So in phase one, we talked about how to build out the nebari on a tree
and work with the root system of a plant that was grown from a cutting, a seedling, or an air layer.
In phase two, we talked about how to set up the initial structure of the trunk, and thicken that trunk.
Now in stage 3, we're going to be talking about what to do with the branch structure on your trees
working out how to select branches, how to wire those branches
how to shorten internodes, and how to start filling in the secondary and tertiary branches on the plant.
So for starters here, we're going to be taking a look at junipers in this section.
We're also going to be diving into pines a little bit later
and then we'll take an overview of deciduous material
so you have a big broad spectrum of species to work with.
So first up here, let's take a look at our junipers.
Now, I've got two trees up here, both of which are Itoigawa Shimpaku.
They're slightly different genetic variety, but they are both Juniperus chinensis Itoigawa.
So the tree on the right hand side here is one that already has a pretty decent sized trunk on it
and at this point, I want to start working on the branch structure on the tree.
So we've done the cutbacks a while back on this plant, we've allowed it to put out another flush of growth
it's got decently elongating shoots on it at this point
so we can actually go through and start selecting branches and wiring things into position
which we'll do here in just a second.
But before we do that, I want to show you the tree on the left hand side here.
This is an Itoigawa that has had this process done to it multiple times, over multiple years.
So you can see that not only do we have primary branches setup, we've got secondary and tertiary branches
It's starting to fill in at this point, and we even have some shari on the trunk as well.
So this is to show you that we can take things like cuttings of Itoigawa, or any juniper
wind them up, wire them out, put them in the right pot, grow them out for a number of years
select back the branches, wire them again
and then eventually you end up with a pretty interesting and solid looking bonsai, like the one on the left hand side there.
So for starters here, let's take a look at this guy in depth.
We'll look at how we set the branch structure up, how we wire that out
and then how we also maybe continue to grow certain sections out for development purposes.
So in phase three here, we're going to be styling up this tree
talking mostly about the branch structure of the plant.
But before we do any work on it, I just want to give you a little bit of a background of this tree.
So this was grown from a cutting likely started, I would say, six to eight years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that.
It was completely container grown, but of course when it was very young
the initial bends were put in the trunk just like what we did in phase two a few minutes ago, with our little whip there.
Now the tree was grown in the container, blasted with fertilizer, thickened up
We had a big old long sacrifice branch up here at the top
that you can see we've already removed in a previous session here at the nursery.
So what we're going to be doing with this now is selecting out the branches and actually applying the wire
to create a new primary line to the top of the tree
new primary lines for the branch structure of the plants, and potentially setting up the secondary structure as well.
Just depends on what kind of branches we have to work with on the plant here.
So first things first, I'm going to get out some copper wire for this particular tree since we're working with a conifer
and we're going to go ahead and apply that wire to the entire plant, and then I'm going to show you how we set the branches.
All right. So first thing here, what I want to do is turn the original apex that we cut off on the tree into a jin feature.
When you're dealing with coniferous material, particularly junipers, the mantra here is 'gin everything.'
We can always remove the jin features later if they're too loud or obtrusive within the design
but you know, a jin feature obviously is a dead branch
that we're peeling the bark off of to create the illusion of age within the tree.
This is what would happen naturally out in the mountains.
For example, if a branch died off, the bark would eventually sort of weather off and peel off
and you'd be left with a really cool interesting deadwood feature.
So in order to create the jin feature at the top here, I'm just going to take my pliers
and start biting away from the end here
all of the tissue, and then we can peel it off.
So in terms of timing for creating jins, you really can do this any time of year.
I would recommend you avoid the first part of spring, as the new flush of growth is starting to emerge.
It's usually better to do this after the first flush is hardened off
or really anytime throughout the fall or winter will be absolutely fine.
Now, we'll say in the summer months, it's going to be much easier to peel the bark off of here
because there'll be a lot of water running through the tissue, so it very easily comes off.
But this time of year, right now we're in late winter going into early spring
just before the first flush comes out, so it's quite difficult to get the bark off of here.
We're going to go ahead and break some of these ends back here, just to give a little bit more of a naturalistic look.
All right. So now that I've created the jin at the top here
I want to take a look at this bottom branch over here on the right hand side.
So you'll notice that we have some really fine soft branching towards the interior
but I've left this very long straight piece with just a tuft of foliage out here at the end.
I did that for one specific reason and that is when we did the initial cutback on this a while ago
I was afraid that if I took off such a large branch all at once, it might die back and kill off our soft growth here.
Well, it's been a number of weeks and we've had really good success with keeping these branches alive here
so I feel comfortable now taking off the end piece out here at the end.
So this is one thing to consider when you're doing kind of an initial structural build on a tree like this
you know, particularly a juniper.
we want to try to cut back to the softest growth possible, and then build our primary structure from there.
Because these plants are relatively young, and it's relatively early in the process
if we cut back to soft growth, we can add the movement in there
and then allow the terminal shoot again to elongate to thicken that branch to the desired diameter.
So this is why I want to cut this off at this moment right now.
And at the end of this, we'll go ahead and break back into a nice little jin feature as well.
Okay.
Okay. So now that we've taken care of all of that
the next thing I want to do here is reestablish a new primary line to the trunk, before we actually set the branches.
So again, we took the initial apex off of here, turn it into a jin
and now we have this larger branch towards the rear, that was a side lateral branch
that we're now going to turn into the new apex.
So this is part of actually phase two, where we're building the structure of the trunk, creating taper in the trunk.
We've allowed something to grow out to give us thickening at the base.
Now we're cutting back, rebuilding a new apex, and then we can build the branch structure on the sides here.
So now that we've got the structural wire on there, we're going to go ahead and bend
the new apex up into a tentative position here.
Now this won't be necessarily the final position, but I just want to get it up and out of the way
so that then we can start building our lower branch structure on the tree.
So one thing I recommend when you're initially building a structure on a tree like this
is to just go ahead and wire all of the lignified or woody branches across the entire tree
and then position them in place.
If we get to, you know, a stage further along into kind of the refinement aspect of the tree
where we're building out, like, the tertiary branches for example, you can go branch by branch as you set it.
But building the initial structure I find much easier if I just wire everything on the plant, and then set it all at once.
Okay, so I've got all of the primary branches wired up on the tree, and now we can start setting things into place.
So we're not necessarily going to use all of the branches as as foliar branches on the tree.
We might actually bend some of these up to be jin features in the future.
So just because we're starting to work with the branch structure on the plant
doesn't mean that we have to use every piece of foliage on here
and it also doesn't mean that we have to cut off everything that we don't necessarily need
in the structural design of the foliage.
So good example here would be down at the base.
We've got this large branch that comes out of the left hand side here.
Got a really nice soft downward, easily to manipulate branch here
another nice soft branch here, but we have a very thick heavy branch coming up out of the top.
This thick heavy branch is really not going to be usable as a foliar pad on the tree; it's just too heavy.
But we can twist it up into all sorts of crazy shapes just like we did with the trunk in previous years
to then turn into a jin feature in the future.
So the trees not necessarily going to look fully padded out and complete at this stage
but again, we're just setting up that primary structure.
Okay. So first thing I like to do here with a tree like this is to set the primary directional branch
so we're going to do that on the right hand side here first.
All right. So as the tree is situated here, as you're viewing it
both of these branches here actually protrude towards the front
so we need to shorten them visually by actually taking them towards the rear first.
So I'm going to bend at the base here, take it towards the back
and then we're going to take the end of the branch, and push it again towards the front.
So this will give us our side to side movement, and a little bit of shortening as well here.
This is a very very common thing to do.
All right, we could do something similar with the branch that's a little bit shorter here in the front.
We'll take it off to the side.. like so.
Maybe clean up some of the underside of the pad, although that's not entirely necessary at this stage
and then sort of tentatively set it in that position.
Maybe we'll drop this guy just a little more here.
Right, so that feels pretty good.
Now again, we're trying not to get necessarily an S curve out of the branch.
We want up and down movement, and side to side movement.
so it gives it a little bit more of a three-dimensional look, just like with the trunk here.
So the next step here, we're going to come to the opposite side of the tree, over here
and set our counterbalance branch.
So we drop this guy down into here. We'll also use this one here.
twisting and dropping it as well.
And keep in mind when you're dealing with junipers, you can rotate the branch up to 180° if you need to.
We'll do that sometimes to reorient foliage in a proper location.
So that gives us a little bit of depth back here, and our counterbalance branch to the directionality of the tree.
All right. So the next thing here, I want to go ahead and move up a little bit further into the tree here
and figure out what we're going to use as the actual apex.
So as of now, this tallest point here is technically the apex
but I want to create a tree that's actually quite short, and has a lot of interesting movement
so there really is no need to utilize all of this growth up here.
So what we're going to do in this instance is go ahead and remove a majority of the growth
but I do want to leave the terminal shoots up here at the end
to allow us to create a better transition from the thick trunk here, to the new line that we're creating here.
So similar concept to our trunk thickening, this is just to create taper essentially.
But I do want to remove some of the foliage in between what we're potentially going to use as the apex down here
and the end out here. That way we can separate them visually from one another
and make it more obvious that this is going to become a sacrifice branch up here at the top.
In addition to separating these visually, it also allow us to get more light to the lower branches down here
because we don't have as much foliage in between
so they're not going to get shaded out and weakened, this area down here.
We're just going to go ahead and stick this straight up out of the way, so I can manipulate the remaining branches.
Okay. Now before we set our foliar branches in this area
let's go ahead and put some crazy twists in the potential jin out here on the side.
And just like when we were working with our young seedling or our young cutting with the case of a juniper here
where we twisted it up not really thinking too much about the future design of the plant
we're going to do the same thing with our jin feature here on the side.
I'm just going to twist this into knots essentially, into very odd shapes
over exaggerating the movement here because eventually, this is going to all be turned into a nice little deadwood feature.
Right. So it looks like a bit of a jumbled mess, but you can imagine this being a deadwood feature here
similar to our jin that we created out of the original apex.
All right. Now, let's come back over to our small branches on the right hand side here.
We're going to position these down. We're looking for kind of a downward outward motion
fanning everything out like a hand, with a little bit of movement side to side, and up and down.
Something along those lines should be pretty good.
And we'll continue working our way up towards the top
again trying to create a bit of a padded look to the tree.
But the goal here is to create kind of a scalene triangle for the most part
so we do want that directional branch sticking out the furthest at the bottom
and then kind of tapering up towards the interior.
Right. And last but not least, we'll set the apex here
So I want this to be a continuation of the line from below, so we're going to add some motion to it
bringing it a little bit further forward, and then having it actually move in the same direction
as the directional branch on the tree, which in the case of this plant, is to the right.
Something along those lines right there.
So it is probably a little bit difficult to tell in the video what exactly the structure of the tree is
but I think overall, if you can just sort of focus on the silhouette of the plant
ignoring our jin feature in the future here
you can see that sort of scalene triangle, and potentially a little bit of padding going on...