Bonsai Fruit Tree Update
Today it’s updates to the bonsai fruit trees and we begin to create our own edible forest in our backyard.
I’ll show you what was going on in the bonsai zone today yesterday was cold windy and rainy and today it’s just a beautiful day t-shirt weather once again i’m heading out today to get the fourth load of horse manure the farm where vivian keeps your horses it’s been sold and you can see the subdivisions in the background and they’re just gonna plow the whole thing under and it’s gonna be built up the pile of horse manure out there is three years old so there’s there’s quite a bit um so she’s gotta be out at the end of june so she said come out every day until the pile’s gone so we can use that good compost in our backyard for we’re gonna make an edible forest back there it’s gonna be really nice so every bit of organic matter like that is just invaluable i made four stakes here to mark out the location of the concrete pad for the greenhouse so i’ll be putting those in today to lay out the location my poor trees are still stuck in the plant room we’ve been going down to freezing every night this week or slightly below freezing and tonight is the first time it’s going down to plus one one degree above freezing it’s trending in the right direction but it’s still pretty cold at night so they definitely can’t go out in the benches yet the ducks and the geese and the chickens are sure enjoying their outdoor time today beautiful weather i’m not totally wasting this beautiful day on my tropicals i brought out a selection of trees and put them in the greenhouse i’ve got it all filled with my tropicals so they’ll have to come back in at night it’s still too cold to leave them out in the greenhouse even if i put the heat on and with the heat on it’ll probably stay around five degrees celsius which is still a little cool they’re better to bring them in at night than bring them back out in the morning until the low is kind of plus 10 degrees celsius then i can leave them out which should be coming in a week or so i checked on elsa here and the cement was still soft you can see the head still moves a bit like it’s attached but it hasn’t fully hardened i found the waist was still i could wiggle it a bit too so i don’t know if i got bad cement or if it’s too old or what’s going on but it just didn’t like gluing this together so i’m gonna let it harden i i think it will eventually harden i’m just got it out here in the shade kind of air drying so yeah i’ll just leave that for another day i’ll give you an update on all the recent trees that i’ve repotted so i’ve got my red maple there you can see the twisty trunk it’s doing well the one branch the other branch hasn’t come out into leaf but maybe it won’t and i don’t really need it anyway my elm tree’s got some strong buds at the base down there so still waiting on that the black locust back there is sprouting branches down near the base of the tree all my silver maples seem to be doing really well they’re coming out into leaf now the amer maples so far doing well not real strong growth yet but hopefully soon all the larches that i repotted seem to be doing well they suffered for a bit they definitely had some setbacks you can see a few needles are kind of dry at the tips but they’re not getting any worse and they’re starting to get new shoots coming out on them so i think they’re on the rebound which is quite exciting the japanese black pine that i repotted is doing really well it uh nothing happened after i transplanted it it didn’t slow down in growth it looks healthy and so i think that was a success my water land pinching here with the red maples is doing quite well the one tree at the back here looked like it was suffering and uh i wasn’t sure if it was gonna make it but it seems to be on the rebound now so probably it’s growing new roots down there and it’s starting to gain strength so that turned out nice uh there’s more larches here that they’re not through the woods yet they’re still i’d say they’re borderline we’ll see what happens with them uh the english oaks the royal oaks are doing really well uh you can see it got damaged by the frost here the leaves went all crispy but there’s new shoots and buds coming out now so it’s uh doing really well it just uh slowed it down a little bit but not a whole lot the large forest is looking really lush and green just beautiful i still have to get to these as thinning them out but that’ll come i’ll get to that soon the moss has really come in yeah it’s looking good the douglas firs are doing well there’s some new shoots opening up down at the bottom here up top you can see there’s shoots all over the place it’s looking really healthy you can see some of the shoots coming out on the old wood back budding the tall one here is looking really good too so that’s kind of exciting to see them doing well i was uh quite worried about them last year the scots pine and shanny’s pot here is looking good no problems with that i didn’t repot it but i did you know fairly good pruning on it so that’s exciting waiting for my new apex to grow here this little tiny shoot will someday be the dominant leader on the tree the apple tree beside it here is coming out into leaf nicely where i hard pruned it you can see the buds each side of the new leader they’re coming out into leaf so that’s looking good my big red maple here is coming out into leaf looking good the manitoba maples or box elder maples doing really good lots of nice foliage on them my black willow coming out into leaf i didn’t prune it this year i i’m going to let it grow get strength and then prune it back hard early summer and then let it recover for the rest of the year my norway maple here the uh the new leader is doing really well you can see it’s going to push out the leaves soon this branch is doing quite well it’s probably even stronger it’s got leaves coming out already yeah doing well the old leader that i wanted to be the leader died many times so i’m not going to touch it this year i’m just going to let it do its own thing every time i touch this tree it just seems to shed whatever i want to be the leader so i’ll just leave it alone for a few years and gain strength all the thujia forest look terrible at this time of the year it’s when the old winter foliage is still on the tree and the new growth hasn’t started so you can see how the tips are starting to turn kind of a reddish orange color that means they’re going to grow soon so usually they start growing kind of the first week of june so it’s got a ways to go before the new growth comes out and then they just turn green and look beautiful but this is still the foliage from last year some of it’s been it’s got a bit of winter kill on it and it doesn’t look very good this time of year you can see my little cedar spirit tree here it also is getting those kind of yellowish reddish tips on it ready to grow soon my witch’s tree here too it’s going to grow which is going to be exciting it’s hard to make a video when i got this in the neighborhood [Music] there’s an eastern redbud tree that’s in flower down the street here i just want to let you see what it looks like because it’s a beautiful tree here’s a view of the tree so it comes into flower before it comes into leaf just beautiful there’s a close-up look at the seed pods right here and there’s a close-up look at the flowers just beautiful so i’ll take some of the seed pods and maybe we’ll try growing them i have grown some before but i didn’t get them through the winter so we’ll try again i’ll put those eastern redbud seeds in the greenhouse here and i’ll plant them a little later on it’s my natal ficus my schefflera my lemon tree my ficus microcarpa my porcula carrier afroforest my other ficus microcarpa fancy my lemon tree my cyrissa vicus cutting of a cutting and a ficus benjamina this month’s meaning of the toronto bonsai society was on growing ochre’s bonsai it was really interesting i learned a lot and that was hosted by david and connor so it was nice to hear their expertise on the subject i’m having trouble talking i’m heading off now to get another load of horse manure on this fine fine day i’m back from getting the horse manure so we got a full load again hard work shoveling it into all these bins loading it up so the whole back of the truck is full we’re putting a lot of the horse manure in the backyard here we’re going to create our own edible forest back here um when i moved into this house 25 years ago it was just a mowed field all this and we let nature grow up and a lot of the trees are just kind of pioneer trees they’re not really productive and the soil is getting a lot better back here we’ve been composting putting you know bags of leaves back here in the fall wood chips and it’s building up a good layer of soil so i think we can grow some fruit trees back here nut trees plant berry bushes currants gooseberries raspberries blackberries yeah making this whole backyard kind of beautiful but producing food a lot of the manure is just going in a pile back here for now and then we’ll spread it out and make gardens laura’s already started a garden here that’s kind of fenced in it’s got raspberries uh i think that’s it just raspberries in here now i’m in the greenhouse now so the plants had a beautiful sunny day and you can tell they’re just greening up they’re going a really nice dark green color um yeah really really liking the sun it’s incredible what sun can do for plants as opposed to artificial lighting and being indoors even though this is still kind of diffused lighting at least it’s uh strong and it’s directly on the trees it’s not shining in through a window where they get you know maybe an hour or two of sunlight a day here it’s kind of from morning till dusk we haven’t had a lot of rain this spring my cube is sitting at 150 gallons or what is that in liters it’s about just under 600 liters i guess somewhere around there but it’s over half full which is kind of exciting i still have to get the covers on these to stop algae growing inside and i got a lot of work to do but it’s exciting to have that much water stored you know at least it’ll get us through a dry spell laura’s got her cube partially filled too this one’s just empty because i got to move it away to work on the plant room and i’ll start work on that as soon as all the trees go outside on the benches till they there’s no more frost in the forecast and no more temperatures at one or two degrees above freezing the sun has set now and i did end up putting all my trees away i thought uh i don’t think it’s good for them to go down to that cooler temperature so they’re all out of the greenhouse i just moved in a few trees my osage orange my oaks my japanese black pine and my bald cypress if it’s still alive i don’t know there’s no sign of life on it i’m very worried about it but what can you do all the other trees should be fine and we’re going three degrees above zero tonight is the low so no problem for the other trees i didn’t get time to stake out the location of the concrete pad yet but i can do that tomorrow morning and we still have to move there’s some gooseberry bushes here because they’ll need to get a skid steer in to move the soil they’ll be digging up here and move it to the backyard so i gotta get a pathway cleared through here wide enough for a skid steer and we eventually want to keep this wide enough to fit the pickup truck back here anyway so you know this garden’s eventually going to have to be pushed over a bit so a little bit of work to go clearing this path getting the stakes in and then i can call the concrete people so that’ll be exciting what a beautiful day it was today i always seem to go to bed tired and sore but i recover the next morning i guess it’s just part of the bonsai lifestyle and that’s all for today i’m nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone [Music]
