Nursery Stock Shohin Juniper

[sunspire]

This is my first time pruning/wiring cheap nursery stock. How did I do?

Also, which front is better, cascade going left with more deadwood visible, or cascade going right with trunk leaning toward viewer?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Wiring looks good! I think you can play around with the pad placement a little to make the composition a bit more balanced.

I like the first picture front myself.

 

[Shibui]

Agree that wiring and pruning appears to be good.
As to which side I also prefer the first picture with cascade going right but we can't see depth in 2D photos so there's no clues for us on what front to back movement it has. Side shots can give some clues but usually need to see a tree in person to be able to properly judge 3D movement.

With some experience I suspect you will need to take good care that the upper section does not suppress the lower section too much. I find the need to prune much harder in upper sections of cascades or the lowest sections lose vigour quickly.

 

[trigo]

Way better than my first time styling a juniper. But i think your cascading branch needs more movement, too much straight and horizontal.

 

[JesusFreak]

I think over time you’ll want to lose the cascading branch. Great job so far though!!

 

[Adamski77]

I’m always coming like a jerk… at least it seems like. Great job… first of all… but what strikes me is two things. (1) the length of the cascading branch… I feel it’s a bit too long, (2) the cascading branch is dead straight and parallel to the ground. If you could get some movement into it would be looking really awesome. Other than that really nice job working with nursery stock.

 

[coltranem]

Nice work on the design.

The jins are a bit thin and long moving away from the cascading. If you want to emphasize that movement bring the jins closer to the trunk. If they are fresh jins you might be able to wire them some but given there thickness I would just make the short and stubby.

When I first started out I had similar issues with jins. Junipers have quite thick live layers so even if a branch looks thick enough to be a jin once the bark is stripped you end up with a skinny jin.

 

[sunspire]

Thank you all for the advice and I think I will follow all the advice posted above.

I already pruned a ton of foliage off the top, but I'll keep the top managed to make sure it doesn't steal too much energy from the cascade branch. I didn't realize how straight and parallel to the ground the cascase was until I took these pictures. I have some tough copper wire from Lowe's that I'll put on there and see if I can add some movement. I left as much as possible on the jins at first, since you can always remove more later, but I do agree they are too long and skinny right now and need to be filed down.

I liked how this one turned out so I went and bought another one, I'll post pictures of that one along with before pictures once I get it done. It's not a nana like this one so the foliage isn't as dense but it does have a nice thick trunk.

 

[coltranem]

You might find the copper wire from Lowes hard to work with since it is not annealed.

In the future wire up branches you want for jin and then let them grow. Eventually you can strip the bark once the gain enough size.

 

[sunspire]

Good point. Google says copper anneals at 700F to 1200F, and my gas grill thermostat maxes at 650F. I wonder if I can turn all the burners to max until the thermostat is maxed out then put the wire in there for 5 minutes, dunk it, and repeat a few times.

 

[ChefB]

Good point. Google says copper anneals at 700F to 1200F, and my gas grill thermostat maxes at 650F. I wonder if I can turn all the burners to max until the thermostat is maxed out then put the wire in there for 5 minutes, dunk it, and repeat a few times.

blow torch it until it glows red.

 

[Sagebrush]

This is my first time pruning/wiring cheap nursery stock. How did I do?































































Also, which front is better, cascade going left with more deadwood visible, or cascade going right with trunk leaning toward viewer?



I don't knowt much but I really like the cascade going to the left in bottom right hand photo.

 

[JoBalz]

This is my first time pruning/wiring cheap nursery stock. How did I do?

Also, which front is better, cascade going left with more deadwood visible, or cascade going right with trunk leaning toward viewer?

Looks great! Personally, I like the last photo with the cascade pointing to the left. I like the balance between the deadwood and the live branches. But then, I'm a newbie and still learning the art.

 

[Shogun610]

Not bad for your first time , I remember my first time styling run of the mill nursery material and only 1 of them survived. I hope you can hold on to this one and watch it develop as you do on learning bonsai

 

[Mike Corazzi]

I'd let that "cascade" branch grow and grow and grow and do NOTHING to it. Just let it draw some resources to the rest of the tree which I like a LOT!

Then I'd whack it off.

I would also probably have left some foliage on a jin or two.