Sekka Hinoki trouble

[Japonicus]

How often do you water your tree? Are the branches that you are having trouble with also the branches you have just wired?

Good points, but I water PRN. It's been rainy just enough to avoid watering.
This golden variety has been on the N side of the house since last month with all the rest
of my conifers awaiting the trip up under the sunroom, which just happened 2 days ago ahead
of the Winter onset. On the N side of the house no direct Sun but bright.
Also not growing, so the soil has not dried out especially. Good hinoki soil environment actually.

The foliage, a second good point, but no wire in the apex which is near ground zero.
Now if segmentation dictates damage from lower branches travels upwards, much like
nerve pain and numbness radiates downwards as in sciatica, perhaps you're onto something.
If no segmentation (damage exhibited above a damaged branch or branches) then I don't know what's up.
It was wired in October I'm pretty sure, after we got back from our trip.

 

[Vance Wood]

Sometimes moving branches around from one side to another whiled trying to decide where is the proper placement can damage the cambium giving you the results you see here.

 

[Japonicus]

Sometimes moving branches around from one side to another whiled trying to decide where is the proper placement can damage the cambium giving you the results you see here.

That isn't the case Vance but thanks for trying to decipher what's going on and lending a hand.
Compare both centre pictures post 39 May this year and current with the wire on a few branches.
There is not much change in branch positioning.
Honestly the tree was allowed to fill in a bit more this year ahead of repotting to an unglazed pot.
The style was already in place, I just lowered some branches and filled in some negative space.
The apex has no wire, the apex looks same as branches with wire just below it. Lowest branches
are wired, but look ok.

I brought this hinoki into this thread as an example that I've had a couple of hinokis better than 10 years
and could possibly be a disease, so I will probably get a couple more seka hinoki and deal with them
in a manner I'm familiar with and see if they follow. These two may just have to be quarantined, something
I should have done with the Seka from day 1. All the Seka they had looked very poor, and that was the only hinoki
variety they had on hand too.

 

[Japonicus]

I was able to get in another Sekka to train myself.
These certainly seem to fall into the broom style, and I cant help but wonder, if like the dwarf miniature spruces,
if they have to be developed slower than normal?...


These are for all practical purposes, the same size, but the nebari does appear more aged and bigger on the 1st one.
I've been coming in and rubbing the crispy dry dead crown in the 1st one from time to time.
I don't plan to use the sheers until I see where new growth emanates from.
The soil is at the same level with these 2 side by side, and being in bonsai soil certainly does make the purchase well worth it.
I would buy more. Love the blue tones

 

[Aiki_Joker]

These are incredibly interesting. That deep green and glaucous underleaf is just awesome. They look like model train trees. Compact like a stone or fire as their name suggests.

There is a guy I met in Scotland that gets these as imports from Japan and sells them very healthy but expensive! My friend helps the the guy out and shifts alot of trees for him. He purchased some and started taking cuttings a few years ago and they are doing well in Scotland. He is meticulous with them though. He is getting maximum a foot of growth on these things a year!

I wish he was on here. I'll tell him about this thread and hopefully it will entice him to contribute. I'm sure he wont mind if I post some of pics he sent me below. Hopefully he can give more guidance.

All of these are protected from wind and full sun in his garden but not scottish winter temps as far as I know. I assume temps in his winter cold frame set up have been min -8C in the past few winters since he started getting into these.

They dont like full sun and will die back more readily both on the top and on the inside if overexposed he says. Shade and consistently moist substrate is the way to go to keep them deep green and free of inner dieback apparently (assuming adequate ferts).

I guess partial shade or morning sun may be acceptable. But I dont know. Very cool trees and not as slow as many people think. Quite possible to build these, not buy them. Some of his cuttings have put on about a foot of growth in one year. Larger cuttings grow faster but there is a big difference in growth rates between plants of different genetics apparently.

Development will likely be dictated by how fast they will grow for you Japonica. On his fastest cuttings he is rooting them, growing to about a foot, then cutting the top off in the first year. Then the next year he gets bisected branching at the cut point and branching further down. No back budding on bare branches though of course.

He has some pretty awesome results guys. But he is meticulous on their growing conditions though as I say. He would not leave them out in wind or full sun as described above in this thread. Quite different conditions to normal obtusa to get the best out of them.

Here is one of his finished imported specimens:

These are two year old cuttings!

This is one of them after he pruned and potted it!

These are some of his other cuttings in progress! Just awesome!

 

[mcpesq817]

I bought one from Bill V years ago but sold it because the growth habits are odd on these, and they barely thicken trunks. I talked to a professional who studied in Japan and he said that the thick trunk sekka hinoki you see there are likely sekka foliage grafted onto thicker regular hinoki stock.

 

[Japonicus]

@Aiki_Joker
Thank you for the informative post.
The interior die off will be resounded in all of the Hinoki I'm aware of since as you mentioned, no back budding on old wood.
I will read your post a couple times over and again, thanks for the information and sharing his pics.
I surely wish more folks would use and sell this material.

It would be super if

Hopefully he can give more guidance.

your friend in Scotland did sign up for BN and even make passage for the sale of cuttings...

 

[Japonicus]

I bought one from Bill V years ago but sold it because the growth habits are odd on these, and they barely thicken trunks. I talked to a professional who studied in Japan and he said that the thick trunk sekka hinoki you see there are likely sekka foliage grafted onto thicker regular hinoki stock.

The cuttings that grow a foot/year Aiki Joker posted has decent sized trunks for 2 years old.
Now if he meant air layers, that's different.

Yes odd growth habit, but I just cant resist such a wonderfully proportioned trunk and foliage.
If they do not thicken up, shohin would be a good call I suspect for many. Not my normal go to size to work with.
I need big print

 

[Japonicus]

Slowly bringing these around. This one from the IBA I did a little bit of pruning about 10 days, 2 weeks ago.
Both are waking up. I doubt this one will be repotted for a couple of years.




I've been removing the dead parts slowly on both of these being careful not to ruin any viable areas.
Once it is fully active I want to begin the task of getting rid of the soil this one is in. I don't like it because
it is quite fine, rather dark, and difficult for me to know the moisture content by eye.
Once it is lighter to heft, it is too dry already. Surface has loads of crumbled dead foliage I've been working on.






Freshly misted and brought in from the drying winds. Had some localized 80 mph winds last night...still rather breezy all day and for a while to come.
Trunk has a nice colour to it once dried, but the nebari on this one is why I babied it this Winter. Just pulled the last of the duct tape off that held the
plumbers heat tape around it through the Winter. This will probably be my 1st shohin by design.

I'm just happy it is still alive regardless of the decimated crown.

I assume temps in his winter cold frame set up have been min -8C in the past few winters since he started getting into these.

I dare say they can handle considerably colder temps than that in ground.

They dont like full sun and will die back more readily both on the top and on the inside if overexposed he says.

I keep my hinokis in full Sun, but this one struggling does get some late afternoon shade and misted.
The inside dying, welcome to the world of hinoki. Left to grow interior shaded foliage does indeed die off naturally.

 

[keri-wms]

I bought four small Japanese imported Sekka in the UK, from a place in the Netherlands, I lost three of them - in the end I think the biggest factor was root rot due to being in compacted wet akadama. The one that survived was root washed and put in fresh akadama, the ones I put in perlite and molar didn’t make it. They also had major trouble with mites!!

Haruyosi kindly offered some advice on facebook, the main thing being to keep them in some shade.

 

[Japonicus]

Repot and prune 2020 makes me suspect that the new owner would do so, the tree obviously already dying would then certainly die, the new owner would then blame themselves.

Dude you have no idea how itchy I am to bust this root ball apart right now and get it into an actual pot.
I really don't like the soil composition at all. It's too fine and compacted.
I doubt I will see this repot friendly of a Spring duplicated next year. Winds and predictions of winds are
keeping me doing the shuffle constantly though, with the 5 recent repots I've done.
One, a nice shimpaku just got out of the nursery pot it's been in since before 2008 with some small browning areas now,
has me fretting over the amount of work I did to the roots 1st go of it. It's just a couple of weak thin areas,
but it always starts somewhere ya know...

 

[Japonicus]

OK! #$@! I'm either going to kill it or help it. Hopefully the latter. This is one I would be very disappointed to lose
but I really disliked the soil make up, retention, and water was not passing well at all. The root ball core is pretty doggone solid.









Repotting anything brings out the worst of paranoia in me.
Not having a robust assortment of pots to choose from, and the struggle over the Winter doesn't help ease my mind one bit.
This was a really tight fit, so I added a portion of DE (8822) and covered the nebari up pretty well.
Say a prayer it lives. This is the best nebari of all my collection bar none.

I have one other oval that would better house this hinoki by dimensions only, which I feel is critical.

It's glazed, but the dimensions I think would make a safer repot. It's well anchored in the lotus pot it's in now, but I don't have a problem
with changing out pots in the 1st couple of days after repotting really.
Any thoughts on changing pots @Brian Van Fleet or do you think the overly tight 1st potting up is best suited?

 

[BunjaeKorea]

Update?

 

[Japonicus]

Update?

Thanks for asking!
I just put it in the same position of previous photo, but backlight kept flash off so had to go off axis to flash the shot for comparison sake.




I've been keeping it outdoors as much as possible, but having half a week of freeze warnings, tonight the last it's been shuffled several times..
Unexpected temps, but is the prolonged Spring I eluded to back in February. Also have had very breezy weekend, but my sunroom here is still unheated and bright.
Plenty of controlled natural air flow as well. I still don't feel it will die but I certainly would be more at ease if I had a propagation mat to put under the pot.
BTW, it is in a Korean humidity dish which I had to glue back together in several places. The matching pot was not frost proof...oops.
I have one other matching Korean pot that has been in the ground for 11 or 12 years with a BP in the shade in it. Still unsure if I can do anything with the tree or not.

Anyway a warm 2nd half of May is underway later this week. The crown has interior possibilities, but I'm unfamiliar with the cultivars foliage qualities overall.

 

[Aiki_Joker]

Very nice and no doubt arduous work Japonicus. Worth it for sure. Good luck this growing season Friends, Ive had no luck pursuading my mate to post here. However, he kindly reviewed the post and wrote the following erratum:

'One thing wind is ok unless the trees dry but they don’t like dry so it’s not normally an issue, I’ve one that’s ok with frost etc too and one other that gets slight brown tips, trying to work out if the majority are ok with frost or not really, I think they are so far.'

 

[Aiki_Joker]

Wel worth checking out Bjorn's latest upload on Sekka:

 

[Japonicus]

Wel worth checking out Bjorn's latest upload on Sekka:

Beautiful! Thank you for sharing that video. Bjorn. If I could choose a teacher, it would be him.
I love his approach and character, which makes presentation and comprehension fluid.
NOW! I have the proper spelling, and Japanese break down on the KK consonants.
If perhaps @sorce could maybe edit the spelling of my thread, since I followed the nursery label incorrect spelling.
Notice how Bjorn states his timing of the season and what has occurred in the months prior
as well as his location. These did bits of information are necessary, but most leave them out of their instructional
or presentation videos. I added this video to my favorites, and again, thanks for sharing. I will refer to it often.

This has been my favourite video of his. One which I always play through before I do any work on my other hinoki.




Mine is none the worse for potting up yet. Some positive growth has followed. Now I cannot wait to do some styling, but will let it recover.
Just potting up was against my normal stance, but intuition was the driving force there. Now that puts me in a cat and mouse game of
keeping foliage to gain vigour, and cutting foliage to prevent loss of interior growth. At least I can "slough" off a bit more of the die off.

 

[Japonicus]

Thank you @sorce

 

[Oerc201]

Awesome threat i had a honoki die due to being in full sun. Lesson learned. I have another one hopefully i can figure this one out and keep it healthy. Great points in the threat guys. I also love the video he posted (Bjorn) i tried to contact him but no luck. I just wated a few bullet points on the care. How offen do you water yours guys?
That is my old onei will post a pic of the healthy one

 

[Japonicus]

How offen do you water yours guys?

PRN (as needed). The one I still have in a more organic nursery/bonsai like blend from
the arboretum is in good health, but the soil holds moisture longer than the 2 hinokis I just potted
up in a more inorganic bonsai soil. Best not to dry out entirely.