Some Japanese trees.....

[Kelv]

Awesome stuff Joe! Seeing these trees and the fun/agony you had to go through makes me scream

[DavidN]

Jow,
Great stuff, you really have the envy of everyone down here!!!! Doing the work us Bonsai enthusiasts only dream of.
Brilliant.

DavidN

[anttal63]

Jow,
Great stuff, you really have the envy of everyone down here!!!! Doing the work us Bonsai enthusiasts only dream of.
Brilliant.

DavidN

ya can say that again!

[Jow]

the night before Last i had all of two hours sleep in the back of a hiace van while driving to Tokyo. We left at 11pm and arrived around 4am to start our bonsai shopping. We visited about 10 or so nurseries in the tokyo / saitama areas and bought a range of stock. Mainly shohin stock to be re styled and sold on Yahoo auctions Japan which is a fair part of the nurseries trade these days.

We got back after leaving Oyakata ( thats what Mr. Urushibata likes to be called, its kind of like sensei and is the same term sumo wrestlers call their stable master.) in Tokyo at the Green club for todays Professional Auction, we arrived back home around midnight... it was a long day, but a night of solid sleep soon sorted that out. Today i woke up and unloaded the van. Most of the stock that was bought for me was rubbish as oyakata is buying trees for me at the auction today.

So as Oyakata was away for the day i was on my own to do what i wanted, so i started with the worst trees.

Two of the rubbish trees i styled today are below. They are both Shimpaku.

The first was bought for 3000 yen ( around $37aud) and is below.

Front

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Back

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These junipers are fairly common and end up producing great little trees. I imagine that you could easily get these results in 3-5 years in a pot and less in the ground. To grow such stock simple strike some cuttings, and wire them into crazy shapes. tie them in knots and coil them up into tangled messes. the crazier the better. As they start to thicken remove the wire and re-wire and extending branches until you have a wired mess roughly the dimensions you are after. then the branches can grow out of the silhouette straight to thicken the trunk. This is how most of the drift wood shohin trees are grown. Once you get to around finger thickness start to add small sharis and then extend them in length and width by a few mm every year until you are left with nice driftwood stock.

Any way this tree had a cork screw going on so to disguise that i used a clamp to compress it and make the twists less regular.

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Then i cleaned up the sharis and added some and then wired it up.

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Next was a juniper that had been styled as a weird windswept something or other..... it was 2000 yen or about $25aud.

before

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After a clean up and wire, oh and of course a change of angle... Its still pretty messy, but it wasnt in the best of shape when we got it.....

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[Jow]

Tomorrow is another rubbish shimpaku. I started it today and appart from taking the end of my finger off with a die grinder its doing ok... Ill post pics tomorrow if it turns out ok...

[Leigh Taafe]

Nice work Jow - love the transformation of the first one - done well.

Cheers,
Leigh.

[Asus101]

I love that last one. Creative styling at its finest!!!

[Leigh Taafe]

Here are some auctions on Yahoo Japan:

http://list5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/20 ... egory.html

Cheers,
Leigh.

[Asus101]

that 300,000y tree is nice...

[anttal63]

fantastic jow we're onto it when you get back!
thats what im talkin about: rubbish shimpakus that i would pay 100's to have if i could getm here. but why should we pay 100's?

[DavidN]

sorry Joe I couldn't help but laugh at your comments about rubbish stock... You know that we could never get stock that good here without paying over $100 for it. The first tree would command between $300 -$500 here.

BTW great work and thanks for sharing .....and rubbing our noses in it!!!

Looking forward to seeing the "BETTER" stock you are taking about. I'm assumming juniper can't be imported to Australia either?

David N

[Jow]

Juniper can be imported but it needs 18 months in quarantine i think. It also has to arrive bare rooted and get fumigated with roots exposed... I am guessing after that treatment you would have slim chances getting many to survive.

The `rubbish` trees would be easy for us to grow in Australia. We complain about bad stock (me included) yet don't do much about changing things by growing our own. I for one will be starting more of these junipers when i get back and i hope that a few others do as well. I am guessing that 3-5 years would be a reasonable time frame to get the results of the first Juniper. Its not difficult, you just have to get around to doing it!

[anttal63]

ive already started after our talk b4 you left. now i look forward to doing some more when you get back.

[Jow]

Today oyakata was still away so i wired up another of the rubbish trees. The first pic show the before. If you tilt your head to align with the pot you can see it was a pretty bad tree. I started by removing a lot of wood (and my fingertip) from the shari. It is a little hard to tell in the photos but i tried to make it more flat and ribbon like. Old collected Junipers tend to form sharis and dead wood in this manner. Wide sharis that are rounded like a continuation of the trunk give a young appearence. Also the live rear vein was hidden behind the round original shari. The live vein on the front will eventually be removed so it was important to be able to see the rear one. Today i just reduced the front veins thickness, in turn increasing the sharis width. The lowest jin also fell victim to the die grinder. Then i just wired up the main branches. The tree has to fill out a lot more before it reaches its final silhouette so i didn't do any detailed wiring. Over all it is improved but unfortunately the branch placement was far from ideal so its never going to be a fantastic tree.


Before

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After.

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[Jow]

ive already started after our talk b4 you left. now i look forward to doing some more when you get back.

Good work, i am planning on growing shimpaku and tridents when i get back..... The more people growning the better....