'This is not a contest' - Cattwood's tree

[Cattwooduk]

Right so I'm really wanting to use a Japanese Cedar I picked up a couple months ago but have been watching and waiting for it to wake up sufficiently for me to start work on it. This weekend I checked and got a second opinion and think it is now on the move enough for me to work it, however I really just haven't been able to squeeze in the hours to do it since Saturday.

As deadline is tomorrow, I'm going to try and get the tools out after work and post the pictures then. And if I really don't get time to do it I will use one of the trees I have worked on in the last few weeks instead. So this post for now is just a place-holder until ultimate deadline comes around and hope this is acceptable for an informal contest! I'd like to do the Crypto really as all my other trees are deciduous so would be a complete change to what I'm used to so far.

Update to come tomorrow!

 

[Sn0W]

You don't need to start work on the tree by today. Just have it, shown us and started a thread about it. The work can take place at any point over the next 4 years

 

[Cattwooduk]

Oh right hah, I misunderstood the guidance rules then! I Have posted pictures of the tree elsewhere on the forum when I bought it so I'll put them in here tomorrow even if I don't get a chance to work on it.

 

[Cattwooduk]

Ok so this is my Cryptomeria Japonica 'Tilford Gold' I picked up a couple months ago. It's been sat waiting to get started and I posted it when I first purchased it and have been trying to do some reading around about them ever since. There doesn't seem to be many Japanese Cedars on this forum and I can't find a great deal in general so it'going to be interesting for me to work on this project, compounded by the fact I don't actually have any other conifers at all anyway. I decided that I might as well give myself something a bit out of my small comfort zone to go with for this contest which I'm more seeing as a group development project
@Handsome John has given me a bit of advice to get started which I'm grateful for.

Plan for this year is to do some general styling this spring; take out the weak branches, do some very light wiring to get an idea of direction and eliminate the top/bottom growth on what pads I have in mind to develop. I'm not going to whack it too hard even though they are supposed to back bud furiously. I think moving some of the branches into general position and letting some light in should encourage the growth further back into the tree as there is a decent amount of young shoots.

Design wise I need to decide what my goal is in terms of it being triple trunked. Do I go for single trunk, remove one and jin the third, go for main trunk with 2 jin trunks, or try and make a triple trunk out of it? I'm going to need to stare at it for longer yet and I'm hoping once I've removed some of the weak branches I will get a better feel of what it's saying to me.

Plenty of misting and maybe some pinching this summer if it's looking health, Winter probably some firmer wiring, then next spring will be half a re-potting job starting the process of getting it into proper soil. I've been advised to do it in 2 separate seasons as they don't appreciate a bare rooting like deciduous can handle.

Apologies for the blurry first picture!

 

[Cattwooduk]

Right so this evening I finally had a little time to get started on this. I was trying to work out a front but with so much foliage it's hard to get a good idea of the branch structure and which ones going where would look best etc.

I decided to just gently bend down all the branches and then cut off any of the smaller bits which pointed up and down to show me what the eventual pads might be like. This opened things up a fair amount to start with.

Next I took out a few of the thin and weak looking branches. The next bit was looking at spots where I had more than one strong branch all coming from the same flat plane, and seeing which ones would fit in best.
I struggled with this a little and I think I need to gently wire the branches down even just a little bit for now to get a better idea of where things will be sitting.

I've more or less left the top part for now because it's so godamn dense I don't even know where to start. I think whatever happens up there is going to be determined by whether I work some jin and Shari onto one of the 3 main trunks. I like the idea of having some big deadwood on one trunk to attract the eye, but this is going to be decided by, or be the deciding factor in picking my front. For now I can't see anything standing out so for now I'll let it recover as I took about 1/3 Of the foliage off.

I also managed to break off a branch which I would have wanted to keep - looked as if it had a bit snapped off in the past so the union to the trunk was already weak when I started to bend it downwards. Even a gentle bend on it managed to peel it off way easier than I expected, after that I was super careful... lesson learned!

Next step will be some minor wiring to get a better idea of structure and hopefully give me more ideas on the bits where I'm feeling stuck.

 

[Handsome John]

Any update to how its growing?

 

[Cattwooduk]

Work has been so busy with work the last few months I've barely done anything to any of my trees besides rotating them, watering and feeding them! I've cut back a few branches to 2 or 3 pairs of leaves on a few of them but all I've been doing is misting the crypto occasionally really. It's looking pretty healthy, took the initial pruning well which is a good indicator for me of what the tree can take.

I'm assuming the tree is now mostly dormant since we've been having 20-30 degrees for a good few weeks, considering the wiring still but I'm thinking it would still be preferable to leave it until winter?

 

[Handsome John]

Keep on the misting! and maybe wait till its a little cooler out for wiring, hot and dry isn't the best combo for them haha

 

[KiwiPlantGuy]

Work has been so busy with work the last few months I've barely done anything to any of my trees besides rotating them, watering and feeding them! I've cut back a few branches to 2 or 3 pairs of leaves on a few of them but all I've been doing is misting the crypto occasionally really. It's looking pretty healthy, took the initial pruning well which is a good indicator for me of what the tree can take.

I'm assuming the tree is now mostly dormant since we've been having 20-30 degrees for a good few weeks, considering the wiring still but I'm thinking it would still be preferable to leave it until winter?

Hi Cattwooduk,
Looks like you have a nice tree here to work on. Unsure if you have considered this option, so here’s my 2 cents.
Cryptomeria root very easily by cutting, so my opinion is you could make a really cool Clump, or multi- trunk bonsai. To do this you would have to sink tree down to where the trunks/branches join the trunk and from there you get a new nebari. Of course you then have to wait for the new trunks to thicken, and thin out inside trunks to create image. Sorry I can’t do a virtual, but someone like @defra can, please.
Something to think about etc,
Charles

 

[Cattwooduk]

Finally made myself some time and got the confidence to do some proper work on this tree!

This is the first tree I've ever wired out and styled from a nursery stock to anything remotely like a bonsai tree... everything else I have is raw collected stuff which I've only really chopped and maybe wired a leader.

I spent about 7 hours wiring this all out and selecting branches, I'm pretty pleased with the result. I know there are still a few issues to take care of - there are some crossing branches looking from some angles but I'm not sure how to get around this on a multi-trunk tree, or if it isn't really a problem if yiu cant see crossing viewed from the front.

Can't decide if the jin I made in the middle looks weirdly out of place, I had to remove the branch there so decided to try making a jin.

There's a couple of areas which looks a bit empty and some a bit clustered perhaps, but found it hard to balance filling areas and then not ending up with branches that look unnaturally positioned.

Wiring could be better in some places, but overall think it's not a bad first attempt.

Apologies for the bad photos, will try and get some better lit ones later. Hard to show the proportions and depth well so some of it looks way more congested than it is.

 

[BunjaeKorea]

I like it! You should search 杉盆栽 'sugi bonsai' because the Japanese are hands down the best at doing these. I just collected a yamadori last week in Jeju so if it survives I will be super happy.

 

[Wee]

First time or not....You did a nice job.

Brian

 

[Cattwooduk]

Thanks! Still a little tidying up to do on some of the pads, remove crotch growth and a little more of the fine wiring etc. I also can't decide if the apex needs thinning a little more - looks a bit clumpy but then from what I see in other examples of the species you get a natural clump at the apex where all the young growth is.

I may leave it until later in the year as I took about a third of the foliage off. Seems to be pretty happy with having a decent amount removed in one go last year as well, so I may do a bit of root reduction when it wakes up as well in May.

 

[CWTurner]

The whole point of wiring is to use it to create intresting bends. Get some movement in those branches, espscially the first one on the right. And pull the branches down towads horizontal.
CW

 

[Cattwooduk]

I was at Herons bonsai at the weekend and asked Peter for some general guidance on the structure of cryptomeria. I was asking about wiring angles and he said the bottom branches can be almost horizontal but as you move up the tree they are much less so, younger growth higher up the tree doesn't grow sideways. I've also watched Ryan Neil's video where he takes a nursery crypto through initial styling and it follows the same principle although I may just be interpreting it wrong.

I tried a few branches wires much more horizontal at first and it really didn't look right at all. Once the pads are laid out better than they are now and they develop and fill out it will look much more layered and you wont see so much of the branches. This is a real basic first structural styling, taking it from a big round ball of green to get to the main trunks and branching I want to work with. There's more pad work etc to do yet but I will experiment with changing some of the branch angles etc again and see how it looks.

If you skip to 1:50:00 he talks about the growth habit of this species.