Zuisho JWP progression thread

[Adair M]

I bought a new project tree a couple weeks ago, and I’m just starting to work on it:



I didn’t do anything with it until today. I was busy prepping other trees for the Nationals.

September into October is the best time to work JWP. They have fully hardened off, so their foliage won’t be damaged by the manipulations we do when we pull old needles and wire. JBP that were decandled in the summer are still growing, so it’s too early to mess with them. So, September is good for JWP, and Scots and Mugo. Those are single flush pines, and they should be finished growing for the year.

Other than the calendar, another sign JWP are ready for work is the sheaths supporting the needle clusters have dried up and mostly fallen off. And you start to see it sluffing off old needles. So, you will find some brown old needles, and yellow old needles, and some dull green old needles that are on their way to becoming yellow.

So, the first thing I did was to spend an hour or so cleaning the tree, removing the brown and yellow needles, and even some of the older green needles. I have not yet done any pruning.



You can see the mess I made. This was largely tweezer work. Old needles come off easily. If you have to really tug on them to remove them, it’s probably best to leave them on. Pulling those might injure a JWP. (JBP are different! A bit of a tug on JBP is expected!)

I start at the top when cleaning and work my way down. Needles fall off as I work, and if I had started at the bottom, the needles from the top would fall all over the bottom, and I would have had to clean it again! When I start to wire, I will start at the bottom, and work my way up. Just the opposite.

The next step is to find those places where 3 spring candles grew out, and thin those down to 2. I’ll try to find some good examples of what I’m doing and post photos in my next post.

I will update this thread as I work my way thru this tree. Stay tuned!

 

[Dav4]

Hmmm... goat farm??

 

[Adair M]

Hmmm... goat farm??

Yep! Working on the front deck of the farm house.

Less clean-up required! Lol!!

 

[Adair M]

Here’s a little clump of foliage up near the apex.



What I found is I hadn’t cleaned it out very well. There were no obvious brown or yellow needles to attract my eye, so I had skipped it while cleaning. But it’s WAY too dense. Here it is after cleaning:



Now we can see there’s a little cluster of twigs of little branches in there. There’s actually two whorles, which means there is two years of growth.

Let’s thin it out:



It’s hard to take a good photo with only two hands. Neither the goats, nor the cats would help! It looks like I left a bar branch, but the upper one is 1/4 inch back and after wiring, it will look better.

As you can see, the twig is rather gangly. This is a problem all over. The previous owner had not wired it out in several years, so the foliage had shaded the twigs. Once it’s wired, I’ll get a lot of backbudding.

 

[Hack Yeah!]

@Adair M could you advise on how much of this work would differ for much younger material. I was just wondering when you would begin pulling needles and such on 3 or 4 yr material

 

[Adair M]

@Adair M could you advise on how much of this work would differ for much younger material. I was just wondering when you would begin pulling needles and such on 3 or 4 yr material

This needle pulling isn’t the “balancing” kind of needle pulling. All I’m really doing here is cleaning up old dead needles or needles I know will turn yellow and then brown later this fall.

The kind of needle pulling you’re talking about is when we are trying to balance the strength so the apex area is weakened by pulling needles from that area, for example. Young material at 3 to 4 years just needs to grow. It’s FAR to young to be concerned with needle pulling. That’s a refinement technique.

The main reason I’m doing this clean up is to make it easier to wire. I won’t be wrapping wire over a whole bunch of needles.

 

[Adair M]

First branch wired.



Final tweaks aren’t done, but it’s most set in place.

As I work, I find more little clusters of too dense buds that need thinning. Here’s one:



There’s a dead twig, a place where three twigs come from one joint, twigs growing down, etc. So, I thinned it:



And finished wiring it out to the end. The twig on the right doesn’t need wire.

Here’s another:





Lots of little twigs and buds crowing each other! Here, I’ll keep one “top twig”, but remove the bottoms and really weak ones that will just drain resources:



And finish wiring it out:



Here is the final product:



The “main line” was done in 16 gauge, the last little bit of the branch on the right out to the right fork on the end is 18 gauge.

For JWP, I use a lot of 18 gauge for finish wiring. For JBP, the smallest I use is 16.

 

[Adair M]

I’ve got the lowest level of branches wired. They’re kinda set, but I’ll wait to do the final tweeting once everything is wired. I’m sure I’ll bump them and/or change my mind once I’m finished wiring!



Now, I’ve got to get some bushhogging in before the hurricane hits!

 

[Tidal Bonsai]

I’ve got the lowest level of branches wired. They’re kinda set, but I’ll wait to do the final tweeting once everything is wired. I’m sure I’ll bump them and/or change my mind once I’m finished wiring!

View attachment 209861

Now, I’ve got to get some bushhogging in before the hurricane hits!

Thank you for showing in detail the process of setting pads and designing a branch in detail! This is still something that I practice and work on. For me, it was hard to wrap my brain around how a pad is not a thick branch with a bunch of foliage on it. Rather, a main branch with many secondary and tertiary branches building up a finished pad. Truely a tree in miniature!

 

[Adair M]

Thank you for showing in detail the process of setting pads and designing a branch in detail! This is still something that I practice and work on. For me, it was hard to wrap my brain around how a pad is not a thick branch with a bunch of foliage on it. Rather, a main branch with many secondary and tertiary branches building up a finished pad. Truely a tree in miniature!

Yep, they’re layers. The foliage around the bottom edge is the lowest layer, then there’s a mid-level layer with shorter branches, and finally a crown layer. This gives the pads “height” and taper.

I have a thread in the Resources section with “fishhooks” in the title detailing how to build a pad in a JBP. There’s better photos in it. The same principles apply on JWP.

 

[Hartinez]

Yep, they’re layers. The foliage around the bottom edge is the lowest layer, then there’s a mid-level layer with shorter branches, and finally a crown layer. This gives the pads “height” and taper.

I have a thread in the Resources section with “fishhooks” in the title detailing how to build a pad in a JBP. There’s better photos in it. The same principles apply on JWP.

Really awessome to see the detail of the layers your making for a final pad with depth and height. At first glance I see a LONG branch with tufts at the end and don’t get it, but then I realize that that is the bottom portion of the pad with several layers of shorter and shorter branches that lay on top.

Can’t wait to see the tree fully wired.

 

[my nellie]

Yep, they’re layers... ...
I have a thread in the Resources section with “fishhooks” in the title detailing how to build a pad in a JBP.

Helping to find the thread...
It is not in the Resources but rather in : Special Forums -> Articles and Tutorials -> Articles & Tutorials -> Advanced wiring: using "fishhooks" link here

 

[Adair M]

Really awessome to see the detail of the layers your making for a final pad with depth and height. At first glance I see a LONG branch with tufts at the end and don’t get it, but then I realize that that is the bottom portion of the pad with several layers of shorter and shorter branches that lay on top.

Can’t wait to see the tree fully wired.

Yep, there are some long branches with no interior branches. This is a “new to me” tree. I bought it a couple weeks ago in the condition you see in the first post. It was not wired. It obviously has been in the past, I don’t know how recently.

I purchased it from a friend who got it from Doug Paul. Mr. Paul has one of the best bonsai collections on earth, and imports dozens, if not hundreds of trees per year from Japan. Importing from Hapan is a crap shoot. No matter what precautions you take, there is some loss going thru quarantine and customs. Sometimes as much as 50%. So, he buys twice what he needs, keeps the really good ones, and sells the others. This is an “other”. A good, but not great, tree from Japan. But, I like Zuisho, and it appears to be on its own roots. They DO back bud well, so I’m hoping with a good wiring out, the grey wood will get exposed to the sun and back bud. My other Zuisho have, so I expect this one will, too.

My friend could not give the tree full sun. I can, so I expect that will help with the back budding.

Meanwhile, I have to work with what I have, and make it look as good as I can while I wait for the back budding.

 

[my nellie]

... ...Meanwhile, I have to work with what I have, and make it look as good as I can while I wait for the back budding.

And we will looking forward to your updates and follow the progress of your work

 

[Adair M]

I’ve managed to get wire on the left-most tree. I’m sure thatbonce I get the rest of the tree wired I will be making adjustments.

Kinda hard in the photo to see the apex, there’s a raw clump of foliage from the middle trunk directly behind it. It should look better once that clump is styled.



I’m going to have to open a new coil of 18 gauge wire soon!

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Wiring white pines is no joke. I wired out this old one (you may have seen it, Cratty bought it a couple years ago) and it took almost a month. Granted, with a young family, and a career and everything else, I only got to work a few hours at a time, but it took forever. Have fun, it is definitely enjoyable.

 

[Adair M]

Wiring white pines is no joke. I wired out this old one (you may have seen it, Cratty bought it a couple years ago) and it took almost a month. Granted, with a young family, and a career and everything else, I only got to work a few hours at a time, but it took forever. Have fun, it is definitely enjoyable.

Yep, I saw that tree. Pinched back a few over grown candles for him, and thinned back to two shoots. He sold it pretty quickly. It was beginning to get leggy again. I don’t know who bought it. I hope they have the skills to keep it from getting overgrown.

 

[my nellie]

Wiring white pines is no joke. I wired out this old one (you may have seen it, Cratty bought it a couple years ago) and it took almost a month... ...

May I ask is there any difference in wiring white Pines compared to wiring other types of Pines?
And if I may ask for an update on the above mentioned white Pine of yours, Sir.... Since 2016 it's two whole years and considering that it's now wired I would like to see it

 

[Adair M]

May I ask is there any difference in wiring white Pines compared to wiring other types of Pines?
And if I may ask for an update on the above mentioned white Pine of yours, Sir.... Since 2016 it's two whole years and considering that it's now wired I would like to see it

The white pine BVF wired was owned by the Birmingham bonsai club, and it was on display at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, I don’t think the trees there got the best care. And occasionally BVF and others would have to rescue them. I think the club decided that the best thing for the trees (and the club) would be to sell them. So they did, about two years ago. Steve Cratty, the owner of Plant City Bonsai purchased a couple of them and resold them after a couple months. I don’t know where they are now.

Wiring JWP isn’t harder than other pines, in fact, it’s easier. Except they don’t backbud well. What happens is each little shoot tends to get just a little bit longer every year. 1/4 inch some years, 1/2 or 3/4 inch on others. But what often happens is you can get these long, spindly, thin branches six or seven inches long with just a little tuft of needles at the end. And then, you try to make those look like a nice full pad of foliage. Bjorn is a Master at doing just that! I’ve seen some JWP he’s wired whet he brings branches way from the back to place that tuft of foliage in just the perfect spot in the front! And when you see it at a comfortable viewing distance, it looks great! It’s when you get up close, actually TOO close, LOL, where you can peer inside the canopy where you can see all the tricks! It looks like a Donald Trump comb-over in there!

I don’t do that. First of all, I’m not that good! Bjorn is amazingly talented! But second, while I want the tree to look good, I also style in such a way that the tree will become structurally sound so that a combover won’t be required. JWP will backbud eventually, so I try to place the branches where they should be so that the backbud, when they occur, will thrive. Eventually, I will be able to shorten the long spindly branches by cutting back to the backbuds.

JBP backbud much more readily. Their twigs are usually stouter, and since the needles are usually larger, you get full looking pads with fewer twigs. Their needles are sharper and stiffer so it’s ouchier! And when you pull needles, they bleed a bit, so your fingers and tools get sticky. But there’s far less tedious fine wining with thin wire involved. The smallest wire I use on JBP is 16 gauge. For JWP, it’s 18 gauge.

To recap, it’s easier to have a well structured JBP than JWP. So wiring JBP is easier mentally. Wiring JWP is more of a mental challenge. Not the physical wiring, it’s the styling and overcoming the leggy twigs.

 

[my nellie]

The white pine BVF wired was owned by the Birmingham bonsai club... ...
So wiring JBP is easier mentally. Wiring JWP is more of a mental challenge. Not the physical wiring, it’s the styling and overcoming the leggy twigs.

Thank you very much for your time and the detailed reply, Adair!
That's very kind of you!