Blue owl ERC, a newb trying a progression thread

[Schmikah]

I know ERCs are usually not considered a good choice for bonsai. I got it from a local nursery and basically for free. That being said:

It pushed a lot of juvenile foliage after I chopped off ones of its big branches in February but its already returning to scale foliage so hopefully thats a good sign.

All that being said, here we go.

First picture is from very early summer. I already cleared out most of the interior, weak, and crotch growth before, but I took off and created jin from a larger branch that came off the opposite (right side in the picture) a few weeks before and the tree started producing juvenile growth.


After that photo, I trimmed it lightly and left it alone for the rest of this year. Today I came back in and cleaned up the foliage, thinned it out, and wired it up.







Its got a long way to go, obviously, there are at least three spots i need to adjust to take some of the straight lines out of it but its moving it along.

 

[TN_Jim]

thoughts of wrapping where white tape/wrap is and bending it severely? grey owl can have some decent foliage, don’t know blue owl so well but it appears more rough hewn erc than grey...dunno

ain’t got no taper with bones beneath or nebari presently if your playing by the rules

the literal shape of it in nature here I see, presently, there would be a tree or canopy close over it and/or it’s going out from an fat rock outcrop or stream and the top died out

 

[TN_Jim]

 

[Schmikah]

thoughts of wrapping where white tape/wrap is and bending it severely? grey owl can have some decent foliage, don’t know blue owl so well but it appears more rough hewn erc than grey...dunno

ain’t got no taper with bones beneath or nebari presently if your playing by the rules

the literal shape of it in nature here I see, presently, there would be a tree or canopy close over it and/or it’s going out from an fat rock outcrop or stream and the top died out

From what I've read, blue and grey owl are the same thing, just depends on what grower you get them from. I think Grey owl is the more common or "official" name, but the nursery had blue owl in the pot so who knows.

I do need to get a couple more detailed shots of the trunk and nebari, its hard to tell with the lighting (took them in a garage in the afternoon).

And the drastic bend is one of my plans. I wish I had a picture (I'm really bad about documenting, hence the thread, I'm trying to force my own hand), but I had three guy wires that were beginning to pull it down and around, but it was so much torque that over about three months it started to snap some of the smaller roots. I could literally hear the roots popping as I readjusted the wires.

So that plan was placed on hold until I can make sure that no major damage was done. And I will definitely go for a wire and guy wire approach the second time around, put less stress on the root ball.

 

[Schmikah]

Short update.

I let the tree grow pretty bushy to help recover from the obvious root damage that happened from the guy wires. It's slow going but it seems like it didn't affect it to much.

I trimmed it a bit and did some more wiring to separate out the branches, and I jinned one branch. That one was skinny and right in the way for future shari path up the trunk.