More than just plants and trees

Special places carries special trees. How great to visit my relatives in Finland and have the opportunity to dive deep in the familys history and visit some special places. Some 120 years ago my great grandfather lived on this very spot and travelled this road. Tough soil to grow your veggies in and support the family back then, but exellent for collecting future bonsai material now.

Great feeling to find a lot of young conifers at the very place the old house used to stand. Mostly Scots pine (Pinus Sylvestris) but also a couple of young Common Junipers(Juniperus Communis). These younglings have a long way to go before they can be called bonsai, but i am exited to find the material on that lot of land.

The reason for collecting small specimens only! After wrapping the roots in wet paper and tying them together in small bundles in a plastic bag they all had to fit in the small suitcase.

Now they are all potted and stored for the winter along with the rest of the pack. The powerfull LED-ramp is set on six hours of light at the moment on the temperature is at a steady 2-5 degrees Celsius wich makes about 37-40 fahr. I will slowly start to increase lighting hours around newyears.

Hopefully all the collected material will make it thru the winter but only time will tell. Exitement grows as we close up on the darkest day of the year in late december. We have past winters halfway point but still we the coldest part ahead of us in Jan-Feb.

Winter storage

Steady 0 to +4 degrees celsius. Collected and repotted trees are safely out of the punishing autumn rains. The powerfull LED ramp in the ceiling is slowly reduced to correlate to outside hours of light. Should push new root growth and minimize risk of root rot. So far everything looks the right color but we´ll se in march/april.

Some of the deciduous trees that went into storage after leaf drop

Japanese snowball, Viburnum plicatum

Weekend work on this decidious shrub. I had go for something lower to fit that area in the garden. Might as well try to use it and pot it instead.

Scene of the crime after some serious root pruning.

At last in the pot to grow and regain some strenght. Straight to the storage to recover.

Collecting some yamadori

Maybe one of the last opportunities of the season to go into the woods and collect some future bonsai material. The big freeze is nowhere to be found with current temperature at about 5-8 degrees celsius and a lot of rain.

The forests around Stockholm was rewarding today with two new conifers to add to the growing collection of bonsai material.

Collected Spruce, Picea abies

Collected Scots pine, Pinus Sylvestris