Spring seems to be taking the day off! Work continues to clear the area and decide where to place the new glass greenhouse!
It is april the 21st today and as you can see we got snow last night how dreadful so i did bring all my trees in from the greenhouse all my tropical trees so let’s go have a look at the greenhouse now here’s a look at the bonsai area at least the uh the older part of it so yeah everything’s looking nice with snow on it that’s pretty cool hopefully everything will do well you can see the snow on top of the maple leaves here down here on top of the larch that large forest looks pretty cool in there i don’t know if the soil is frozen yeah it is yeah we got down to -3 last night pines are looking cool so yeah we’ll just have to see how everything did so far these leaves don’t look so good they’re kind of droopy but we’ll see we’ll see what happens in the greenhouse here let’s see what temperature it is it is it’s about 40 degrees fahrenheit or yeah maybe four degrees celsius four or five yeah so i brought some of my my more tender trees in here i’ve got my redwood in here or not my redwood my bald cypress which i don’t know i hope it’s alive but i have no idea still no signs of life much on it i thought i saw buds popping on it and spring but see like right here i think i see one but i don’t know i’ll have to wait yeah everything else looks fine my little royal oaks here those sage oranges still have the green buds on them i’m not sure about these bay berries if they survived the winter i haven’t seen any signs of life on those yet either got the ginkgo in here you can see the the green buds forming on the ginkgo there so yeah and then i have a black locus in here uh my wife found it growing her in her garden and she dug it up for me and gave it to me and then look what the rabbits did this year it used to be quite a tall tree so there is green buds popping out on it so i’m hoping you know once again the rabbits know what they’re doing and they’ll give me a nice little bonsai tree to work with there so i’ll keep you updated on what happens to these leaves in this cold weather these fresh new leaves see if they perk up or if they die off and then you know sometimes you get a second flush of growth down below here usually it doesn’t kill the tree but uh yeah it can definitely set them back a bit but you know in spring they have tons and tons of vigor so hopefully they’ll do okay i don’t think the t-rex likes the cold it’s quite typical to have snow in april here and even in may and we’ve even had snow in june the first week of june just a light snow that didn’t last long but we’ve had it i can see the apple tree the buds are really turning red there i don’t know if you can see that up top here i’ve got some buds here and i’m hoping something comes out on this main trunk oh yeah there’s there’s a butt at the front and one at the back there so everything’s looking good for the apple tree so my large trees i think i will combine the larches with the black spruce i think that look good i’ve got one two three four five of them here which is probably a good number five larches 15 black spruce i think that looked quite nice douglas firs have snow on them i see my silver maple came out in the leaf awesome here’s a look at the new bonsai area yeah we got our bear there scott’s pine on the rock cool the bird’s nest spruce over there has got snow on it films my new little cedar forest snow on it a pine over there all right well yeah that’s the update april the 21st lots of snow hi everyone nigel saunders here it is a cold snowy day this morning and i’m thinking about where i’m going to put the greenhouse originally i was going to have the greenhouse lengthwise along here so this is kind of the main path to the backyard so it would be 90 degrees to my other greenhouse and then i was thinking well in the winter time the sun is just kind of over the fence this is uh the south here so you get this southern sun so i think you know for optimum heating in the winter i would want the greenhouse sideways to get the most glass surface area facing the sun which would mean my doorway would either have to be at the front here or at the back uh it might be nice having you know the two doors near each other the door to the plastic greenhouse and the door to the glass greenhouse kind of facing each other maybe a central path or something down the middle here so i’ve been laying it out i think i want the edge this back edge of the greenhouse kind of in line with the edge of this one so i would have maintained this pathway here so the side of the greenhouse would be kind of around this area and then it would come over to to about here i think that would be best so i’ve got to remove this stump here this was our old cherry tree it uh we started from a small tree and it grew fantastic and then one year it just died it just didn’t come out and leaf so i’m not sure what happened to it if it got diseased or if it just i don’t know winter killed it somehow but it died so i got to remove that stump there to kind of clear this area out a bit more it’s getting there i’ve got a lot of a lot of this stuff cleared out of here so if the greenhouse backs up against the path then i’m gonna have to move my filming studio over more or in a different location i’ll have to rearrange everything kind of around the greenhouse but i’m kind of constrained i have the pear tree here and i’ve got the maple over here so i’ve kind of got to have the greenhouse in the middle between them so this sort of garden here which has raspberries and gooseberries and currants in it i may have to move a section of it over more over this direction i hate to dig up some of these plants because they’re so established especially these gooseberries but and they’re flowering at the moment even though there’s snow on them but i may have to do that or prune them back a little more to get the space in between the two trees for the greenhouse here so that’s my dilemma i mean everything in life is a compromise the other thing with the greenhouse when the sun’s really low on the horizon the fence kind of if you picture the angle of the light coming down if i have the greenhouse too close to the fence it’ll stay in shadow the benches and the greenhouse i’ve noticed in the wintertime that this greenhouse the one bench will stay in the shadow all winter and this one gets light so i need you know the back edge of the greenhouse at least out to this edge which it will be and that way it’ll get light on the benches for the whole winter so my first job i’m going to remove this cherry stump with the axe so i’ll be doing some lumberjacking all right [Music] [Music] so i’m in the process i’ve got to remove all these raspberries that are growing here raspberry plants that’s quite a few clumps of them over here i was looking at this gooseberry bush so the main part of the gooseberry is in here quite far back and these are just branches and i some of them branches have rooted because we throw compost on top here so i think those will come up quite easily and i can kind of move the fence line back quite a bit making the edge of the greenhouse kind of somewhere in here so i’ll kind of intrude in the garden space here a bit but i think that’s better that way it’s not jammed up you know tight against the pear tree here the pear tree has flowers coming on it which is kind of exciting so i’ll continue removing the stump and digging up the raspberries kind of clearing this spot of land i’ve been digging out all the raspberries here and i’m finding that the stump is quite loose so there’s my box with the raspberries rabbits prune them down but they’ll grow again yeah so i think i can just push the stump out so i’m going to try it there it goes it wasn’t too hard at all there it is the old cherry trees out i can see these raspberries were wrapped around the roots of it that’s good that’s out i can put that in the backyard to decom pose yeah that’s good to get that out oh can i lift it oh yeah i can lift it okay so i’ve got the cherry tree stump removed i’ve got a lot of clumps of raspberries that i gotta dig up here relocate those i tell you i’m not feeling cold today at all i’ve got my jacket off and i’m keeping plenty warm doing all this digging and lifting and moving so that’s good feels like spring to me out here [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the snow is really starting to come down now it’s looking very wintery out here i have made really good progress on the raspberries i got this major clump out here i’ve got a couple more clumps over in this area that i got to remove still and i think that’s about it then i can push this garden edge back i can prune the currants back uh over as far as i can anyway so here’s a look at all the raspberry canes i’ve got out so i got a good amount of root with each one i was quite careful getting them out so yeah that’ll have to get planted elsewhere once i have everything cleared in the greenhouse area i’ll have to put four stakes in the ground to mark out the area where the pad is going to be located so i’ll measure off the fence to make sure the pad’s square to the fence and then it’ll be up to the concrete people to finish the finish the job so that’ll be exciting getting that in and i don’t know don’t know when they can do it but uh we’ll see we’ll see how it goes it’s keeping an eye on me well there goes it’s having a drink [Music] i’ve been looking at the site again and i may be rethinking the orientation of the greenhouse the sun it rises in the summer over this direction it goes across the sky and sets right about over here so you know ideally the greenhouse would be put on sort of this angle so that’s kind of 45 degrees to either direction if i have it lengthwise this way or lengthwise this way so i think if i did have it lengthwise this way i’m getting all this afternoon and setting sunlight kind of almost sideways on the greenhouse so i think it would be just as good as having it sideways because you know you get this pine tree blocking sun i got the pear tree here i got all these maples so i don’t get a lot of sun kind of this direction until it’s quite high in the sky so i don’t think it really matters which direction i put it and i think to fit it in between this pear tree and this maple here i think lengthwise is the better choice if i have it sideways i’m pretty tight to both ends here so if i have it lengthways it fits in better i still have to clear these gooseberry bushes back a bit i’ll have to dig up the ones that are rooted push them back a bit just so they can get room to get in here to dig out this soil to pour the pad this soil is really good like it’s good soil you know down really deep uh we’ve been you know putting wood chips and compost in this area for well 25 years and it’s really built up with really good soil so we’re going to get that soil dug out and then we’ll get its skid steered down behind that mound in the backyard and that’ll be our compost pile and we can use that soil when we’re gardening in that and it’s good good stuff so that’s where the soil will go and then they’ll pour it out put down gravel here compact it down and then the cement pad will go on top of that and then it’ll get back filled yeah so my next job is to move this gooseberry line back so i’ll dig out what i can kind of push it back so there’s a little more room here well i think i have enough of this area cleared that i can call the concrete place and schedule my concrete pad to be poured i don’t know when they’ll be able to come do it but at least i’ll get my name in on the list it is the afternoon now and i phoned them about the concrete pad and he’s going to come around this afternoon and have a look at the site and yeah check it out so that’s good you may also have noticed that it is snowing quite hard out the ground is turning white so i’m glad i brought all my tropical trees in from the greenhouse inside last night it’s supposed to be quite cool again tonight the sun is sort of coming out it’s just beautiful out here with the snow the sun it’s kind of warmed up a bit there’s the avatar grove in the winter very cool it is later in the afternoon it’s still snowing just lightly now the guy from the concrete place came he said everything’s looking good um he suggests i wait a bit until the ground hardens up a bit he says it’s pretty soft and he thinks you know all the vehicles will get stuck so that’s good he said give me a call when it’s dried up and they’ll start the work so hopefully we’ll get some good warm sunny days and the ground will firm up a bit and i can get this concrete pad poured well i am slowly making progress in the bonsai area for the new greenhouse it’ll be exciting getting that pad poured and then start the building of it which i think it’ll be tricky but we’ll get it together after all the yard work today clearing the spot for the greenhouse i came into the nice warm plant room here gave all my trees a really good watering and that’s all for today i’m nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone
