by Larry Magee
The tree I am working on is a collected Colorado blue spruce. It was wired in a windswept style several years ago and left to grow on in an Anderson flat to improve the roots and recover. I obtained a sizeable natural slab collected by Matt Turner in Colorado.
I used a diamond hole cutter to make a nice-sized drainage hole and drilled extra holes for the tie-down wires. When I removed it from the training pot, I was pleased to see plenty of compact and healthy roots.
I combed out the root ball and removed any overly long and thick roots typically found on yamadori trees. I secured the drainage screen and wires and added a drainage layer to settle the tree.
To hold the soil in place after the tree was secured, I used a ten-pound bag of Muck-O to form a berm around the outside of the root ball. Muck-O is a commercially prepared muck made of long-fibered moss and ground-up akadama dust with a bit of organic fertilizer in it. I make pretty much the same myself but purchased some because of the large amount I would need.
With the muck in place i worked the standard 1:1:1 mix of akadama ,pumice and lava into the roots and covered the root ball with a thin layer of muck as well. I then covered the entire root ball with fresh moss and watered it in
The finished project weighed in at 150 pounds! I will do a bit of rewiring after it flushes out in June and try to have it show ready by next summer.
Larry Magee
