BT's Urban Yamadori

[Brain Treez]

The nature of my job gives me a pretty thorough and very early heads up on all development in my city. This of course includes lot demolitions prior to redevelopment, and the subsequent removal of landscape plantings. In other words, I have the inside track on a massive volume of potential urban yamadori. Even with early warning, sometimes it's only weeks until potential trees are in a landfill. So I've kept my standards relatively high, and only pursued those which I have the time to actually go after. At last, the stars have aligned with time of year, project timeline, and my availability to attempt a dig.

These (I'm assuming sabina) junipers are 30+ years old based on satellite/street cam views. The house was built in the 30's, so who knows? They have enough decades on them for branches to have apparently ground layered into possible independent trunks.







In the next couple weeks I'll be cleaning them up by removing the dead twiggy stuff so I can get an actual look in there. Since "the strength is in the foliage" with junipers, the goal will be to keep as much foliage as practical to aid post-collection recovery. This will be my first attempt at digging something this big, but I'll have the assistance of one or more experienced club members.

 

[Tahoebonsai]

If these are just free trees that are going to be demolished and with a few weeks heads up notice like that you should try cutting some back super hard maybe even fertilize them and then collect them in a few weeks hoping that they push out another flush of growth, go hard

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

If these are just free trees that are going to be demolished and with a few weeks heads up notice like that you should try cutting some back super hard maybe even fertilize them and then collect them in a few weeks hoping that they push out another flush of growth, go hard

Yeah, but if they don't make it you've spent a lot of time on getting them out, doing the root work, getting a grow box, punching that soil deep in there, drive up and down, and then have them die on you..
A whole lot of effort to lose everything.
If you instead take them out, do the work and are able to keep them.. I don't see the reason to risk anything.
A trunk like that alone would be able to yield you a couple hundred dollars just because of the age.

These (I'm assuming sabina) junipers are 30+ years old based on satellite/street cam views.

Yes, they seem to be the tamariscifolia type, more specifically 'tam no blight'. A sabina x chinensis hybrid that's as indestructible as pfitzer(iana) types. Maybe a little more because it was bred to resist tip blight. It's not fully resistant, mind you, but it's less likely to suffer from it. The foliage is difficult to manage, it reverts if you look at it wrong. But a couple years of grafting will solve that issue.
It's one of those older ornamental varieties that was popular for a while. But people forgot how to prune junipers and instead treat them like hedges, which kind of shows from the pictures; you can hack these back and the branches will stay bare for decades.

 

[Brain Treez]

Prepping these for collection is a lot more work than I'd thought. I spent a few hours yesterday just clearing out dead twiggy and/or too long branches to clean a couple up, but I think they're about ready to dig. The nice triple trunk I assume is connected below. I will try to collect it all at once and split later since the branches themselves have obviously rooted. A pretty exciting trunk line on this one.