Sunday, February 22, 2009

OCH Water Jasmine 01

(21/02/2009)

Source: och(oh chin huat), seed grown

This was a "wild" water jasmine that i bought from och(oh chin huat) a few months back. It was in a bad shape, though the mass of roots stood right into 13-14inch deep pot, the top growth from trunk up was less than 9-10inch. The trunk and branches were covered with fungus. Foliage was very very sparse and many branches were already withered and dead. I have no wish to let it grow bigger and wanted to make a shohin out of it thus i did some major operations on it.

Old clayish soil was cleared, about 80% of the roots were totally pruned off. A portion of the roots was used to develop Water Jasmine Root Cutting 001. Some branches were removed as you can see from the wounds on it. I wired and spread some roots out in a radial direction as i wanted to develop more shallow root growth in future to come. In the process of doing so, i broke off one main root while wiring. It was heart wrenching, but lesson well learnt the hard way haha.

Because most of the main branches all grew in the same direction without much alternation, i decided to wire them in a slight windswept style. And so during the first few weeks, leaves gradually dropped and the whole plant was in a very weak health. Only after frequent watering with diluted weak seaweed solutions over about a month or so, the roots slowly recovered and developed more feeder roots which in turn the plant started to bud. Initially i let them grow wherever they want so they could produce leaves to make more food and in turn more leaves. Afterwhich at this stage i cherry picked which shoots and branches to keep.