Material for ground growing is building up!

As you know I have recently acquired an allotment, the chronicles of which can be read HERE

Well, not much has been happening over there but I have been slowly building my stock and associate paraphernalia for planting in the spring.

Check out this amazing pallet  which arrived at my workplace recently. the sides are completely removable, and fold down with metal hinges, it also has a lid if required.

However, to me, it looks like a box planter ready for newly collected material in the spring! it doesn't look it but it's actually a whopper - the width you can see nearest the front is wide enough to take a pallet truck. Just need to drill some holes and use some greenhouse mesh to cover the holes....

A couple of other bits too:

 

A nice ancient hawthorn I collected recently which is in dormancy:

gorgeous craggy bark and lovely wide basal flare(hard to tell from my crappy photo)....

Left to right: Hibiscus, collected from a hillside near Naples as a shoot over 30 years ago, and was left in a pot for the whole time - this was only repotted into the molar clay below last season.

Middle: trident maple - this is my main candidate for going in the ground and having a crack at a sumo over the next 15 years

right: field maple I *think*

You may be wondering what they are planted in, so I'll tell you; they are planted in pond baskets.

So why plant them in pond baskets you might be asking yourself? Well, I'll tell you!

One of the long term aims in bonsai is to generate a root ball of fine roots, and not long thick ones you'd normally associate with trees. Planting in the ground unfortunately has the side effect of promoting thick bulbous roots and normal pots do similarly.

Pond baskets however, have the amazing benefit of being super-free draining, and also self prune the roots as they grow. As the roots hit the edges of the basket they hit air and dry out, forcing the plant within to push out new fibrous roots further back in. This has the highly desirable effect of create a mass of fine feeder roots....perfect for eventually putting into a bonsai pot!

They are also bloody cheap and very convenient as they are generally hardwearing enough to re-use.

Anyway, back to the pics:

In no particular order, there are below - spruce , another hawthorn, Ash,  spirea, cotoneaster, a couple more Larch, a couple of beech, blackthorn etc

and one more Hawthorn...

Pretty much all of this stuff is being ground planted in the spring, to get some trunks growing. I won't go into trunks now, but suffice to say it's a long, slow job but there are plenty of trees here which should give me some decent stuff to play with over the next ten years!

I've acquired a fair bit of it from a friend who left the country and was having a clearout. Ironically his move fell through, but he let me keep it anyway! (I'm still unsure it wasn't just a ruse to clear out some of the monstrous volume he had in his garden!)

Thanks for reading, more updates soon, including a cheeky little Silver Birch I collected near Windermere

Deano