Thinning Out a Potential Clump

Lifted this azalea from the ground a few years ago and it was root pruned and potted into this seed tray two years ago.  An overdue thinning was necessary:

The potential front with majority of trunks leaning to the viewer.

Getting there. One or two crossing trunks removed.

A drastic thinning.

A lot of leggy branching/trunks so I’m hoping for more backbudding and a reduction in height further still at some point but I’ll keep it tidy from now and change the soil next year.

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Swelling Buds

Signs of life around the garden the other morning.  I’ve started to walk round and inspect things a bit more often, expecting to see buds starting to swell on some plant/tree species.  I’m looking forward to some flowers within the next few weeks:

European Hornbeam (Carpinus Betulus)

Flowering Peach (Prunus Persica)

Japanese Apricot (Prunus Mume)

Damson Tree (Prunus Insititia)

Japanese Maple (Acer Palmatum)

Full steam ahead…

All this warmth and rain means that my bonsai material in the  growing beds are running a bit rampant which is great.  Except that the weeds are getting out of hand too.  I’m thinking this is also because of the chicken manure I’ve been spreading.  I may change to a foliar feed instead and that’ll hopefully mean less work weeding.

Pyracanthra, Sorbus, Blaaws Juniper, Silver Birch, Japanese Maple

European Hornbeam

English yew, Japanese Cedar, raised Beds with trees rootpruned earlier this year. Still a lot of low level weeds were unremoved as I didn’t want to damage the recovering rootballs of trees in the shallow soil.  Think I’ll fill up the bed a bit more with another layer of soil.

A toddler sized bathing pool filled from just one raised bed of weeds.

I’ll try and keep on top of weeding a bit more now that I’m off work for a while.