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I've noticed that many Japanese black pine growers wait until very late in the fall to do the year's final bud selection, needle plucking, cleanup, and pruning. Is this peculiar to jbp? If so, why is that?

Is the general consensus that this branch structuring is the best way to go? Is this the correct structure for both deciduous and coniferous material?

I guess I was thinking of benjamina.

I'm not really a tropical guy, but I've noticed that my ficus trees are extremely durable. Can ficus be root pruned, potted, and styled all at once? Also, if the tree is kept indoors, can that work be done in fall?

I take 2 or 3 small cuttings from these plants in March. I've also done significant shari work on them each year. The shari work has been done in June and September. I don't water on a schedule and let the top of the soil get dry before watering again. That said, I don't pull the trees out...

I've been using the exact same fertilizer on my Kishu. The foliage is thick, compact, and robust. Is it just an Itoigawa thing?

The Kishu doesn't have juvenile foliage. It's perfectly healthy and growing with vigor. The reason I posted that picture was to show that not all my junipers are as unhealthy as the Itoigawa.

My Itoigawas in nursery cans are doing terribly. They're leggy, not producing strong growth or filling out, and they're dropping the most important branches. They're planted in 1 gallon, black plastic nursery pots. They've been in these containers for at least 3 years. They get 8+ hours...

As I understand it, the most accepted method for refined shimpaku foliage pruning, to do the following. 1. Clean out dead foliage. 2. Remove downward growing stems and foliage. 3. On each foliage clump, cut the strong extended runners back to a vigorous fork in the foliage clump. 4...

"white spruce" = Picea glauca. Are you suggesting that I let the buds on the end elongate, grow through the season, and then prune back close to the trunk where there are needles but no buds?

To get this white spruce budding closer to the trunk (near my finger tips), I pinch these buds in half? So it's not like a pine where I cut the branch where needles are growing and get a bunch of needle buds to pop?

If you're a beginner and you're going to repot and root prune a pine, you don't want to be doing any additional work to it until a season has passed and it's showing vigor. That means no needle plucking, pruning, bending, or anything. Also, where are the terminal buds? It almost looks like...

I hope you're right, but I've looked at a lot of jbp prebonsai. The picture isn't great, and the needles look a bit dull and droopy. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Ryan does not use the half bare root method at all and doesn't agree with that procedure. He uses his "ring" method for transitioning all his trees into aggregate substrate. Once the trees have been transitioned out of field soil, nursery mix, or what have you, Boon and Ryan seem to do similar...

This jbp was growing in a one-gallon nursery container for several years. The mix, which had broken down considerably, was composed of pine bark and perlite. I decided to put it in a bonsai container on March 15th. The new mix is the standard a/p/l. As I was getting into the root ball, I...

I've been fertilizing with full strength miracle gro every 2 weeks. I also added an iron supplement with other minerals. I've noticed with peat-based substrate, that water seems to wick throughout the container, but with aggregate substrates, the surface dries out completely and leaves a small...

I love Eric Schrader's Bonsaify you tube channel - some of the best content out there. I'm trying the suggested 80/20 mix of perlite/peat potting mix for my jbp seedlings. He uses coco coir for the organics, but wrote that peat would be ok. As you can see the seedlings in regular potting soil...

I'd like to use some rotten pieces of wood for shitakusa containers. What is the best way to preserve the wood?

Thanks wgw for the very precise advice. I think I understand the way forward a bit better now. Here's a pic of the entire plant. It was grown from a cutting that I got from Brent Walston.

I still don't quite understand the procedure and timing for shortening branch internodes on shimpaku. The photo is a branch on a shohin Itoigawa. It's already gotten a bit leggy. I'd like the next node to be roughly where the red line is. Do I just cut the branch off there? What time of...

Can someone please supply me with Brent Walston's business email address. When I try to get it from his site, something goes wrong.

I'm a potter and I read Michael Ryan Bell's blog. Out of curiosity, could you tell us who the potter is?

Run it through the dishwasher about 50 times. You could also submerge it in something acidic, like vinegar, for a couple of days.

It doesn't fire for nearly that long. A lot of that time is from the cool down. If power goes out, pots can be refired.

From closing the lid to opening it at 130F, it takes about 42 hours.