer:
Took a Sharpie, and drew a line around the base. I tried to get a bit of natural flair, but wanted to avoid getting those heavy roots. I thought about doing it higher, to avoid some of the trunk scars, but I figure when the new roots come in, it will cause bulging and the scars wont matter. We’ll see. (Assuming it works!)
I didn’t take a picture, but I ran my grafting knife along the line, all the way around.
Then, I cut a second line around, free hand. Then started peeling:
I’m committed now! Zelkova wood is really, really hard and dense. It makes great furniture! So the picture above shows the work in progress. When I first started, I thought it was going to be really difficult to get it cut, smoothed, and cleaned, but as it turned dout it wasn’t as difficult as I feared. Oh, there were some tedious sections, but I was able to get it cleaned up in about 1/2 hour.
All cleaned up:
I scraped all the cambium layers off. Down to the hardwood.
While I was doing this work, I was soaking some long fiber Orchid Moss. Once I got the upper edge of the cut nice and clean with my grafting knife, I packed about an inch of the wet spagnum on. I used a piece of aluminum Wire to wrap around the moss to hold it in place.
Then I took a 1 gallon zip lock bag and cut it open, and wrapped it around the ball of spagnum. One wire down low, and one wire up high to hold the spagnum in place. Then, one final wire around the middle to assure the spagnum stays in contact with the tree. Not a lot of pressure. The plastic is open above and below. Water will be able to get in, and out.
I did not, by the way, use any rooting hormone.
So, here it is:
Beautiful, huh?
Broom style. I guess it could be a center line broom, but really, I prefer the good old traditional, boring brooms.
And I don’t have one. At least, not a good full sized one. I have a couple of shohin, but they don’t count.
Anyway, as they say on Youtube, press the “Like” button, and let’s get stuck in...
This tree:
This Zelkova was given to me from Boon. I don’t know exactly where it came from, I suspect one of his client gave it to him. Anyway, when I brought a bunch of my trees home from Boon’s last fall, he stuck this on the truck. Why? To torture me, I suppose. Maybe it’s a test. I don’t know. It’s full of problems. If I kill it, I can probably still use the pot!
Ok, where to start? The top has lots of problems. But, even IF I fix then, I’ll be stuck with those roots. Right? So, let’s ignore the top, and do something about the roots. Would potting it lower help? Yes, and not really. They’re WAY too heavy.
Let’s just start over.
Airlayer!
First step mark where I want to have the root layer:
Took a Sharpie, and drew a line around the base. I tried to get a bit of natural flair, but wanted to avoid getting those heavy roots. I thought about doing it higher, to avoid some of the trunk scars, but I figure when the new roots come in, it will cause bulging and the scars wont matter. We’ll see. (Assuming it works!)
I didn’t take a picture, but I ran my grafting knife along the line, all the way around.
Then, I cut a second line around, free hand. Then started peeling:
I’m committed now! Zelkova wood is really, really hard and dense. It makes great furniture! So the picture above shows the work in progress. When I first started, I thought it was going to be really difficult to get it cut, smoothed, and cleaned, but as it turned dout it wasn’t as difficult as I feared. Oh, there were some tedious sections, but I was able to get it cleaned up in about 1/2 hour.
All cleaned up:
I scraped all the cambium layers off. Down to the hardwood.
While I was doing this work, I was soaking some long fiber Orchid Moss. Once I got the upper edge of the cut nice and clean with my grafting knife, I packed about an inch of the wet spagnum on. I used a piece of aluminum Wire to wrap around the moss to hold it in place.
Then I took a 1 gallon zip lock bag and cut it open, and wrapped it around the ball of spagnum. One wire down low, and one wire up high to hold the spagnum in place. Then, one final wire around the middle to assure the spagnum stays in contact with the tree. Not a lot of pressure. The plastic is open above and below. Water will be able to get in, and out.
I did not, by the way, use any rooting hormone.
So, here it is:
Beautiful, huh?
