Ken’s Trees

Aside from the rain these past two days the weather has been beautiful and it is about time to get my seedlings outside. Even though it may not seem like a big deal to move these plants less than 100 feet, when a plant is moved from indoors to outside it is really being introduced to a completely new environment. It can be a real shock to the trees (or any plant) if it is not done carefully and in a gradual manner. This process is called hardening off, and it can take between one and two weeks to complete. During this time the plant will be placed outdoors in increased amounts of time and will adapt to the change in sunlight, wind, temperature fluctuation, and a bunch of other outdoor environment changes. I once saw a schedule when the gardener moved their seedlings outside for 15 minutes on the first day and then doubled the time every day until they were out for 8 hours, the next day they were left out for good. I want to be careful since these are my first seedlings and this seems a bit too aggressive and it does not account for the move into full sunlight. Here is the schedule I am using, I’m currently on Day 4:

Day 1: 15 minutes in shade

Day 2: 30 minutes in shade

Day 3: 1 hour in shade (Couldn’t find sunlight if I wanted it yesterday)

Day 4: 2 hours in shade (I would have liked to get a half hour in the sun, but it is overcast today)

Day 5: 2 1/2 hours in shade, 1/2 hour in sun

Day 6: 3 hours in shade, 1 hour in sun

Day 7: 4 hours in shade, 2 hours in sun

Day 8: 5 hours in shade, 3 hours in sun

Day 9: 6 hours in shade, 4 hours in sun

Day 10: 6 hours in shade, 6 hours in sun

Day 11: 14 hours in sun location

Day 12: 16 hours in sun location

A couple of clarifications here, the steps to my apartment are in the shade for most of the day, this will be my shady location, while the table in the backyard will be in direct sunlight for most of the day. I certainly don’t receive anywhere near 14 to 16 hours of sunlight so there is no need to move the trees twice on the last couple days. The final thing that I have not mentioned yet is a reduction of watering during this period. They will certainly need to be watered during this period, but it is recommended to do this less frequently.

Well I’ve been slacking off with the blog the last couple weeks with the nice weather and all, but have had a surprising number of people asking what’s happening with Willard.  For some reason I thought that I had taken more photos than I actually did this past week, so unfortunately there are only two for the past seven days.  I got permission from my landlord this weekend to setup a table out in the sunny area in the backyard to move the trees out to.  In the next post I will discuss the the process of easing them into their new environment.

Willard was hoping to run the Boston Marathon today,  but was sorely disappointed when I told him that you need to qualify to run in it.  I think he’s training for next year, but I didn’t see him move all day.

I was going to write a tree joke today, but I cannot seem to find one.  Anyone know any good tree jokes?

You may have noticed that the highest branch of Willard has been slowly tilting up over the past couple weeks.  This has also been happening on a couple of the other trees, but the most pronounced is the General.  At this point it looks like the highest branch of the General (on the right in the photo below) was the original trunk of the tree.  The branch originally grew out horizontally, but every day it gets even more vertical.  It will be interesting to see if it becomes the main trunk of the tree.

How can I possibly be expected to handle work on a day like today?  The weather is finally beautiful out this week and it is very difficult to get much of anything done.  Willard and the others are almost ready to start the process of getting outdoors for the spring.  Check back tomorrow to see what the General has done!

I apologize to all of Willard’s fans out there that have been wondering what happened these past couple days.  For some time now, especially with the launch of inventionpub.com, I have been overwhelming myself with blog stuff.  I really just needed a little break from both of them, and this morning I felt like I was ready to get back to work on these blogs.  The trees remain in good care, and surprisingly I only missed photos on Tuesday and Saturday (which was planned).  Above is Willard on Wednesday, and below is Willard on Monday.

I spent the weekend in Maine, so I missed day 100 for Willard. Above is Willard on Sunday, and below is day 99. Hopefully once I get back on track here I can post a progression image of the first 100 days as I had planned. Look for this within the next couple days…

One of the things that I have been curious about is how these dawn redwood trees will grow once pruned.  There is a branch on Dawn McCain that looks like it is in sort of rough shape, so I figured this would be a good branch to experiment on.  I cut off the end of the branch and now I will have to wait to see what happens, below is a photo of the pruned branch.

I was watching How Its Made on the Discovery Channel and they started talking about bonsai.  Unfortunately it was an introduction into how fake Bonsai were made.  Willard would make for an awfully boring blog if he was fake, and never changed.  I never understood fake plants, but I always thought that the long process of growing bonsai was what made them interesting.