derrick wrote:One in Southampton as big as a house not cut just wild most I see are something like a umbrella like say a small olive tree ask Billabong Captain cave man . Some shapes cordy on small plants
I love the cut on that first pic, removing lower leaves to get the tropical lower branch look, may take some height off it and do that!
Half Hardy wrote:Mr List wrote:if you want short plants don't but big trees for the spots you have.
That told you! Now go and sit on the naughty step
By that logic,if you don't want plants to die in winter,only plant 100% hardy plants. Sensible but not very interesting.
I am just about to buy loquat seed (apparently they have to be very fresh,to get them to germinate).Anybody got a rough idea how long it would take to grow to that size,from seed?
Concur its all about experimented, one of my fav parts of this gardening lark, is redesigning, and moving stuff about
I grew x20 from seed last year, got to 6" tall really quick, then all went downhill after summer and died, bar one which was put into a bigger pot. The x19 which died werent rootbound either, so not sure what happened.
Chad wrote:If it is a seedling being grown for foliage effect you can’t really go wrong.
If it is a grafted named fruiting form you need to be sure you don’t cut too far down or you tend to get growth from below the graft.
It is closely related to, for example, Pyracantha [which can be used as dwarfing rootstock for grafting it onto], and responds the same to ‘restorative' pruning.
If what you want is a vase shaped shrub with big leaves and no visible stem; cut it down to two inches from the soil about now. They tend to throw a lot of replacement shoots from a cut back into thicker wood, so if you pruned back the branches you would get a thicket of ‘shuttlecocks’ with the re-growth. They can be thinned out but it is quite tricky to get ‘balance’ back.
Good information for growing for fruit production
here.
Chad.
ps. Hard pruning usually works, but there is a small risk it would kill the tree!
Is there a way I can tell if its a graft, I can't see any join at the top of the trunk, it just seems the previous side shoots have been cut to encourage a solitary stem with a bushy head.
Half Hardy wrote:There is one locally,that has been left in a pot.I know has been there for at least 5 yrs.It always looks very healthy.Perhaps you could plant yours in a sunken container,to restrict growth.
I should have done that from the get go
But now it would mean digging it up, then i'd probably just move it to another spot, I heard they don't like root disturbance and this can see them off,
