3 months ago I've sown Rainbow Eucalyptus seeds. From 80 germinated seeds, 30 survived first couple weeks. Then they grew up like crazy. In April I moved them to larger nursery pots, and periodically I removed plants that looked too small or otherwise ill to give selected others more living space. Eventually, I ended up with 10 plants in 2 pots:
One pot recently suffered from a local draught and surviving seedlings lost some leaves, but I look at this as a kind of natural selection, I want to have somewhat draught resistant trees.
I started with removing plants from pots, combing and separating roots. They've developed quite dense root system these few months:
My original plan was to trunk fuse all eucalyptuses together, but one seedling really stood out in a good way. Much taller than others, it measured 65cm height and the trunk was 4mm thick, featuring nice layering bark.
Not quite like on ads yet, but getting closer, I think
So I decided to grow this one on its own. I root pruned it, trimmed the stem and put it to a small training pot:
This time I made a soil mix from 50% Akadama, 40% pumice and 10% compost.
From 9 plants left, I chose 3 weakest ant planted them back to a nursery pot. They'll be a backup in case some of fused trunks die. I defoliated and hard trimmed the best 6 seedlings and bound them using wooden stick as a core and paper covered steel wire to twist them together:
I kept them a bit taller than I want them to be, to increase survival chances. I'll trim them more when I'm sure they are alive. Also, I was able to keep a few leaves on some plants, but not on all. When new leaves start growing I may remove old ones to keep equal opportunities for each fused plant.
