PTIEN 2026 Seven-year Shimpaku Juniper contest

[ptien]

Decide to take a few cuttings and air-layer for the contest. It was done in January so I expect them to root in March.



A few cuttings as well but I always have low success rate so it is just for experiment with new substrate this time (perlite & coco peat)


From my experience shimpaku tend to take a few months or even a year to recover from root work. This will slow down the whole procress a lot so the plan is once they root they will be moved to bigger pots eventually without root work. Field grow is not possible for me and it would take a few more years before they start to put a slot of growth so they will be in pot for the whole contest.

 

[ptien]

The Octopus, Stage 1.

This post will likely be the first of many documenting this tree’s progress from stock through to ‘bonsai’ over the next few years. I haven’t had a post like this for a long…

nichigobonsai.com

My plan is to make a plate/board trunk shimpaku, idea taken from this article by Nichigo Bonsai

"by reducing the area of live trunk but maintaining a similar amount of foliage above forces the trunk to thicken the existing live areas at a rate faster than if the whole trunk was growing. You see this in live vein creating where the vein ‘muscles up’ and bulges as a large amount of sap and resources is channeled through a reduced area. This can be manipulated further by leaving the live areas of bark in spots you want to thicken, ie. a live vein either side of a trunk will only see the trunk expand in those directions, creating more side to side thickening than if a similar amount of growth was to occur on a fully live trunk"

 

[JEads]

Looks good. I look forward to seeing these develop. Good luck