RobertB
Chumono
Picked up this medium size juniper at a nursery around my parts in the fall. These are fairly rare around these parts. There is a fair amount of older material in commercial beds that were planted 20 yrs ago but you really don't see that much at nurserys or at least I haven't found much.
See original thread of this juniper where I was asking for some help on identification for the first photos of. https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/juniper-identification.30199/
I knew it wasn't anything spectacular but my thought was to try and get for a good price, plant in ground for at least 5 years to thicken up.
Around winter time and after reading a good bit of material on this forum I decided to do a little work on. I cleaned up the foliage some, basically just eliminating some of the dead foliage and reducing some of the bottom foliage. Then I started to wire the tree.
This past weekend, I decided to perform a little more work on it and a half bare root re-pot. I knew it was extremely root bound and decided against planting in ground as I wanted to keep in a pot so I could mess with and learn from. Before the repot, I trimmed some of the foliage on the branches that would not be part of the final design in their current condition, trying to promote some back budding. Some back budding had already started from the previous fall foliage cleanup and wiring. I would say I reduced maybe 15% in the fall and another 30% this spring. I know that was probably too much but I got a little carried away.
The repot was extremely slow. I took me 3 hrs to carefully work out half the rootball. I was able to completely bare root 1/2 the root ball getting all the way underneath the trunk. Also, forgot to mention. I had to slip pot in the fall into a larger pot packed with soil around the edges and bottom as the nursery can had split.
You can in the first photo that when I removed the tree there was a pretty good amount of root growth since the fall.
Here it is with the fall soil layer knocked off back to its original nursery soil. A decent amount of root growth.
Then I proceed to cut off the bottom part of the root ball. I did this with a saw. After cutting I definitely confirmed that it was jam packed with roots. The removed portion felt like a concrete disk.
I then proceeded with the half bare root the tree. This really took some time (about 8pm to midnight). I carefully and meticulously worked out the soil with a chopstick. It almost felt like I was a hair stylist at one point as I was parting the roots and working down the root ball then carefully repositioning and working down the next portion and so on. Extremely tedious work as I was trying to be as careful as possible not to damage to many of the roots.
A shot from underneath. You can kind of see the portion that was bare rooted vs the half left as is.
Overall this was a great experience. Even though it was a lot of work, I kind of liked it.
It was potted in a mix of 2 parts decomposed pine bark with particle sizes from 1/8" to 1/4", 1 part - Optisorb screened to particle size greater than 1/8" and 1part builders gravel screened between 1/8" and 1/4". It was potted in a terra cotta pot. Unfortunately, I never had time to get a wooden box ready for it (so I went with I think a 12" standard terra cotta pot). I plan to keep it in this for 2 years then half bare root the other side then place in a wooden grow box.
Next spring (2019) I hope to be able to remove some more foliage getting the foliage starting now closer to the trunk while establishing some sacrifice branching to continue to thicken the trunk. For now Im just going to let it grow unchecked for a while.
I will post some more photos over the coarse of the year showing its status.
See original thread of this juniper where I was asking for some help on identification for the first photos of. https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/juniper-identification.30199/
I knew it wasn't anything spectacular but my thought was to try and get for a good price, plant in ground for at least 5 years to thicken up.
Around winter time and after reading a good bit of material on this forum I decided to do a little work on. I cleaned up the foliage some, basically just eliminating some of the dead foliage and reducing some of the bottom foliage. Then I started to wire the tree.
This past weekend, I decided to perform a little more work on it and a half bare root re-pot. I knew it was extremely root bound and decided against planting in ground as I wanted to keep in a pot so I could mess with and learn from. Before the repot, I trimmed some of the foliage on the branches that would not be part of the final design in their current condition, trying to promote some back budding. Some back budding had already started from the previous fall foliage cleanup and wiring. I would say I reduced maybe 15% in the fall and another 30% this spring. I know that was probably too much but I got a little carried away.
The repot was extremely slow. I took me 3 hrs to carefully work out half the rootball. I was able to completely bare root 1/2 the root ball getting all the way underneath the trunk. Also, forgot to mention. I had to slip pot in the fall into a larger pot packed with soil around the edges and bottom as the nursery can had split.
You can in the first photo that when I removed the tree there was a pretty good amount of root growth since the fall.
Here it is with the fall soil layer knocked off back to its original nursery soil. A decent amount of root growth.
Then I proceed to cut off the bottom part of the root ball. I did this with a saw. After cutting I definitely confirmed that it was jam packed with roots. The removed portion felt like a concrete disk.
I then proceeded with the half bare root the tree. This really took some time (about 8pm to midnight). I carefully and meticulously worked out the soil with a chopstick. It almost felt like I was a hair stylist at one point as I was parting the roots and working down the root ball then carefully repositioning and working down the next portion and so on. Extremely tedious work as I was trying to be as careful as possible not to damage to many of the roots.
A shot from underneath. You can kind of see the portion that was bare rooted vs the half left as is.
Overall this was a great experience. Even though it was a lot of work, I kind of liked it.
It was potted in a mix of 2 parts decomposed pine bark with particle sizes from 1/8" to 1/4", 1 part - Optisorb screened to particle size greater than 1/8" and 1part builders gravel screened between 1/8" and 1/4". It was potted in a terra cotta pot. Unfortunately, I never had time to get a wooden box ready for it (so I went with I think a 12" standard terra cotta pot). I plan to keep it in this for 2 years then half bare root the other side then place in a wooden grow box.
Next spring (2019) I hope to be able to remove some more foliage getting the foliage starting now closer to the trunk while establishing some sacrifice branching to continue to thicken the trunk. For now Im just going to let it grow unchecked for a while.
I will post some more photos over the coarse of the year showing its status.
