First off, I apologise for the poor quality of the photos in this article – I am sure I’ll get better with practice !

Many people strive for what I can only describe the “cloud” look and effect for their chinese junipers – thick rounded pads or pompoms of scale foliage at the end of the branches, and for some years I too subscribed to this vision of how a juniper should look. This naturally tends to happens as the pads of foliage are constantly pinched as all the books tell to develop the pads– the foliage becomes denser and denser, and the pads become rounder and rounder.  If you are like I was, then I hope here to persuade to think again in how you treat your junipers.

I now try and achieve a more open and look and feel to my junipers, regardless of how they are styled – this makes them look far more natural and effective in the image we strive for in Bonsai, ie that of a mature tree. Pinching alone is not enough for me, as the pads I end up with don’t look natural, and I feel there needs to be some negative space introduced both between the branches but also the foliage pads/masses on the branches. This tree was thinned and heavily wired last September, but already you can see how thick the pads are becoming.

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The first clue is the “June drop” and how heavy it is  (well June in the UK anyway). This is the tree’s natural response to thin out overcrowded foliage, and results in large quantities of needles going brown and being shed inside the foliage mass. This in the normal run of events needs to be cleaned out by raking through all the foliage with your fingers to remove the brown needles to allow light and air into the centre of the tree and foliage pads, and to make sure all the debris doesn’t harbour bugs and fungus. The additional air circulation helps with this as well.

The June drop is minimised or eliminated if the foliage is already thin enough to allow light and air into the centre of the branches and pads, and the look of the tree is much improved from the pompoms effect. I noticed a heavier than normal (for me anyway !) june drop this year and took this as my cue for some slightly more radical pruning and thinning out of the foliage than I get from pinching. I don’t usually tackle this until late August or early September, as most of this years growth has already happened, most of any aggressive feeding regime has already finished. The tree has enough time to heal before winter, but not enough time or food to explode into juvenile foliage production, or masses of new growth which might be susceptible to tip blight or winter weather. Wait for a dry spell if you can.

Trace each thick “bundle” of scale needles (they get thicker and denser towards the tip of each branchlet) back towards the trunk. Probably you need to go back 1 – 3 cm depending on how overgrown your juniper is. Use a sharp, clean pair of snips and trace backwards to where there are two obvious candidate branchlets that you can cut the bundle back to, and remove most of the heavy, dense foliage on the tip. Do this for each branchlet and you will significantly reduce the depth and “heaviness” of the foliage over the whole tree. This opens up the tree, makes it easier to wire, reduces the chance of fungal infection as you increase the airflow, lets light in which encourages back budding, and also reduces or eliminates the june drop.

Below is the same tree after the thinning.

It's now ready for detailed wiring. Below this is a picture of the the thinnings - it looks like a lot of material but it really opens the tree up to get in some light and air, and also will make the detailed wiring of the tree again this autumn much simpler. The pads i have left will be pinched as they grow and will start to fill out and the cycle starts again. As this is a kishu shimpaku chinese juniper (which has been grown out from a whip I obtained 25 years ago),  I will attempt to root some of these as cuttings for some new material, but thats for me to document and present another day !.

I’ll apologise now that this entry is not bonsai related, but I won’t apologise for writing it. My background and previous existence is from a large multinational financial institution, where if I am honest, although I sometimes seriously doubted the competence and ability of some of the immediate layers of middle management I had to deal and work with, I rarely doubted their moral scruples or ethics, however those of their bosses I cannot comment on as I had little or no direct experience of them.

I was a technologist and as such my job was to build, install, change and fix all manner of technologies used by the institution in its day to day workings and profit generation, so I like to think I know a thing or two about “systems” both from a customer or consumer perspective and also from the company perspective. Our website was one such of these “systems”. We were constantly striving to maximise “customer experience”, “usability”, and “customer experience” for minimum cost, with maximum  “profit” “sales”, “up sell” and “cross sell”, like any commercial institution would. We had design teams, marketing teams, sales teams, compliance teams, finance teams, credit teams to name but a few all involved with changes, additions, fixes and rollouts of our websites and products  to ensure that a balanced view was taken, the customer was treated fairly and legally, that their viewpoint was taken into account AND we could make a profit. I also saw pragmatic and sometimes what I considered senseless overrides and compromises to this process made in the name of “reducing expenses”, “time to market”, “competitive advantage”. These invariably came from on high. They sometimes reduced the “customer experience”, “usability”, and “customer experience”, but normally were not cynical or unethical. Why am I wittering you ask?

I, like many people have to use an ISP to access the internet. In fact I use a well known UK based ISP. Their prices are not that competitive, the service provided is not that good, the technology I am offered is old. So why don’t I change? Simple – inertia, the agro of change. – They were who I signed up with, who I first got my internet connection working with and I have stuck with them. I nearly changed a year ago when they became completely uncompetitive on price. We phoned to attempt to close our account and were offered a retention package which frankly made the aggravation of moving not worth going through, and was a good price.

 This runs out very soon. I don’t care if I am offered another retention package. I don’t care if I have to pay more. This time I am moving. Why? Well, quite simply; “customer experience”, “usability”, and “customer experience”.  A straw that has broken the camels back. When I go their homepage, it loads quickly, except for the box that allows me to logon to my mail account, my broadband account, and my mobile account or get help. Not Good. I wait, I wait more – the box appears, eventually, and I move my mouse over the email logon and click- Arrrrhhhh – too slow, the box disappears, and moves down the screen, and where I have just clicked has magically become an advert for one of their core products or services and it opens a new window. I hastily shut the window so I wont be tempted, whizz my mouse down the screen to where the logon box now resides, and click on mail again – Arrrrgggghhhh – too slow, the logon has shut, and moved back to where it originally was, and where I am has magically become an advert for another core service or product. All because I am too impatient to wait longer for the homepage to finish it’s morphing, which in turn forces me to read the omnipresent adverts for zillions of things I don’t want and don’t need. I have learned to wait for the homepage to stabilise, but with my eyes shut so I don’t see the adverts. Occasional users probably get caught every time.

Are the designers and marketers paid and bonused on a per click basis for the adverts ?– if they are and they’re allowed to do this, then – I’m OUT

Are the designers and marketers not part of an integrated product development team that blocks such a poor customer experience ? – if they are not and the process is this poor then I’m OUT

Is this an oversight and does management have such poor oversight and control over what’s going on ? then if so – I’m OUT

Do they simply not care as they believe inertia and retention packages are enough to keep customers ? If they believe this then I’m OUT

I know there is recession; I know everyone wants everything cheap; the best price on everything; but when the true price is sacrificing inherent quality and/or content, short term sacrifice of quality, ethics or loyalty,  then guess what – I’m DEFINITELY OUT.

Absolute price at any cost is not a measure I want, VALUE FOR MONEY and HONESTY is where it’s at.

I have just spent the best part of the last 3 hours removing wire from some pines I acquired last year. I guess I shouldn't really be shocked at what I found, but it’s probably worth me writing a few things down for posterity, and because the memory aint what it used to be, and because it might be of use to someone else!  

Normally I wire my pines in the Autumn and remove the wire in the early summer, rewiring in the Autumn if and where required if the branches haven’t fully set. Some of these were wired last October, and some in March when they were re-potted. Whilst doing some routine cleaning and weeding, I noticed one tree had really swollen and all but swallowed the wire in places – (luckily just on a sacrifice branch) - this is one of the trees wired in March and repotted. It had responded well to the repotting and complete bare-rooting and has grown well. I decided I couldn't wait any longer and went to check the other wired pines. All of them , despite none being youngsters, and all having been bare rooted in spring, had swollen considerably in places. All of these I checked last month and all seemed ok,

so – lessons learned thus far.

1)      bare rooting pines doesn’t seem to upset scots pine that much – I repotted in Kiryu/Akadama 50:50 and included Rootgrow, Rootfood(humates) and some of the original mychorhizza

2)      I missed the rapid swelling on some of the branches and this has marked some of the trees – Don’t leave wire on after June to be safe, and if you do you should check wire weekly to avoid scarring.

3)      Pinus Contorta bark is much softer, less resilient and damages more easily than Pinus Sylvestris(please DON’T ASK ! how I found that out).

So – what was the next thing I reminded myself of. Well , it takes almost as long to remove the wire as to put it on. It takes longer to remove where I didn’t wire very well or cheated when I put it on. It takes considerably longer again to regrow new branches and shoots you happen knock off or damage, because you wired incorrectly, or removed it badly, or left it on too long hoping you wouldn’t then have to re-wire in the autumn !

Having not listened to what I had just reminded myself of, and having knocked off a couple of precious back buds I had generated, trying to uncoil some very thin wire(I thought I could cheat and save time) , I “remembered” that its much safer to cut the wire the off. Although I wasn’t uncoiling it in order to save the wire, I was doing it to try and save time. I was just as quick cutting the wire off. If, you are like me and use glasses to read, don’t try and save even more time by not bothering to go back inside and find your glasses.

So – additional lessons leant

4)      Use decent wire cutters to cut the wire off – its not quicker, or cheaper or safer or better to uncoil the wire

5)      Don’t get vain, if you use glasses then USE THEM – better that than damaging the bark of , for example, a Pinus Contorta(eeek)

6)      A little more time spent wiring correctly in the first place, will make wire removal much easier and less time consuming.

So – moral of this story – wire removal is mind numbingly boring, tedious, slow, unimportant and simple.  WRONG. Done incorrectly and badly it might be. Done correctly, we minimise damage, get up close and see what’s growing well, buds, potential buds, new emerging lines and where new wiring is required and how well our energy balancing techniques are working (or not). Trying to do this with haste I suggest is a recipe for disaster.       

Our promises to our blog and to ourselves.

We WILL attempt to make regular entries.

We WILL NOT restrict ourselves to all things bonsai, (although if I were a betting man, I'd say that topic would be pretty much up there. )

We WILL seem to rant from time to time - for that - apologies now

We WILL try to keep it interesting, topical or seasonal(although we will probably fail miserably)