Jaberwky17
Shohin
Went to Sams Club today (for those not familiar, it's the Costco type store associated with Walmart). They had a few sad looking landscape plants on a pallet island in the middle of the parking lot. Leftovers from spring. They had a half dozen 3 gallon containers with what I thought was dwarf mugo for $6.81 each. Upon closer inspection, the tags said "Tanyosho pine" so of course I looked up tanyosho pine bonsai on my phone, saw a few examples and thought "Ok - for six bucks what the heck". Nice fat 2" or so trunks and nice healthy budding and needle growth. When I went out to pick one up after shopping inside, the cart guy said "just take a couple - these are the last and will be dead soon."
Fast forward to home, I unwrapped the first one and tugged it out of the pot. Hidden under the needles and duff was what is left of burlap wrapping and string. It had disintegrated and become mostly part of the soil ball. Ah, the soil. Top layer is sandy loam, inside is hard packed solid clay. I saw nice white root tips poking out here and there but there was no way I was going to let these trees stay in that horrible clay. After careful removal, I was left with a surprisingly small rootball that easily fit pond baskets.
Next, to clean out the nasty duff up in the branches, remove a bunch of spindly dead stuff, pull all the growth up, and give them a good watering and wash. One seems to want to be relatively upright, while the other wants to lean (although I think it needs to rotate 180 degrees on its trunk axis at its next repotting). I didn't remove more than 3-4 branchlets that had green on them. I figure I will leave them to grow a little.
The foliage is spectacular, nice short needles - even the 2nd year needles are short. I can see being able to wire the branching into a couple of pleasing shapes. 2 nice fat trunks for six bucks - can't beat that!
Fast forward to home, I unwrapped the first one and tugged it out of the pot. Hidden under the needles and duff was what is left of burlap wrapping and string. It had disintegrated and become mostly part of the soil ball. Ah, the soil. Top layer is sandy loam, inside is hard packed solid clay. I saw nice white root tips poking out here and there but there was no way I was going to let these trees stay in that horrible clay. After careful removal, I was left with a surprisingly small rootball that easily fit pond baskets.
Next, to clean out the nasty duff up in the branches, remove a bunch of spindly dead stuff, pull all the growth up, and give them a good watering and wash. One seems to want to be relatively upright, while the other wants to lean (although I think it needs to rotate 180 degrees on its trunk axis at its next repotting). I didn't remove more than 3-4 branchlets that had green on them. I figure I will leave them to grow a little.
The foliage is spectacular, nice short needles - even the 2nd year needles are short. I can see being able to wire the branching into a couple of pleasing shapes. 2 nice fat trunks for six bucks - can't beat that!
