Niall Smyth wrote:
[...] thanks for the tips

[...]


"David W.E. Roberts" wrote in message
[...]
I had one like this, and it was to all intents and purposes
dormant
for about 2 years.

The stem was still green, there were minute signs of buds, but no
growth.
[...]
Dave, this is inspiring. When I moved last year I brought away two
little bay seedlings. Something pesky took away all the leaves --
only maybe four in all! -- from one of them a few months ago, but the
skinny five-inch stem is still green and alive-seeming, though it's
died back to about three inches now. There are the same tiny but
static signs of buds. I've been treating it just as you describe in
the faint hope that something might happen eventually from root
level; now I'm going to take the possibility seriously. Many thanks.

Niall, not spreading out the roots on planting a tree is quite a
common cause of failure -- often many years later. Sometimes if you
dig up an unexplained casualty, you find the main roots have grown so
big that they've strangled one another in the bunched-up position in
which they were left on planting out. Some trees can't compensate for
the crowding by sending out new roots above the constriction. Best to
shake the soil off a new tree and soak it in a bucket for an hour, so
the roots are flexible when you plant it. (There'll be some for which
this is asking for trouble, but these will have a note in the
gardening book saying something like "resents root disturbance". I'd
be cautious about doing it to eucalypts, for example.)

--
Mike.