Harunobu
Chumono
4 July 2020:
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15 September 2020:
Annotated plant:
Wire applied to get some movement in the main trunk. I still suck at wiring, but at least I didn't snap off any buds or branches. The trunk can bend more, but for now the wire isn't heavy gauge enough to bend it more. Maybe next year in spring after a possible prune, I can try again with a heavier gauge wire.
Next year, I will have to remove some of the sidebranches from those two nodes/whirls. If not, I eventually risk reverse taper. The fact that it is now backbudding inbetween the nodes is helpful. I can leave only 1 side-branch at this whirls.
The mild bend I put in has the new backbuds and one of the sidebranches on the outside. So those I will keep. I think this one had zero flowers in 2019, 2 in 2020. And I could like 9 buds, which usually contain two flowers. The colour of the two flowers I had was the pale pink. So it is the base colour. 'Hekisui' is a sport of 'Aozora' that is supposed to give both purple and red. But I have not seen the purple on my plants. I have not seem 'Aozora' in person, but Hekisui turns on the colour in a very gradual and pleasant way. Some pictures of 'Aozora' seem to suggest it is white, but then with violet or purple sectors. So it seems that 'Hekisui' is not just a colour change, but also a slight variation in how the flower patterns emerge.
This all started when I obtained this small 'Hekisui' plant myself in 2011:
This second generation cutting is now larger than the original 'Hekisui' back in 2011 (and that 2011 plant is now a sizable plant in my garden).
Not 100% sure what the final plan is. I think I want to grow it one season taller. So adding a third year of growth on top of what I have now. Maybe you notice from the annotated picture that the 2019 growth only extended a bit further. This is because these shoots did not have a flower bud. So they didn't grow new shoots from those nodes. They did wake up, but they only added a few more leaves and then a flower bud to those 2019 shoots. Yet the dominant shoot that grew flower buds, from that I got the 2020 shoots. So this cutting isn't in apical dominance mode yet. Many satsuki cultivar at some point will push out many many new shoots, often juts above the soil line. This cutting is strong, but so far only a few in the middle. It might still do so, but it is a bit late. So in 2021, I will be waiting for it to push out this growth. Once it has done so and this growth has been able to extend and harden off for a season, I think I will have to come in and do some serious pruning. At that point, I will repot it and also take a better look at the roots and see if I am too late to fix the root flare/nebari. I suspect I will try this late winter 2022. So for next year the goal is to grow it a few cm taller, remove every branch but one from the node, probably as the flowers are about to go. And see if I can wire it more strongly after that prune. If only late summer 2021 it starts backbudding just above the soil line, the heavy pruning may be delayed to late winter 2023. And maybe some of the roots will be too hard to spread out into a root flare. And in that case it means I should have looked more aggressively when I repotted this cutting this year. I decided not to touch the roots at all.
\15 September 2020:
Annotated plant:
Wire applied to get some movement in the main trunk. I still suck at wiring, but at least I didn't snap off any buds or branches. The trunk can bend more, but for now the wire isn't heavy gauge enough to bend it more. Maybe next year in spring after a possible prune, I can try again with a heavier gauge wire.
Next year, I will have to remove some of the sidebranches from those two nodes/whirls. If not, I eventually risk reverse taper. The fact that it is now backbudding inbetween the nodes is helpful. I can leave only 1 side-branch at this whirls.
The mild bend I put in has the new backbuds and one of the sidebranches on the outside. So those I will keep. I think this one had zero flowers in 2019, 2 in 2020. And I could like 9 buds, which usually contain two flowers. The colour of the two flowers I had was the pale pink. So it is the base colour. 'Hekisui' is a sport of 'Aozora' that is supposed to give both purple and red. But I have not seen the purple on my plants. I have not seem 'Aozora' in person, but Hekisui turns on the colour in a very gradual and pleasant way. Some pictures of 'Aozora' seem to suggest it is white, but then with violet or purple sectors. So it seems that 'Hekisui' is not just a colour change, but also a slight variation in how the flower patterns emerge.
This all started when I obtained this small 'Hekisui' plant myself in 2011:
This second generation cutting is now larger than the original 'Hekisui' back in 2011 (and that 2011 plant is now a sizable plant in my garden).
Not 100% sure what the final plan is. I think I want to grow it one season taller. So adding a third year of growth on top of what I have now. Maybe you notice from the annotated picture that the 2019 growth only extended a bit further. This is because these shoots did not have a flower bud. So they didn't grow new shoots from those nodes. They did wake up, but they only added a few more leaves and then a flower bud to those 2019 shoots. Yet the dominant shoot that grew flower buds, from that I got the 2020 shoots. So this cutting isn't in apical dominance mode yet. Many satsuki cultivar at some point will push out many many new shoots, often juts above the soil line. This cutting is strong, but so far only a few in the middle. It might still do so, but it is a bit late. So in 2021, I will be waiting for it to push out this growth. Once it has done so and this growth has been able to extend and harden off for a season, I think I will have to come in and do some serious pruning. At that point, I will repot it and also take a better look at the roots and see if I am too late to fix the root flare/nebari. I suspect I will try this late winter 2022. So for next year the goal is to grow it a few cm taller, remove every branch but one from the node, probably as the flowers are about to go. And see if I can wire it more strongly after that prune. If only late summer 2021 it starts backbudding just above the soil line, the heavy pruning may be delayed to late winter 2023. And maybe some of the roots will be too hard to spread out into a root flare. And in that case it means I should have looked more aggressively when I repotted this cutting this year. I decided not to touch the roots at all.
