I mentioned the fertilizer incident and the killing off of half or more of my collection. During Covid, I guess in an effort to stay in business, manufacturing was doing what ever it took to keep up with raw materials. Making fertilizer with things like urea, humates and quality ingredients was hard to do just sourcing them as well as transportation. So to stay in business they used what they could get and what they could get was chicken shit. Lots and lots of chicken shit. Now the fertilizer I had always used was organic, but with urea from cattle, not chicken shit. That stuff is hot and just burned my trees up I thought some might even catch fire.
So now I am starting over. Mostly I am not replacing the big trees I lost, some California junipers, other junipers like prostrata and shimpaku. I lost big pines and so many of my best Shohin which really were devastated with the small pots and hot fertilizer.
So as you look thru this photo log of trees keep in mind that most of what you see has only been developed in the last four years.
I don't know how this big trident made it thru. I am so happy it made it.
The East side of the Shohin bench.
Some new species for me, Kinzu kumquat, New princess persimmon, and a pyracantha with yellow berries.
Some small material in development on the back side in the shade. Here I am working on gardenia and Asian jasmine.
Out back I have pines in the ground. This is starting year four.
I have a couple raised grow beds that were not being used so I am using them to grow stuff on the ground but in cans.
A couple of Satsuki Azaleas, one in an oatmeal glazed Yamaaki on the left and the other in a two tone Heian Kosen. Two really nice top shelf Mame pots.
The west side of the Shohin shelf.
Moving south, we come to the group of benches and this monster resides there. His name is Gordo.
I mentioned that I was not replacing and large trees lost, I lied. In looking at my collection I was happy with what was left. It was pretty good but mostly deciduous. I needed a good large juniper, so I bought this thing. A very big Itoigawa with a 5 inch base and a trunk 3 inches across a foot above the dirt.
I have stuff everywhere being grown out for Shohin material. Someday it will come in handy. Yes those are little pines, first year I grew from seed. This year I transplanted them into individual tall pots. Next year they too will go into the ground.
I dug this crepe myrtle out of Lisa's yard after I moved in.
A couple chunky tridents to develop.
In all two Californias died and three made it thru. These two and a small one, Tripper, made it also. Tripper gets a new styling next week. That should make for a cool blog entry. These two also need a haircut.
Layer underway here. Will take this off in Feb. This is the best time to leave a layer on due to the fact that the tree right now while not growing on top is growing roots like crazy. It does this cause all the sugars in the tree go down to the roots for storage, and as it runs out of room for all that sugar it makes more roots to compensate.
I built this lift up work station at the end of one of my benches. When not in use it folds down flat against the end of the bench out of the way. I'll talk more about this after repotting and show how it works.
I just finished cleaning this pot last week. It is by Housei Souin. A very old pot and I am willing to bet probably the only existing one in America. It is made of Shudei (朱泥 - vermilion clay)
This one by Bigei needs a cleaning also. You don't see many by Hirata this big. There is no patina just calcium. The one above did have patina but the calcium stains had encapsulated the patina and just made brown calcium.
