Giant Sequoia Styling from nursery stock 15 years old.
Height 6 feet.
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About my relations with the Giant Sequoia.
The Giant Sequoia. When I was ill with Cancer back in 2000 I made the pilgrimage to Sequoia National Park in California. My wife asked me what I wanted to do before I died. (Well in case I died) I wanted to see the Giant Sequoias and do the worlds highest Bunjee.. When we finally got there I managed to walk up the steep hill from the lower car park. It was winter and the shuttle bus was not running. It really was very difficult for me and having been through months of Chemo., I was not at all as fit as I would have liked to be for this journey. I went up to see these great trees and they inspired me enormously. That grove holds a special place in my heart. I am sure that being with these wonderful trees helped me in many positive ways.
Oh, The Bungee? Well a couple of months later we travelled to New Zealand as I was heading up another convention in that beautiful country and we went to Queenstown where I did the Pipeline Bungee which is 325 feet high or the height of a 30 story building. Wonderful. We did a lot of other stuff. I was getting better with all this extreme stuff-I have always been a fan.
I am now fully recovered incidentally
Sequoiadendron Gigantium Giant Sequoia In June 2006
Rough shaping after potting into an oversized pot to develop roots.
I cant seem to locate the picture of the tree when I first received this but this is the first Styling I did in 2005. I repotted a year later.
June 2005 Height is 6 feet. All the existing branches were left on but the tree was leggy. I needed to pinch once a year for two years to get to the next stage. Heavy feeding with Biogold pellets twice a year (lots)
The trees first repot in July 2006. This required branch removal and the crown to be pulled over to for a new apex. The tree was also planted into a longer shallow pot as these are shallow rooted trees and now that I had developed the root system I could spread that out and remove the larger roots under the tree (sealed with Kiyonal after cutting)
This was the second styling in 2007. Lower branches were removed to increase the Sequoia outline. These were Jinned but may be removed later
The original apex had been hard chopped so the new apex styled in 2005 was created from a lower branch. Its now developing well and the shape is starting t look like my favourite tree in Nature.
June 2008 After working on the tree (At back of the picture) for a couple of years I managed to get the growth to become thicker. But now it was too long and unlike the outline of a Giant Sequoia
July 2009 I have just pruned the branches back, rewired the structure and cleaned out unnecessary growth.
I need to wait until the new growth starts to sprout within a few weeks and then pinch back hard.
Here you see the tree six weeks later. Half the tree down one side has been plucked and the other shows vigorous growth.
After plucking both sides September 2009 When you pluck this species only pull gently upwards. It is stiff so you can take a small bunch and pluck up but do not tear as that will damage the back shoots. These create the bulk of the growth the following year.
Meantime it looks pretty nice right now.
Plucking a maximum of three weeks after pruning and wiring. Its best to pluck once at the beginning of summer when the new shoots start to grow and then tidy up what you missed in early September in Northern climates. As you can see that within a month the foliage has started to fill in very quickly. It will be shaped in summer 2010 and that should get it pretty much to its final shape-well you all know that maintaining that shape is indeed an ongoing effort