Vance, I'll recap the story, but my comment as not directed at you. There are many people who, when I tell them not to pinch junipers, respond with "But that's how I was taught!"
In fact, Bonsai Bark just published another article about it on their blog. In their blog, they state that some of the early information from the Japanese magazines was first translated from Japanese to Spanish. And then later, they were translated from Spanish to English. And who knows if either translator (Japanese to Spanish) or (Spanish to English) had any knowledge of bonsai culture? Probably neither did! So, not only is it possible, it's likely that a lot of the information we received 30 years ago was erroneous!
But back to this tree...
The picture I posted today is the same tree that is the subject of this entire thread. I bought it early last summer. A long time customer of Plant City was getting out of bonsai, and Steve bought his entire collection to resell at the shop. I saw this tree, and decided to buy it because it's rare to find an old Itoigawa Shimpaku on an Itoigawa Rock! The roots clasp the rock nicely, and the rock is a good one.
Upon closer inspection, I determined that the previous owner had been "maintaining" this juniper by shearing it back. Which is an extreme form of pinching.
This tree was originally imported by Brussel's about 10 years ago. Plant City bought it and resold it to the customer who owned it for a decade before he resold it back to Plant City.
When I reported it a couple weeks ago, I found three layers of old screen wire on the bottom. Which means every time it had beef repotted, nothing had been removed, it was just moved into a larger container, and new soil placed on the bottom and around the sides.
I did a HBR (Half Bare Root) repot, as depicted above a few posts, removing most of the old soil. The center was Brussel's pine bark soil which was slimy and held no live roots.
I also determined that the rock was buried too deep in the pot, only about 1/2 of the rock was visible as it had been buried. A lot of the clasping roots could not be seen, which I've fixed, by raising the rock up. Unfortunately, during those 10 years a circling root grew and had never been reduced. I've had to leave it on for now until the root system regenerates. In a year, I should be able to remove it.
So, getting back to the pinching, when I aquired it, it had been recently sheared, and I'm trying to restore it back yo health. Also, it appeared to have never been wired in those 10 years, so I wired it to open up the canopy to promote backbudding to get growth closer to the trunk.
Yes, a 100 % rehab!
