Alpineart's Blog

This is one of the Juniper Sabina -Savin Juniper collected recently along with many others . This was long and leggy with too much material and a lot of waste . I have decided that this along with another one has more than  1 trunk worthy of using . I used a sabre saw to split the trunks down to a more usable plant . They still have impressive trunks with plenty of character however i will most likely inarch graft Shimpaku Juniper onto the smaller of the two or graft more Savin juniper back onto the lower trunk . It will make for a very impressive Shimpaku with attitude and plenty of carving to be had on this 150mm base. The remaining larger trunk has various options from informal upright to semi cascade , there is even the possibility of a huge raft style in there if i was inclined to layer another section off . I’m looking forward to the next couple of years designing and styling these big buggers into something quite unique . Now 8 big trunks become 9 and no doubt i could split a couple more to increase my future stock .

Cheers Alpineart

This was another  purchase from Ebay recently .I find a lot of good material that people don’t want and its usually at a very cheap price . Most consider this as a poor quality pot plant , which it probably is however as far as Bonsai goes it good and can certainly be improved .This was simply slip potted from the large plastic container to a large bonsai training pot .The roots close to the trunk were very healthy however lower down in the soil they where extremely wet and rot had began to take it toll . The majority of the roots that were good were around 1.5 long . I simply teased them out and  cut them back by about 60 %  then slipped it into the pot . This will in time make a very nice semi cascade . I will allow this to settle back then trim and wire it for shaping . It has a slight reverse taper at the graft union and a couple of area’s that will nee some work where the tag ties that were left on the trunk have created some swelling I’m in no hurry to shape this as i need to pot up more big junipers , so its under cover and onto the next challenge .

Cheers Alpineart.

This is one of the huge  Juniper Chinensis pfitzer that was collected a while back . I have decided to slip them into pots while i am capable of doing so . I managed to purchase some large pots for this purpose over the weekend and its time to make a start . With all the hard work done when collected it was simply a matter of removing from the grow bed and potting it up .This particular juniper has a base of 350mm in time it will be wired and styled , it is beginning to back bud in certain area’s along the severed branches .The carving of  the large amount of  stubs on the trunk will take place after the initial styling . I need to be sure of their survival prior to doing any further work to them .

Cheers Alpineart