Collected Pyracantha

Hi Guys,

Collected 4 pyracantha trees yesterday from a driveway. Not sure how much chance of survival there is
but I thought it was worth taking a chance. Put them in shade and water 4-5 times a day.

Any comments would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Faisal

Fingers crossed Faisal. Job for the Makita me thinks. I think they have a good chance. Found and asked about an absolutely HUGE Escalonia today. It's mine now. We cleared an old fella's garden today. He said the Escalonia had been there for 40 years. It hasn't been pruned for about 10 years and is presently about 18 feet tall. This one has red flowers.

FANTASTICC..when you collecting? 18 ft is TALL. Good luck, Will.

Hope mine survive. cpl of them will really make good ones. fingers crossed.

I've some time off tomorrow. Will visit and cut it back severely. I don't intend on digging it up until Mid to late Autumn.

Well dug that man

will baddeley wrote:I've some time off tomorrow. Will visit and cut it back severely. I don't intend on digging it up until Mid to late Autumn.

A good decision Will. I have found that cutting back hard and collecting escallonia in the same session usually ends in failure. With the back budding you get, It'll be a much safer lift in the Autumn. They're a bugger to get out though

Make sure you take the camera, we all want to see lol.

I have my eye on a dark red flowering one and one with yellow foliage and a dark purple flower. Want to make it a set of three, pure greed

Ian Young wrote:

will baddeley wrote:I've some time off tomorrow. Will visit and cut it back severely. I don't intend on digging it up until Mid to late Autumn.

A good decision Will. I have found that cutting back hard and collecting escallonia in the same session usually ends in failure. With the back budding you get, It'll be a much safer lift in the Autumn. They're a bugger to get out though

Make sure you take the camera, we all want to see lol.

I have my eye on a dark red flowering one and one with yellow foliage and a dark purple flower. Want to make it a set of three, pure greed

You have no idea how persistant I am!!.....Badger Baddeley,as I am known locally.

So it will be an autumn hernia then?

Great find Will... I look forward to the progress.

This species (firethorn) generally hates root disturbance. I should know after every repot of my large one I have fingers crossed. I was going to add that mist spraying foliage will be greatly beneficial with a weak superthrive solution, but I note there does not seem to be more than an odd leaf.

P's will sprout new growth from almost anywhere and will be happier kept moist so you are on the right road with shade and watering. I probably would not water so frequently as you may encourage the potential tree to become lazy. I would drench then wait until the P is leaning towards moist to dry, somewhere in-between; this should have the effect of making the new feeder roots search for moisture., which is why spraying is beneficial.

Good luck.

Mike

You can see from the photos that the collected trees have almost no taper- this is because a pyracantha for some reason grows like a pure cylinder - so it is hard to get taper without lots of sacriface branches. In your case the bases are huge - and you are going to have to get alot of top and side growth going. I don't see that as a problem - but the growth is going to have to be very long like 2 meters in order to get the transitions to work. I just wonder if a larger grow box would be better - because this way you can still get to them [vs. putting them back in the ground] but you still have room to get a big root mass. Let's face it - unless you get the roots to really take off - you will never get the top growth going. The collected stumps look pretty good - but you are going to need some time to really create the upper crown...good luck...Tom

ps. I can see you have used really large plastic tubs/containers - these should work very well. Just make sure you have drilled lots of drainage holes. Also...clean-up all of your cut edges- this way, you may get bud breaks near the cut surfaces....Tom

Hi Faisal,

when we go out for collecting trees, we prepare a night before a big tub or barrel with a solution of water an juvenile buds of a willow tree. Then we leave the collected tree overnight in the solution, while trying not to interfere with the roots at all. this helps a lot to raise the odds, much better than crossing the muddy fingers...

Thank you, Tom, Mike and Ami BAS. All your comments are definitely going to be of great help.

They're coming up nicely though. In just a week they're full of new buds. I will leave them in the current containers for a while and then, if need be, put them back in the ground. Could take a good few years but i think they will make reasonably good trees.

Mike, I been watering all my trees twice daily but now ill water the pyracanthas only once.

Thank you for your much valuable advice.

Regards.