New Young Juniper

[Irfan]

Hi guys,
I'm about to wire this small juniper I got. Any recommendations, or suggestions. I can't really see a shape in the tree apart from cascade which I don't fancy at all.
Thanks in advance

 

[Irfan]

Ok, i Jined another branch which seemed too thick compared to the trunk

 

[River's Edge]

Hi guys,
I'm about to wire this small juniper I got. Any recommendations, or suggestions. I can't really see a shape in the tree apart from cascade which I don't fancy at all.
Thanks in advance

You have a seedling, small cutting. Grow it until you have something to work with. Put it in the ground or grow pot for five years.

 

[Irfan]

You have a seedling, small cutting. Grow it until you have something to work with. Put it in the ground or grow pot for five years.

it is in a grow pot. I just want to wire it up and give it a basic shape

 

[River's Edge]

it is in a grow pot. I just want to wire it up and give it a basic shape

Looks like a typical 3 inch nursery pot. What is the diameter of the trunk?

 

[Irfan]

Looks like a typical 3 inch nursery pot. What is the diameter of the trunk?

20 cm pot trunks around 2cm thick. What i want to do is make a small prebonsai and work on my skills. Got to start somewhere

 

[River's Edge]

20 cm pot trunks around 2cm thick. What i want to do is make a small prebonsai and work on my skills. Got to start somewhere

I understand that, my suggestion stands. Recognize that the stage is important to recognize. Bonsai takes time, if you wish to style and wire acquire material that is at that stage. If you wish grow out acquire seedlings or cuttings. I am not trying to offend just educate. Here is a sample of two junipers ready for styling and basic structure. Both have base diameters of greater than 10 cm.
First you need to grow the trunk.

 

[Shibui]

I'm about to wire this small juniper I got. Any recommendations, or suggestions. I can't really see a shape in the tree apart from cascade which I don't fancy at all.

The reason you can't see any shape is because it is too small to have a shape. It definitely needs to be grown to get a more substantial trunk so there is something to work with.
Junipers are prized for their wild, twisted trunks and dead wood but in captivity with gentle conditions they tend to grow tall and straight. I start wiring junipers when they are really small and thin and bend all sorts of tight twists and turns into all the trunks and branches. Don't worry too much about style or shape at this stage. The whole tree will be completely different in a few years. Just try to get random bends and twists. Try to avoid regular corkscrew bends and straight sections, especially near the base. The smaller the final bonsai the tighter the bends need to be generally.
Don't worry too much about taper at that stage. Most of it will be cut off later anyway. Leave as many trunks and branches as possible because every bit of live foliage will contribute to growth and thickness. Junipers are slow growing so you need all the help you can get.
Jinning thin branches is a waste of time. Matchstick jins like you have made do not look impressive and most will rot away before the tree has developed enough to be a good bonsai anyway. Use the extra branches to get growth.

Transfer the tree to a larger container or into the garden for a few years so it grows at maximum potential to get thickness quicker and then work out what to do with the results in 3-5 years, maybe 10 years if you want 10cm trunks like the ones @Rivers Edge has posted.

 

[Irfan]

The reason you can't see any shape is because it is too small to have a shape. It definitely needs to be grown to get a more substantial trunk so there is something to work with.
Junipers are prized for their wild, twisted trunks and dead wood but in captivity with gentle conditions they tend to grow tall and straight. I start wiring junipers when they are really small and thin and bend all sorts of tight twists and turns into all the trunks and branches. Don't worry too much about style or shape at this stage. The whole tree will be completely different in a few years. Just try to get random bends and twists. Try to avoid regular corkscrew bends and straight sections, especially near the base. The smaller the final bonsai the tighter the bends need to be generally.
Don't worry too much about taper at that stage. Most of it will be cut off later anyway. Leave as many trunks and branches as possible because every bit of live foliage will contribute to growth and thickness. Junipers are slow growing so you need all the help you can get.
Jinning thin branches is a waste of time. Matchstick jins like you have made do not look impressive and most will rot away before the tree has developed enough to be a good bonsai anyway. Use the extra branches to get growth.

Transfer the tree to a larger container or into the garden for a few years so it grows at maximum potential to get thickness quicker and then work out what to do with the results in 3-5 years, maybe 10 years if you want 10cm trunks like the ones @Rivers Edge has posted.

Thank you soooooooo much. This was really helpful advice

 

[Irfan]

I understand that, my suggestion stands. Recognize that the stage is important to recognize. Bonsai takes time, if you wish to style and wire acquire material that is at that stage. If you wish grow out acquire seedlings or cuttings. I am not trying to offend just educate. Here is a sample of two junipers ready for styling and basic structure. Both have base diameters of greater than 10 cm.
First you need to grow the trunk.

Thanks a lot

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

This looks like a communis juniper to me. One of the slowest growing junipers out there.
The others are right, you want this one to grow, but count on closer to 10 years instead of 3-5 to get something substantial.

Wiring communis is hard, they love snapping and breaking instead of bending, so do the structural trunk wiring while it's young.
I think you could get some pfizer or media junipers and maybe even some meditteranean ones (sabina, phoenicea) in Bosnia. Maybe even Blaauw and other chinensis varieties. They are pretty cheap most of the times so you can get bigger ones for just a small increase in price, and they are much easier to work with. They also grow a lot faster.
That will give you something to play with ;-)

 

[Irfan]

Guys your feedback is much appreciated. So i went back to the nursery, no one does bonsai where i live so finding sth good is quite hard, it's either too small or too big (or it just seeems so to my inexperienced eye). I found couple of older junipers which are leggy and barely alive but have interesting trunk movement. Tell me what you think about these.

The last two pics are from the tree i brought back home. Plan on planting it in the ground and getting its vigor back. It has buds all over the trunk line which i hope to grow out

 

[augustine]

Remember that good bonsai material can be obtained by removing landscape shrubs and small trees. I don't know what grows in your area but just as an example here we have collected azaleas, junipers, yews and others from people's yards to train for bonsai. (with permission of course.)

We also go out and collect native trees on private property (with owner's permission). Collecting/digging has to be done at the right time of the year.

Good luck,

Augustine

 

[Vance Wood]

The reason you can't see any shape is because it is too small to have a shape. It definitely needs to be grown to get a more substantial trunk so there is something to work with.
Junipers are prized for their wild, twisted trunks and dead wood but in captivity with gentle conditions they tend to grow tall and straight. I start wiring junipers when they are really small and thin and bend all sorts of tight twists and turns into all the trunks and branches. Don't worry too much about style or shape at this stage. The whole tree will be completely different in a few years. Just try to get random bends and twists. Try to avoid regular corkscrew bends and straight sections, especially near the base. The smaller the final bonsai the tighter the bends need to be generally.
Don't worry too much about taper at that stage. Most of it will be cut off later anyway. Leave as many trunks and branches as possible because every bit of live foliage will contribute to growth and thickness. Junipers are slow growing so you need all the help you can get.
Jinning thin branches is a waste of time. Matchstick jins like you have made do not look impressive and most will rot away before the tree has developed enough to be a good bonsai anyway. Use the extra branches to get growth.

Transfer the tree to a larger container or into the garden for a few years so it grows at maximum potential to get thickness quicker and then work out what to do with the results in 3-5 years, maybe 10 years if you want 10cm trunks like the ones @Rivers Edge has posted.

For Ifran: I have always taught that good bonsai are not grown up into great bonsai from young immature trees like you have show here, but are the product of being cut down from much larger material and shaped by the skill of the grower so as to give the appearance of a very old tree shaped by the power of nature. If you are serious about learning bonsai you need to learn this lesson now and try not to default to the ridiculous argument that you have nothing but time and don't mind the wait. You will learn over time that your time is your greatest resource. Your own life span that goes by a lot faster than you can imagine and eventually, you will discover you don't get a do-over and cannot regain the wasted time that could have been spent dedicated to productive effort not foolish drivel. Junipers grow, mature and become beautiful as bonsai very slowly. If you start with small Junipers you will always have small bonsai unless you remain active and productive into your triple digits. Time is the best resource you have, don't waste it and don't throw it out because your are too flippant to recognize the necessity of your mortality.