ONE MORE TIME! Yamadori Style Junipers

[Smoke]

Thanks Mark, Hey, hope to see you at the meeting Feb 19th, I will be there giving a talk on formal display. I will be bringing a whole SUV full of Bonsai, stands, scrolls, portable backdrop, tatami matts and tenpai (accessories)

 

[FourMileMarc]

I'll mark it down. Everyone at the airport wants my Saturdays and I am just going to have to start learning to say no to them.

 

[BBristow79]

Great post. Thank you for taking the time to write everything up. Looks like a great project tree to work on. Thanks again,

Brent

 

[John Kirby]

I think this thread has done a great service for teaching how to develop these interesting little junipers. I saw Jim Gremel do this as a workshop at the ABS/BCI convention in St Louis (I was vending and snuck in to watch his workshop). It is a really fine way to get really twisty little trees that can be made in to very convincing little deadwood bonsai. I am attaching a couple of pictures of a Shimpaku that Jim Gremel wired as a little rooted cutting in 1994. After it started to grow, Jim planted it out into the ground in 1995. THe tree was dug in 2006 and Jim had it as a medium sized bonsai (Chuhin 12-18") in the BIB show in 2010. I purchased the tree from Jim at the show and it was restyled by Daisaku Nomoto, Boon's Senior at Kihachi-en with Mr Kamiya, and made smaller (I want it to be shohin/kifu <12" when it is done). The jin and deadwood will be reworked and shortened this Summer.

The key to making these little trees work the best is that they need to be rewired- the branches in particular need to be wired, then rewired. I know from personal experience that really twisty little JUnipers with nice straight ranches are not really very useful.

Well have fun. YOu can take a 10 cent cutting and with a little effort, attention to detail and some time turn it into a bonsai that you can be proud of- I am just grateful that Jim allowed me to get this one from him.

 

[digger714]

I got my main trunks wired on 4 of them, and have some pretty good size branches to wire. Do you go ahead and choose your final branches, and loose the others? or just wire all branches, sacrifice and finals, and continue to let grow?

 

[John Kirby]

YOu will always want to keep getting younger branches, the large branches can be turned into jin after they have helped to grow the trunk up to the size and taper that you want.

 

[kmdesigns]

I don't know if this question was answered or not, but is this process typically done in winter when the tree is dormant or in early spring when sap begins to flow and the tree becomes a little more "pliable"? I have a young Shimpaku whip that is almost 18 inches long, but is a bit thicker than the one you used for the example and I would like to use this treatment. I'm thinking about doing this when it warms up a bit more since mine is on the thicker side and my theory is that the increased sap flow along with a little patience with the bending will allow me to get the same kinds of bends in it.

 

[Smoke]

I don't know if this question was answered or not, but is this process typically done in winter when the tree is dormant or in early spring when sap begins to flow and the tree becomes a little more "pliable"? I have a young Shimpaku whip that is almost 18 inches long, but is a bit thicker than the one you used for the example and I would like to use this treatment. I'm thinking about doing this when it warms up a bit more since mine is on the thicker side and my theory is that the increased sap flow along with a little patience with the bending will allow me to get the same kinds of bends in it.

You would think huh....

What I have found doing more than 20 of these with little or no success is that when done in spring the sap flow pools under the cambium and makes the bark almost floating on a layer of sap. As soon as you start the bending process which requires keeping the trunk being bent as well as branches in a twisting motion against the wire, the entire cambium can be seperated from the inner wood. As soon as this happens the tree may liove for a couple months and even shoot from the buds but is a false sense of security because as soon as thge heat of summer starts the tree will suddenly wither and die. Late winter, like now before continuous days above 55 set in and keeping the whip on the dry side, (not turgid) will give the best conditions for the bending process.

I will let you know mid summer how this one fairs!

 

[John Kirby]

Ditto what Al has said, I have had good luck doing these in Mid-summer (July) in Arkansas. John

 

[discusmike]

Thanks for all this useful info Al,im gonna give it a go this weekend.

 

[Bill S]

Great litttle trees Al, good write up as well.
I will back up what Al said re. bending with the pliars, it makes a huge differance. If you haven't or don't know how, next workshop you take, ask to see it done, it will make you trees all the better for it, and you will wish you knew sooner. It is a task to write a description , seeing it live will make you happy. Everyone should have a bag of raffia around.

Great points about going after the branches for rewiring too, hard to explain having a twisted trunk with nice straight branches, the two images don't go together. Don't forget as well as the bending, you twist them around as well, that helps to get you to the spiralling live veins/bulging pipes.

 

[kmdesigns]

Thanks a lot smoke. I'd really hate to kill the junipers I want to do this to by bending them at the wrong time of the year. I also wanted to ask you about what your thoughts are on the method of forcing the trunk to twist on its on simply by carving and peeling the bark. I'm not sure if you've seen the Lindsay Farr video, but it seems to come up a lot when looking into this process. I've looked at some of the twisted trunk junipers on the internet and I just feel like the shari on the carved junipers look so much more natural. If its possible to replicate that with your method, I'll definitely go that route since it seems like it is a much faster process.

If you haven't seen it, here ya go. http://vimeo.com/6936761 The tree I'm talking about is the main example in the video.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[milehigh_7]

Great litttle trees Al, good write up as well.
I will back up what Al said re. bending with the pliars, it makes a huge differance. If you haven't or don't know how, next workshop you take, ask to see it done, it will make you trees all the better for it, and you will wish you knew sooner. It is a task to write a description , seeing it live will make you happy. Everyone should have a bag of raffia around.

Great points about going after the branches for rewiring too, hard to explain having a twisted trunk with nice straight branches, the two images don't go together. Don't forget as well as the bending, you twist them around as well, that helps to get you to the spiralling live veins/bulging pipes.

*Using the Jedi mind trick, Clyde whispers to Bill, Smoke and anyone else that could show it... MAKE A VIDEO a HI-Res with good lighting and sound*

 

[Bill S]

The only thing that Al didn't get good pix of is the pliars deal, a good video isn't easy, best still by far is watching it done in person, and having that person critique you doing it, on the job training so to speak. Really though I don't have the stuff to do a video.

By one of Als recent posts, I believe he is a BIG advocate of try it you'll like it. Nothing like hands on.

Besides at worst if you try this on a liner or two, most you'd be out if they croak is about $10.
Try it you'll like it.

 

[digger714]

One of the first things my instructor taught us was to bend the wire with the pliars, and you get so much more leverage. Just cant do it if there is double wire on the branch, so learning the correct size of wire is important, and how to apply it all comes into play. The past two months of our meetings have been about wiring only. I think ive wired 6 trees since weve started, one twice to get it right, and even the smallest branches on the junipers. Great technique. What do you do with your branches Al? Do you keep all of them, and twist each, or just your final branches?

 

[digger714]

Heres a picture of one i did this week. Thanks Smoke for the instruction on these. Ive done 5 so far, and 2 to go. This one was kind of large to start this, but i got a couple turns in the main, and all the branches. Thanks again.

 

[Smoke]

Thats pretty damn sweet. The final part is to squash it, doubling over those trunks on themselves.

Even if you don't you will have lots of movement in these.

Great job.

 

[digger714]

The main trunk on this one is pretty large. It took some bending of the wire to get this much movement. Do you make them flat like or keep them spiraling upward? After doing a few, im getting the hang of it.

 

[Smoke]

I mostly try to keep to one trunk, although a workshop some years ago with Jim Gremel we used material such as this and retained all the trunks. I have no idea what happened to the tree I did. It did not die so I muct have given it away or it went to the raffle table.

 

[yenling83]

Okay, so we understand the process for creating these little shohin twisty junipers. But, what type of movement do you put in the whip if you want a large tree? I would imagine it would be much more open, less smashed, larger movement. Like the field grown Taiwanese Junipers, that you see Cheng Cheng work on?

I would imagine those junipers took 20-40 years. But I’m not sure what the growth rate is like of the Taiwanese variety. I would imagine that the goal is to try and grow as long of a whip as possible. Jim Gremel told me the guy that grew those ones is now a millionaire.