Alan's Tree Growing Experience

[AlanG]

Following on from John Race's excellent thread about growing and preserving Asparagus Ferns for diorama trees. I thought i'd give it a go.

I asked a couple of questions in PM with John and now is the day i give it a go with a little bit of an experiment.

Here are the ferns post cutting.



Here are the cuttings including a few dead ones. I thought i'd use them for dead branches.



Here is the glycerine/water mix with a little twist (the experimental bit). I've added 10 drops of brown food colouring to see if i can 'tint' the branches.



And here is the tray of soaking branches. I'll take them out in 3 days time and report back to say how they've come out.

 

[Jim R]

Great stuff Alan. Keep us updated
Jim

 

[Tim Marlow]

Hope it works Alan, always good to try new things.

 

[AlanG]

Cheers guys. I have some other fern cuttings left over to preserve. But this time i'm going to try and tint them with a dark green like pine trees have.
Again i shall report back any findings

 

[GerryW]

Watching with interest - always great to see how things go with experiments, even 'failures' can be helpful for another project.

 

[AlanG]

Well i was going to take them out of the solution tonight but my paper roll seems to have evaporated away from my bench. SWMBO says she has no idea where its gone. Convenient me thinks.

 

[Tim Marlow]

I usually get moaned at for nicking it from the kitchen!

 

[Deleted member 5496]

Not into the ferns Alan. But if you have any asparagus shoots I will take those any day.

Oven roasted with parmesan cheese. Decorated with asparagus ferns.

Laurie

 

[JR]

Alan leave them a lot longer, the 3 days didn't work the last time when I tried to speed the process up.

I'd left them for much longer before and they were ok. The colouring I also found needed to be quite strong. Watching with interest.

Good luck.

 

[AlanG]

Cheers John. I pulled a couple of shoots out of the solution and as you say, it will probably need a lot stronger colouring to effect it. I'll know that for next time.

Will post some pics later on. Just in from work. Was in work for 3am today (and will be tomorrow too) so in need of strong coffee now

 

[AlanG]

Here are the pics. Only took some out of the green solution so far. 3 days seems to be the consensus on YT but i shall bow down to your personal experience John.

But all in all. The ones i've taken out already look nice and a little greener. I don't think the brown solution will work unless the ferns have died. Still it doesn't really matter. I can always hit it with some paint.

 

[JR]

Certainly looking good Alan.
The first time I did a long soak all seemed to be good, it was only the last time I tried the 3 days in the solution that I found they started to loose colour. Of course it could be that my solution has weakened ? In the past I have just kept the used mix in jars and re used. Maybe this was the problem. Can't find any thing on the net about the mix not storing or loosing its ability to preserve.

As to the brown , just leave some of the fern cut and they will soon loose the green colour , then try the brown. I tried spraying green onto some , but either I had too weak a mix but wasn't very impressed. See what you think as I 'd like to hear your opinion.

 

[AlanG]

Cheer John. I shall try cutting them, letting them dry out/turn light brown, then try a stronger brown solution to see if it'll dye better. I think it has possibilities.

 

[JR]

Look fwd to seeing how this progresses Alan. Think the increased brown should work .

 

[AlanG]

Having a quick play tonight. Found a rowan tree stick in my garden and decided to take the bark off and give it a sand down. Not exactly straight but it'll suffice for a test job.

Three 'branches' added. Looking ok so far. I've learned to be more selective when i next remove some foliage from the plants as some of the cuttings are naturally bent and they are hard to adjust without breaking.

 

[AlanG]

Just to give a little sense of scale. Tree next to a 1/35 StuG (calm down @Bobthestug )

 

[BattleshipBob]

Whats that green thingy behind that thing of beauty

 

[Jim R]

Hi Alan
That tree is good. A lot to add but fine at the moment. Many of the most impressive dios have height and trees do that nicely.
Jim

 

[AlanG]

Just about added all that i can now as i only dried a few cuttings out of the solution i have. The rest are still in the solution and need processing. This was just a quick test job. I haven't even stained/painted the tree trunk! But if i'm honest i'm quite impressed with it.
I think if i took far more time and was a lot more selective with my cuttings selection then the results would be a bit better.

 

[JR]

I realise you have lot more to do but what great result so far Alan.Most impressive
Looking at photos of different types of pine can help with the branch formation from the trunk, that seems to be the trick iñto getting a realistic tree.