How to grow or train it to get the best out of it: Growing shrub-onna-stick clipped standard for the smaller garden or courtyard: this is an opportunity to grow a Eucalyptus in a confined space and control its overall size. You can produce a small tree on a 1m – 1.2m tall trunk with a clean stem and a head of around 1.0-1.2m across, with an overall tree height of around 2m. This requires an annual pruning regime on March 18th (National Eucalyptus Day) and nipping out of newly produced stems. Growing a multi-stemmed bush or tree. E. ‘Baby Blue’ responds well to coppicing/pollarding and readily produces a multi-stemmed specimen.
Why would you want to do this? To create a tree with more body or ‘mass’ of branches and foliage for cutting. Once grown back up to its full potential, it will now have several main trunks – an attractive multi-stemmed architectural tree, especially if it has exceptional bark.
Growing in the Ground Method: This will give you the highest yield. If you would like to grow your Baby Blue in a pot – see the bottom of this page.
Year 1 – plant in the ground in full sun, as per our planting instructions. Digging a deep hole down to 450-500mm (18-20 inches), removing all the subsoil and replacing it with good quality topsoil mixed with sharp sand (10-20% by volume) is important to encourage deep rooting into the lower soil horizon. This is where the soil will be warm +6 Celsius in a cold winter and there will also be water available for your Euc. When planting your Baby Blue, remove the air-pot container and plant the root-ball a little deeper than you usually would plant a tree, by about 25mm (1 inch). This will bury the lignotuber at the base of the trunk – this is a good thing!
- Over the summer, give plenty of water.
- apply a bark chip mulch
- nip out the shoot tip ends (last 1 cm) every time a branch grows by 2 pairs of leaves or so. The aim is to produce a compact bushy plant with plenty of leaves producing carbohydrates to fatten up the trunk. Prevent your plant from growing any taller than around 1.2m (4ft) by nipping out the growing point at the top. Carry out this pruning from April through to mid August
- feed April, June, August and September with Eucalyptus Smart Fertiliser at the recommended rate of 20g per square metre. This high potash fertiliser produces sturdy growth and helps the tree lay down woody fibre in the trunk.
- keep the area around the base of your tree free from competitive grass and weeds.
- be very strict with yourself and resist the temptation to harvest any foliage for the house – your tree is too small!
Over the first winter ensure there is a deep bark chip mulch.
If conditions are very cold and windy, construct a little windbreak around your Baby Blue using horticultural fleece stapled onto wooden tree stakes – set at around 30cm (1 ft) away from the plant on all sides. Knock off any snow that falls on to the foliage.
Year 2
March 18th – go out and measure the diameter of your Baby Blue’s trunk at 1m from the ground. I suspect it wont yet have achieved the gold metric of 50 mm (2 inches) diameter or the circumference measurement of 150mm (6 inches). Baby Blue takes an extra year or so to get its feet under the table and will require you to again resist all temptation to take an early harvest. It needs every leaf to make food to fatten the trunk.
- Continue as before with mulching, weeding and feeding from April through to August/September.
- Carry on tip pruning as before
Year 3
March 18th – go out an measure the diameter of your Baby Blue’s trunk at 1m from the ground. If all has gone to plan, I would expect the trunk to be nice and fat, which means that you can pollard down to around 900mm (3ft). Cut all the side branches back to 25mm (1 inch) of the trunk. Mulch, weed and feed as before. If the Spring is dry, water your Baby Blue well, to encourage lots of lovely new shoots.
May in Year 3 – by now there should be lots of new shoots on the structure and you need to nip out the ends to encourage bushiness.
Harvest – any time from August onwards, the shoots should be firm enough to not wilt at the ends once cut and plunged in a vase of water.
Growing Baby Blue in a pot.
This can be achieved, but it is best to grow it in the airpot container system, by potting on your Baby Blue into a 20 litre airpot container. Follow the instructions for feeding and watering in our Blog Post entitled How to grow a Eucalyptus in a pot and keep it alive. The pruning regime will be as detailed above – the same as for growing a Baby Blue in the ground.
Floral Art: E. ‘Baby Blue’ is one of the top three for floral art, producing excellent cut foliage for Flower Farmers and floristry bouquets and wreaths.
Chickens: The shredded foliage of E. ‘Baby Blue’ is excellent at keeping Chicken nest boxes and hen houses free of red mites, which detest the presence of Eucalyptol. I used to line our Chicken boxes with shredded leaves, strew the floor and pile up the spindly branches for the chickens to make nests. It was all great till the foxes moved into the next field!
