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A Blackberry Thumb, and
Shaping My Junipers
by
Thomas J.
In my June article which was based
primarily on the procumbens juniper, I mentioned that
pinching your procumbens would be a chore, especially
if you have quite a few of them. Well this article
is for those who fit in this category, be it with procumbens
junipers or any other juniper that will
need your sometimes daily devotion to pinching them
to keep their desired shape.
For those of you that are new to
bonsai, and probably new to this newsletter, you might
want to
go back and search the newsletter archives for a two
part article I did on the procumbens juniper
which goes into a little more detail about the correct
way to pinch these junipers. I use the same method
on my shimpakus also. Many people don't use the same
for both, probably because they see it
as too tedious a job on the shimps because grabbing
a small bunch of foliage and pulling them out is what
most people do with them to give them the shape they
are looking for.
Some people wire very meticulous
in order to give their tree that award winning look,
while I do my meticulous work in the way of pinching.
For me it's an every day thing, and for that reason
I think
I've developed "Blackberry Thumb". I'm sure
most of you have by now heard that term, referring
to
the pain and agony that comes with the repeated and
probably overuse of that new little high tech
gadget where the thumb is in constant use on the little
keyboard. The same can be said for the
constant use of the thumb when pinching your junipers,
almost to the point where it can be considered
a tool in this respect, since scissors aren't allowed
when shaping the tips of your juniper foliage.
Now I'm sure the thumb wasn't meant
to be used as some kind of tool that's for sure, and
since some of us use it in that respect, we may have
to pay the price down the road.
Most of my junipers have been in
training around three to four years, and in that time
I'd like to show you what you can get from constant
pinching, sometimes in as little as a few months to
a year.
If your constantly watering and fertilizing,
and you know that your trees are in excellent health,
you can probably also notice the way they are putting
on new foliage and an increased thickening and lengthening
of the branch system. At the same time if you are constantly
pinching, you should also be noticing a
beautiful refinement of that branch system starting
to take place along with the desired overall shape.
Look at these first two pictures.
They show a tree with potential, but with a lot of
work needed to make it
more pleasing to the eye.
Now look at the tree three years
later. Constant pinching refined the branch system,
and more importantly it brought out the mature foliage,
something you should strive for if your doing procumbens
junipers.
These next two pictures show a time
lapse of exactly four years. After the initial wiring
was done, the entire shape
of the tree was done by pinching.
Take this shimpaku for example. It
takes a good eye to see the possibility in something
like this
After the initial styling is done,
it's off to a good start with the pinching program.
Here it is only a few months later.
Shimpakus are so nice to work with because you don't
notice the brown tips
as much as you do on the procumbens after pinching,
mainly because they don't brown out as much.
Now here it is fifteen months later.
The ramification of the branches is coming along very
nice, and the tree is responding wonderfully to the
pinching routine. A little over a years work ,and this
one is almost finished.
And finally, here's one that's almost
finished after only nine months. The first two pics
show the raw material and
the initial styling.
After that it's just pinch to shape.
Now can you see why I have "Blackberry Thumb"?
But I hope you'll agree with me that it was worth every
twist of thumb,
in producing some very high quality bonsai trees in
a rather short period of time.
Stay dilligent in your pinching all
year long, and especially during the heavy growing
season, keeping in mind
that you want your juniper to resemble a tree
and not a shrub.
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