Here's the long awaited update on the project.
For those who don't know me, I've been a long-time friend and "bonsai comrade" of Steven. In 2018, Steven and I begun what we call "Project Shohin", a long-term project aimed at producing high-quality Shohin trees (like the stuff we see in the Japanese Nurseries). Since the projects inception I've taken over the future growing decisions for the original batch of maples in this thread.
Many of the maples were reaching a suitable thickness in relation to the future final height. During 2019-2020, I began to remove the sacrifice branches on some of them, along with starting to ramify and heal over wounds (both new and old). I started grafting ones that were missing lower branches or had larger wounds that required encouragement to heal quicker. I've also made sure to try and repot them every year to further improve nebari, but with the amount of stock I'm growing sometimes they might miss a year of repotting. The growing mix has also changed, with a 50-50 scoria-akadama mix becoming the standard.
The 2020-2021 season was more of the same.
This year (2021-2022) has been a perplexing one for maples though, with the La Nina confusing them as to what season we are actually in. I've had some tridents and Japanese maples that have remained red the entire season (despite the fertiliser I give them or the fungicide I spray them with). I've had some that were cut back hard a few months ago, have developed new buds, but have gone dormant already. And now the autumn colour appearing early due to the bizarre mid-summer cold snaps we've had.
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Most of the Japanese Maples are reaching maturity with the majority of them having 50-70% gray trunks. The lower not-very-twisted ones have become powerful looking sumos. The over-the-top super twisty ones have ended up as more slender graceful trees (usually thinner than their sumo counterparts). Either way, the initial mix of movement Steven did has paid off big time.
I will start transitioning the Japanese Maples that are in refinement stage into smaller pots this year, along with having them in 100% Akadama. I've found that it's difficult to achieve ramification with them in larger pots due to the internodes being too long with all the extra growing space that a larger pot affords.
Most have still only had a few primary branches wired out, with the main method being clip and grow. But once they are in the smaller pots is when I will begin to wire all of the branches on them.
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The Trident Maples are developing just as well as the Japanese Maples. The Tridents tendency to thicken quicker and fuse more easily in comparison to the Japanese Maples has resulted in a more muscled appearance to the over-the-top twisted ones. There's a significant lack of trident sumos from the original batch though. From my experience you need very low sacrifice branches to produce the amazing sumo tridents that you see in Japan. A few of the more recent batches that I've done have been cutback early on to try and achieve this (to great results so far).
Like the Japanese Maples, most of the ones going into refinement will also be put into smaller pots.
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A few of the tridents are also in the process of having lower branches grafted onto them. Because they were packed a little too tightly a few years ago they lost a few of the choice lower buds and branches. I tend to approach graft more than thread graft, a personal preference due to how quick and easy they are to do. I'm also a big fan of using zipties to secure them, something much easier to do on small trees (maybe too easy
).
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And to finish off the update, a few shots of "Project Shohin". All of the stock growing area is caged for security (from both people and wildlife), along with an overhead automatic sprinkler system. We were lucky to acquire all of the benches from a nursery that was going out of business.
When we started in 2018, there was stock nicely spaced out among some of the shelves and other places that were bare. I'm a prolific propagation addict so I quickly filled the space with as much bonsai stock as I could. 4 years later I've finally reached the capacity of the growing area, so I've resorted to using the underbench space for the meantime until we can expand. I long lost count of how many stock trees there are, but my current estimates are around 400.
We're currently growing most of the main Shohin species used in Japan (along with a few rare ones and some Aus natives as well). The main species we're focusing on are Shimpaku Juniper, Black Pine, Trident Maples, Japanese Maples, Kinzu (Dwarf Cumquat), Chinese Quince, Chojubai (Dwarf Japanese Quince, Zelkova, Cotoneaster, Princess Persimmon, Dwarf Rose, Japanese Privet, and Gardenia.
I still order a batch of maple seedlings from Shibui every year (with a goal of doing a minimum of 50). The 2nd and 3rd (and now up to 4th) generation of maple stock is definitely growing/improving at a much quicker rate than the original batch. Most of this is thanks to the experimentation and learning from the mistakes of the original batch.
It's been a long time since the last update, so happy to answer any questions.