Mugo styling advice and jin placement

[SouthernMaple]

So I bought a cranberry candles mugo pine the other day. I own one other pine which is a JBP I rarely work on it and was going to learn how to jin with my Mugo. In the past I have always considered jin to be overrated. Now my thoughts are different. When choosing to jin a branch how do you go about it? Would you use a dominant branch or one of the smaller ones? Is there a number of jins that one tree can have before it looks too repetitive. My original thought was to make picture one the front but the longer I play with the tree I like the second picture as the front because it not only shows the trunk better, but it has better stronger branches in the foreground. My usual solution to crowded branches is to prune them off with branch cutters, but since this is not a deciduous tree I can use those branches as jin instead. Please let me know your thoughts and any advice you can give me.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I would say that you need to take your time to find the tree within the tree. Sometimes this is more obvious in person, and certainly hard to tell from the photo, but if it is not obvious the process of elimination can be used reduce whirls or more than three branches coming from the same spot. Right angles are generally not very natural looking but maybe could be wired to look more pleasing.
Look for long straight sections that could be removed in favor of smaller sections with better movement. Don’t cut off the long straight section yet, but remove the side branching from it to allow the light to get to your chosen branch, while maintaining some energy and growth that will be sacrificed later. For deadwood or Jin, you can leave stubs, but wait a while before pulling off the bark and treating. There is no rush, and you’ll want a plan for the tree before you go crazy on the deadwood.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

If this tree were mine. I would not start pruning. First experiment with different angles. The "laying down on the ground" is probably not creating much of a "tree" image. More a failed log image. Play with different angles. Then I would repot to put the trunk at the new angle. I would repot during the ideal season for your location. So that might mean not repotting until middle of 2021. Then let it recover a season.

The earliest I would do serious pruning would be 2022, a year after the repotting. But that is me, I prefer to go slow.

But I think the tree in there is where the trunk is lifted up to maybe 60 degrees off horizontal or 30 off vertical. Laying down you are not seeing "tree" character.

 

[sorce]

First, you gotta remember that generally, the more "Crate and Barrel" the culty name sounds, the worse trees tend to be for bonsai. Lol!

As for your "Vanilla Bean" jins....

There are a couple things to consider so you don't have to worry about when and where.
Keep them looking Natural.
Keep them in proportion to the rest of the tree.

I personally hate the "jin surrounded by shari". That ends up looking like an overly aggresive and excited manscaper (Douche), cuz I can't figure out for the life of me what force will remove the bark around a dead branch and not also remove the branch too. It looks dumb as hell.

As for the angle ...the way I see it, if you want an upright tree, there are a million better ones to go fetch. This one is already on lean, so I'd take the 30 years it's gonna take to make that look good.

Cranberry Candles .....

No more shopping Bath and Bodyworks for trees.

Sorce

 

[KiwiPlantGuy]

Hi,
There’s that saying about lemons and lemonade, and when a tree like this is lying down it looks even more weird.
My suggestion would be to look at this from the angle of a raft - multi trunk attached forest if you will.
What did you have in mind for the direction of this?
Charles

 

[SouthernMaple]

First, you gotta remember that generally, the more "Crate and Barrel" the culty name sounds, the worse trees tend to be for bonsai. Lol!

As for your "Vanilla Bean" jins....

There are a couple things to consider so you don't have to worry about when and where.
Keep them looking Natural.
Keep them in proportion to the rest of the tree.

I personally hate the "jin surrounded by shari". That ends up looking like an overly aggresive and excited manscaper (Douche), cuz I can't figure out for the life of me what force will remove the bark around a dead branch and not also remove the branch too. It looks dumb as hell.

As for the angle ...the way I see it, if you want an upright tree, there are a million better ones to go fetch. This one is already on lean, so I'd take the 30 years it's gonna take to make that look good.

Cranberry Candles .....

No more shopping Bath and Bodyworks for trees.

Sorce

First off I love the way you write, I can't wait to read your bonsai book when you get around to publishing one.

I got this tree at the mountain meadows nursery last weekend, it was one of 3 cascading-ish mugo pines at the nursery in my price range, its called cranberry candles because the candles turn cranberry red in the spring, I agree I too am not too fond of its name, maybe from now on Ill refer to it as "Red Dragon", but to me its a blank canvas and I am an artist. I am considering going back up there and getting the other 2 if they are still there this weekend and carve/prune them up and give them to family as christmas gifts. I could always use the practice

I have never been too big of a fan of jin, I always thought it looked flashy/douchey , but I feel if I get into the world of conifers, it is a skill I must learn. When used subtly I think it looks really good. I have also always liked shari better than jin but I don't think I could pull off that on my current tree any time soon.

I don't want another upright tree.

Please never change

 

[SouthernMaple]

Hi,
There’s that saying about lemons and lemonade, and when a tree like this is lying down it looks even more weird.
My suggestion would be to look at this from the angle of a raft - multi trunk attached forest if you will.
What did you have in mind for the direction of this?
Charles

So the plan on this guy has always been to repot in spring or whenever conifers are potted and put it on a mound so that I can achieve the cascade effect more substantially. But I have to wait till spring to do that which is my current dilemma. I unlike all of you only have 16 trees, I am also mentorless for the next 3 months so I don't have anyones trees to work on.

Sorry i can get side tracked sometimes, i just spent 30 mins wondering why I can't rotate an image 30 degrees in windows explorer anymore and I have to use word instead.

If you look at the second picture of the tree, right to left, the first 3 branches I want to jin one of them and then jin another one in between the big branch in the middle and the big one on the end. I also thought about going "bjorn" on it and jinning the big branch in the middle instead but I don't have the skills to pull it off. I think after I do the jins I will leave it alone until repot.

 

[sorce]

To be fair, it is quite easy to get a wrong impression of a jin because the internet is always flooded with poor representations of young, ugly "jin".

I think a "craftsman" of a jin stands proud of his work, but really, they'll just never hold a candle, cranberry or otherwise, to the jin of real Yamadori.

So they're best "created" sparingly. With full knowledge that time, and, AHEM, winters outside of garages, is what will make them look natural.

I like both your names!

Sorce

 

[BonjourBonsai]

cuz I can't figure out for the life of me what force will remove the bark around a dead branch and not also remove the branch too. It looks dumb as hell.

Yup! It should be from too much snow, lightning strike, Dorothy's worst nightmare, or similar catastrophic event that causes the branches to snap.

 

[Vance Wood]

Jins on Mugos are generally created out of expedience. In order to make a believable Mugo bonsai It becomes necessary to reduce the branches to achieve a single trunk design. It is not easy to find a single trunked Mugo Pine, or a trunk that does not look like it has been chopped here and there without forethought. It is a real possibility, because most Mugos are architecturally issolated and dependent to have one branch associated with one root, causeing the associated root/branch to die all the way to the ground. The way you avoid this is to stub all branches atttcahed to the trunk instead of flush cuting. After a year or two you will be able to flush cut the stubbed branch without much fear of major die back, or if the stubbed branch is in the right place you can make a jin of it. If you cut flush any large branch you also run the risk of creating a really large and ugly scar.
Mugos in their natural environment are subject to the forces of avalance from both show and rocks which will strip of bark without taking the branch as well. Also these trees in the mountain are subject to bore attack which will kill the branch or trunk or whole tree without removing the affected area from the environment.

I hope this helps?

 

[Japonicus]

@SouthernMaple Did you just repot this mugo? Based on the 3rd picture I suppose you laid the tree down horizontally.
I think this would have been a beaut of a tree in a more upright form. It does not look like a cascade. I do recall Vance giving
sorce a hard time earlier this year for giving a mugo, a go at a cascade form. Not that it cant be done or shouldn't,
but what are your plans for this one? Appears you have raft in mind? It looks really good in the 3rd picture

 

[SouthernMaple]

@SouthernMaple Did you just repot this mugo? Based on the 3rd picture I suppose you laid the tree down horizontally.
I think this would have been a beaut of a tree in a more upright form. It does not look like a cascade. I do recall Vance giving
sorce a hard time earlier this year for giving a mugo, a go at a cascade form. Not that it cant be done or shouldn't,
but what are your plans for this one? Appears you have raft in mind? It looks really good in the 3rd picture

3rd picture is a birds eye view before i threw some akadama on the top layer, that i had left over from the bottom of a bag(I am trying to give myself an excuse to buy more akadama). I repotted every tree in my collection besides this one last year. I have not touched the tree since I took pictures of it other than placing rocks on the top soil.

I appreciate everyones advice on this tree, but I will probably ignore it all and make a mugo cascade from it with some ugly jins, not out of disrespect to my fellow nuts, but because i want to practice different techniques.

I ve been really bored with covid cancelling all these bonsai shows and club meetings and I was going to volunteer at a few different gardens this year, but due to covid ive been in a holding pattern. Its strange how life is, when I had no time I had all these events and volunteering opportunities open to me but I had a full time job and no time to do them.
But now that I have paid off my mortgages on my investment properties and quit my job, i have so much time on my hands and nothing to do.

 

[Japonicus]

3rd picture is a birds eye view before i threw some akadama on the top layer, that i had left over from the bottom of a bag(I am trying to give myself an excuse to buy more akadama). I repotted every tree in my collection besides this one last year. I have not touched the tree since I took pictures of it other than placing rocks on the top soil.

I appreciate everyones advice on this tree, but I will probably ignore it all and make a mugo cascade from it with some ugly jins, not out of disrespect to my fellow nuts, but because i want to practice different techniques.

I ve been really bored with covid cancelling all these bonsai shows and club meetings and I was going to volunteer at a few different gardens this year, but due to covid ive been in a holding pattern. Its strange how life is, when I had no time I had all these events and volunteering opportunities open to me but I had a full time job and no time to do them.
But now that I have paid off my mortgages on my investment properties and quit my job, i have so much time on my hands and nothing to do.

Sorry I missed post #7. I thought you had not mentioned your plan for the style,
and really didnt know if it came that way or not.
I wasnt saying you should not
go cascade, just that it did not look like one, so post #7 clears that up.
July is good time to pot up mugo unlike most other pines.
Have you checked the resources tab?
I think you could still put some movement in the trunk as soon as it needs watering if you have good sized copper wire.

 

[Vance Wood]

One good lesson you need to learn is how to design and accomplish some items that are beautiful.

 

[SouthernMaple]

So I let the candles grow and I put some wire on it, got a decent bend out of it and will probably bend some more at a later date, here it is as of yesterday.

 

[Vance Wood]

Do you have the sales tag that was on the tree from the nursery? If so what does it say? To me it looks like Pinus Mugo Mughus.

 

[SouthernMaple]

Do you have the sales tag that was on the tree from the nursery? If so what does it say? To me it looks like Pinus Mugo Mughus.

it says Katana Kandles Mugo Pine

 

[Vance Wood]

it says Katana Kandles Mugo Pine

Sounds like a man made cultivar so the tree is probably a graft. Obviously you look like you are going for a cascade, which is possible but probably very difficult with this tree. From the Katana in the title of the cultivar I assume it is refering to the sword like straight and upright nature of the growth which could make a cascade near impossible.

You need to study some of the fundamentals of bonsai design. One of the most important reveals of a good bonsai is the reveal of the nebari, All bonsai designs start with the design of the trunk, the radial roots (Nebari), and the way the roots grasp the ground. These elements take a good deal of time to develop especially if you have no clue how to do this and are left with hoping that in time good nebari will develop naturally. With a Mugo Pine this is possible in ten or twenty years but for now it would be nice to see how the trunk is shaped and in your photos you show very little of the trunk structure. Everu bonsai desiogn out there starts with the foundation of the tree----the trunk and surface roots. The taper of the trunk follows and the emergence of well placed branches top off and finish the tree.

All of these things are supposed to emulate age and the conflict of life the tree has endured. You may not understand any of this at this point but in essence, it is the existence of these elements which have attracted you to bonsai in the first place.

 

[SouthernMaple]

Sounds like a man made cultivar so the tree is probably a graft. Obviously you look like you are going for a cascade, which is possible but probably very difficult with this tree. From the Katana in the title of the cultivar I assume it is refering to the sword like straight and upright nature of the growth which could make a cascade near impossible.

You need to study some of the fundamentals of bonsai design. One of the most important reveals of a good bonsai is the reveal of the nebari, All bonsai designs start with the design of the trunk, the radial roots (Nebari), and the way the roots grasp the ground. These elements take a good deal of time to develop especially if you have no clue how to do this and are left with hoping that in time good nebari will develop naturally. With a Mugo Pine this is possible in ten or twenty years but for now it would be nice to see how the trunk is shaped and in your photos you show very little of the trunk structure. Everu bonsai desiogn out there starts with the foundation of the tree----the trunk and surface roots. The taper of the trunk follows and the emergence of well placed branches top off and finish the tree.

All of these things are supposed to emulate age and the conflict of life the tree has endured. You may not understand any of this at this point but in essence, it is the existence of these elements which have attracted you to bonsai in the first place.

Katana kandles is not the name its something else, I just thought that sounded more badass, the nebari on this tree blows and I am trying to cover it with the rim of the pot and the little foliage there is. I prefer younger thinner bonsai as it is more appealing to me just like i like my women, that and its all I can afford with my bonsai budget. maybe in 20 years if im still alive ill have changed my tune.

 

[Vance Wood]

Katana kandles is not the name its something else, I just thought that sounded more badass, the nebari on this tree blows and I am trying to cover it with the rim of the pot and the little foliage there is. I prefer younger thinner bonsai as it is more appealing to me just like i like my women, that and its all I can afford with my bonsai budget. maybe in 20 years if im still alive ill have changed my tune.

Look at the label one more time. I was not looking for bad ass I was looking for information that would help me make a conclusion that would help you. What I wanted was the botanical name. Good luck with your decision to proceed bsckwards into bonsai culture.