Scrap pile revival or Pre-firewood? Looking for ideas

[stu929]

So my local nursery has been great to me and whenever they have something that has either been there to long or just doesn't look as they like they usually will let me have it for a very cheap price.

I picked up this rather tall but sparse Common Juniper for I believe 3 or 5 bucks. It was cheap enough that I wasn't worried lets put it that way. It seems to have been in this pot for a very long time and is surprisingly heavy and root bound.

Its got some twists and bends but it fairly straight. Thickness at the soil level is probably my pointer finger maybe the thickness of my thumb. I admittedly do not know a lot of Junipers, should I immediately repot this to try to mitigate some of the root bound issues? I know she doesn't look very healthy but everywhere I have scratched has been green and as the tempts start to warm up I hope the foliage returns.

My ideas or thoughts for this were like some of the below though I am curious as to how much I can bend this trunk. I'm guessing I can probably bend it a lot more than I realize but I did want to ask the group.

When I picked it up I was thinking about something like the tree below. A beaten old survivor with not a lot of foliage and some gins Shari to go with it. Would you throw it in the ground for a year or two? Start trying to put some bends in it asap? Build a grow box and see how much foliage I can get on it in a year or two? Yes Im eager to work on it but I also want to keep it alive, even if it is a cheap tree I strangely saw some promise and an idea in it when I got it. If I were to growbox I have seen to many different ideas on soil but give them amount I will need I was thinking a pumice, bark, grit mix, something that is light and wont compact and give the roots a chance to flourish. I had other pictures of ideas I had but the page keeps rejecting them :-(


Thank you in advance for any ideas

 

[Bonsai Nut]

99% of the problems you list will be solved with a repot. It is suffering terrifically right now from bad roots and bad soil. Trust me on this one... repot it now into a shallower and wider container with good media and you will see new bright green growth popping out everywhere. Do not worry about pruning anything - just get it into good soil. The time to prune or bend or style will come later in June.

That is not a "normal" common juniper. Can you read the cultivar name? I can't quite make it out. It looks like an upright weeping cultivar... which could be really cool.

 

[stu929]

99% of the problems you list will be solved with a repot. It is suffering terrifically right now from bad roots and bad soil. Trust me on this one... repot it now into a shallower and wider container with good media and you will see new bright green growth popping out everywhere. Do not worry about pruning anything - just get it into good soil. The time to prune or bend or style will come later in June.

That is not a "normal" common juniper. Can you read the cultivar name? I can't quite make it out. It looks like an upright weeping cultivar... which could be really cool.

Here you go. I searched it before and couldn't find much about it.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Here's what it looks like when healthy

 

[stu929]

Here's what it looks like when healthy

View attachment 364187

Hmm. Maybe not a great option but what the hell it was 3 bucks.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Hmm. Maybe not a great option but what the hell it was 3 bucks.

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression. I think it is a cool cultivar. It has a light green color, naturally, and I think the draping growth habit, while not what I would call "weeping" still gives it a drooping aged appearance. It is much easier to work with cultivars that are not naturally prone to shooting up beanpole straight.

I posted the image to give you a suggestion of how weak your tree is currently. But don't despair! Trust me - get it out of that plastic pot, clean out all that crappy nursery soil, and get it established in good bonsai soil, and it will burst forth with new growth everywhere!

 

[stu929]

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression. I think it is a cool cultivar. It has a light green color, naturally, and I think the draping growth habit, while not what I would call "weeping" still gives it a drooping aged appearance. It is much easier to work with cultivars that are not naturally prone to shooting up beanpole straight.

I posted the image to give you a suggestion of how weak your tree is currently. But don't despair! Trust me - get it out of that plastic pot, clean out all that crappy nursery soil, and get it established in good bonsai soil, and it will burst forth with new growth everywhere!

I didn't take it that necessarily. When looking at what it should become naturally I was actually a little more stumped as to what to do with it. Part of the reason I like distressed is it forces me to make decisions and cut, the tree in the picture you sent me would have me stumped about decisions to be made
I was hoping to find one someone had bonsai before but no such luck so far.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression. I think it is a cool cultivar. It has a light green color, naturally, and I think the draping growth habit, while not what I would call "weeping" still gives it a drooping aged appearance. It is much easier to work with cultivars that are not naturally prone to shooting up beanpole straight.

I posted the image to give you a suggestion of how weak your tree is currently. But don't despair! Trust me - get it out of that plastic pot, clean out all that crappy nursery soil, and get it established in good bonsai soil, and it will burst forth with new growth everywhere!

Have you ever repotted communis yourself?
I'm not calling you out or anything.. But you either have magic hands, and I'd like to know how you did it.. Or you're assuming communis behaves anything like other junipers, which unfortunately it doesn't.

From the 25 repots I've seen and the three I've done myself, I have seen 4 survivors.

 

[sorce]

Just be careful it's not a pest train, last stop your place, they'll be looking for new food.

Sorce

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Have you ever repotted communis yourself?
I'm not calling you out or anything.. But you either have magic hands, and I'd like to know how you did it.. Or you're assuming communis behaves anything like other junipers, which unfortunately it doesn't.

From the 25 repots I've seen and the three I've done myself, I have seen 4 survivors.

You are correct that I don't have experience with this specific species. I consider them similar to J. rigida, a needle juniper species that I am familiar with, but if J. communis is significantly different it is something I haven't heard of before. So I am curious what you think should be done?

 

[stu929]

Just be careful it's not a pest train, last stop your place, they'll be looking for new food.

Sorce

I did not see any pests but will keep my eye on it. I think it looks like hell because it is so pot bound and it got stuck up against a building and wasn't getting much love.

 

[stu929]

In

Have you ever repotted communis yourself?
I'm not calling you out or anything.. But you either have magic hands, and I'd like to know how you did it.. Or you're assuming communis behaves anything like other junipers, which unfortunately it doesn't.

From the 25 repots I've seen and the three I've done myself, I have seen 4 survivorsIntere

Have you ever repotted communis yourself?
I'm not calling you out or anything.. But you either have magic hands, and I'd like to know how you did it.. Or you're assuming communis behaves anything like other junipers, which unfortunately it doesn't.

From the 25 repots I've seen and the three I've done myself, I have seen 4 survivors.

Interesting. I have never repotted one so I would love any and all info. Even though it was very cheap I would rather not kill it if I don't have too.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

You are correct that I don't have experience with this specific species. I consider them similar to J. rigida, a needle juniper species that I am familiar with, but if J. communis is significantly different it is something I haven't heard of before. So I am curious what you think should be done?

Rigida has been in culture for way longer as far as I know. So the ones ending up in the nurseries etc. will probably have some advantageous traits for potted culture. Communis has some cultivars that are easier than others, but they're still some of the weakest junipers I have seen.

I would poke a hundred holes in the pot to get some air in, maybe lift it out and loosen the soil a little and put it back in the pot again. Then feed it for two years. Communis is friggin' slow to restore. Mine has been repotted three years ago and still not very vigorous.
Even the best stands I can find in nature - bunch of rabbit dung all around - have a two inches of foliar growth a year at most. Cuttings? Fuggedaboudit!

Since they're such a-holes about repotting, I wouldn't dare to touch a weaker trees roots. Because it will push it over the edge. I'm usually not that confident in statements like this, but I've seen slip pots into gardens make them go belly up.

They're the Kurt Cobains of the plant world; pretty cool, rough around the edges, grungy punk rock, but they keep repeating "I hate myself and I want to die".

Half or quarter bare rooting might be a viable option but these things sometimes take 12 months to show damage. That makes it difficult to remember what pushed them over the edge.

I've seen them thrive in dry sand soil, and in damp meadows in scotland. So soil-wise they might be not that picky at all. It's just.. You can't touch them without risking their life for some reason.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Since they're such a-holes about repotting, I wouldn't dare to touch a weaker trees roots. Because it will push it over the edge. I'm usually not that confident in statements like this, but I've seen slip pots into gardens make them go belly up.

They are so common in landscape nurseries here I never really thought much about it. The USDA says they are probably the most widely distributed tree in the world, and their legal status in the wild is "least concern - numbers increasing". I always assumed they were pretty robust.

I would go find a nasty root-bound one at a nursery just to see if I could repot it... though I'm not sure a case study of one will prove much of anything. It could be that the cultivars that are available in NC are specifically chosen for strength within this USDA zone, or something similar. Regardless, based on your feedback, if I ever DO get one, I will make sure I treat it with kid gloves!

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

They used to be pretty common here too, but we murdered (by proxy) all the birds that spread their seeds.
Some ancient giants remain, but they are the last of their kind. It's the only "tree" that's on our national endangered red list, but it has lost it's legal protective status in 2017.

They can grow pretty much everywhere and they can withstand practically every type of environment except shade and prolonged standing water. I don't know if this is factual but it seems that this is the exception to the rule that junipers get their strength from their foliage. These definetely get it from the roots - and with needles that sparse and so little activity overall, that makes sense. Compared to scale junipers, they have less than half the photosynthetic surface on a branch; the needles don't cover the bark, the internodes are just wood. They are more like a cedrus in my humble opinion. But these things are built to last.

There are a bunch of commercial varieties, I like the Arnold one because it's a dwarf type. The weeping (hibernica?) and creeping ones would be hard to style. I never got wild type or true communis to survive a repot. But I might give it another go in a couple years.

I do recommend getting one! They're pretty unique in their own way. The wood is tough as nails but brittle, it snaps easily. Once they do get established in a pot, I believe they can be pretty rewarding bonsai. The berries are pretty magical too.

 

[stu929]

I essentially slip potted and teased the edges. Here's to hoping he survives!

How and when would you feed it ?

 

[Forsoothe!]

Styling, -why fight the natural style? When it shows some healthy growth I would chop it at 2/3 a finished height of my choice based upon the diameter of the base and let it grow somewhat shaggy pointy column as pictured above to the new height. I like to treat trees as individuals and accentuate what is, instead of forcing a tree into some formula that may or may not be possible. Or desirable, for that matter, but to each their own.

 

[stu929]

Styling, -why fight the natural style? When it shows some healthy growth I would chop it at 2/3 a finished height of my choice based upon the diameter of the base and let it grow somewhat shaggy pointy column as pictured above to the new height. I like to treat trees as individuals and accentuate what is, instead of forcing a tree into some formula that may or may not be possible. Or desirable, for that matter, but to each their own.

I will see how it responds, I'm just hoping the report puts some vigor in it and doesn't kill it.

After that I will see what I do with it, I'm just hoping it lives even it it was a cheapo.

 

[Orion_metalhead]

From Dirr...



Idk.. says they transplant readily... idk why youre having so much trouble @Wires_Guy_wires. I cant imagine something that transplants readily would be so picky with it's roots.

 

[0soyoung]

I am taken by the 'pre-firewood' concept.

... just in general.



I don't think this tree is good 'pre-firewood', though. It first needs to be repotted (as discussed) and then undergo several years worth of diligent, fruitless development effort before it can be 'pre-firewood', IMHO.