Thanks for your new tutorial.
This is my question.
Taking into account that junipers depend on their foliage (contrary to pines = roots) is it safe for the tree to remove all that % of foliage at once.
Will it survive? Or this is just a demonstration tree and you take that risk with its health?
Was busy earlier and didn't have the chance to respond...
I thank you for your question... when working with any type of material really, the answer to your question would be... understanding the material, the health of the material, as well the current climate conditions and the time of year... and with Junipers they are no exception.
This tree is a Parsonii. They are very tough material as far as junipers are concerned... where as other types of Junipers, such as Shimpaku, at least in my climate... I would not do such drastic work on. The condition of the material was very healthy... it had obviously been some time since original work was done on the tree, seeing the amount of wire I found virtually embedded within the tree.
Heat and amount of sun are obviously going to play a role in after care... because now that I have opened up the tree, it will create dryer conditions within the foliage. So, for the first couple of weeks I would place the tree in partial sun, and make sure it receives a good amount of water.
If you were to do very severe bending, I would actually increase this amount of water even more for the first week or two.
The tree will most definitely survive... so no worries there! I did not go through the tree really and define any of the actually padding, just set major branching in place. To do so, would of required even more foliage having to be reduced and taken off... which at this stage serves no point.
The stage where this tree was currently at, was doing the first style. At this point, I am not concerned about foliage. I worry about foliage once I begin actually trying to refine the tree. Now I am only trying trying to resolve the trunk, resolve the basic composition of the tree, set the major branching... then let the tree recover as fast as it can.
Hope this answers your question!