Ginkgo comes home
Posted: October 26th, 2019, 9:45 am
Back in 2016 a family friend said she had a Ginkgo in the nature strip she wanted to remove that had been there for 20 odd years, and asked if i would want to use it for Bonsai. Of course the answer to that question was resounding YES! I drove around and it was certainly manageable; it was a little less than 6ft in height after she had chopped the top off it with the idea of removing the whole thing eventually. This actually helped me greatly as it had prompted dormant buds further down to start shooting. I was a little disappointed at the lack of taper in the tree, but beggars can't be choosers and it was a free 20 year old ginkgo after all.
I waited until winter of 2017 to go around and have a look at digging it up, and after some slight excavation i discovered it actually didn't have a lot of roots for a tree planted in the ground for so long. What it did have one one very thick root running off under the pavement, so in my inexperience i decided to err on the side of cutting that one big root, and then leaving it for a year in the ground to recover from that. The family friend obligingly agreed to having it one more year in the nature strip and i went away and put it out of my mind.
I got a call again in autumn of 2018 to say would i mind awfully coming and getting the Ginkgo, as the council were about to come and pull out a whole bunch of trees including this ginkgo. She had asked them if it was okay for me to take the Ginkgo, and they were happy for that to happen, so I chucked a spade and some newspaper in the boot to wrap the roots in and raced around. The tree lifted very easily, and i got it home to inspect it. I washed the soil away and found that under the ground the base had swelled dramatically. It was by no means beautiful, but it was more interesting than the taper-less trunk. I found some nice strong shoots lower on the trunk, cut it down to about 2ft tall and chucked it in a polystyrene box.
Come spring it shot away to my relief, and once it gained some strength i fertilised it well but not excessively heavily. I noted a couple of buds on the trunk had appeared, but they didn't shoot. In winter of 2019 i went back in and cut away the last of the big root that had now died off, and put it back into the box again. Now as i look at it, those buds on the trunk now shooting and there are new dormant buds taking off from the swollen base too.
Not only is it great fortune to have been offered this tree for free, and also managed to dig before the council put it through a wood chipper; but it turns out that my family friend purchased it originally from the plant stall at my school fete in 1996. Who was it who grew all the plants for that stall, including seed growing a bunch of Ginkgo? My father.
So this tree, started by my father, left my family 23 years ago. Now it returns for a whole new direction in for life. Needless to say this stump is very special to me now, and i hope to take it onward in good health in the next 20 years+. Updates will follow from here.
The stump the spring after i collected it in 2018
The stump today, a year on
Size of the base that was submerged below the soil line (hand for comparison)
Some of the dormant buds starting to shoot:
Bark texture coming through
I waited until winter of 2017 to go around and have a look at digging it up, and after some slight excavation i discovered it actually didn't have a lot of roots for a tree planted in the ground for so long. What it did have one one very thick root running off under the pavement, so in my inexperience i decided to err on the side of cutting that one big root, and then leaving it for a year in the ground to recover from that. The family friend obligingly agreed to having it one more year in the nature strip and i went away and put it out of my mind.
I got a call again in autumn of 2018 to say would i mind awfully coming and getting the Ginkgo, as the council were about to come and pull out a whole bunch of trees including this ginkgo. She had asked them if it was okay for me to take the Ginkgo, and they were happy for that to happen, so I chucked a spade and some newspaper in the boot to wrap the roots in and raced around. The tree lifted very easily, and i got it home to inspect it. I washed the soil away and found that under the ground the base had swelled dramatically. It was by no means beautiful, but it was more interesting than the taper-less trunk. I found some nice strong shoots lower on the trunk, cut it down to about 2ft tall and chucked it in a polystyrene box.
Come spring it shot away to my relief, and once it gained some strength i fertilised it well but not excessively heavily. I noted a couple of buds on the trunk had appeared, but they didn't shoot. In winter of 2019 i went back in and cut away the last of the big root that had now died off, and put it back into the box again. Now as i look at it, those buds on the trunk now shooting and there are new dormant buds taking off from the swollen base too.
Not only is it great fortune to have been offered this tree for free, and also managed to dig before the council put it through a wood chipper; but it turns out that my family friend purchased it originally from the plant stall at my school fete in 1996. Who was it who grew all the plants for that stall, including seed growing a bunch of Ginkgo? My father.
So this tree, started by my father, left my family 23 years ago. Now it returns for a whole new direction in for life. Needless to say this stump is very special to me now, and i hope to take it onward in good health in the next 20 years+. Updates will follow from here.
The stump the spring after i collected it in 2018
The stump today, a year on
Size of the base that was submerged below the soil line (hand for comparison)
Some of the dormant buds starting to shoot:
Bark texture coming through
good job!
And well woth the effort by the look of it.
