bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - PROJECT- Trident Maple III

Oh yea, I still have this "thing".

I have some good news and some bad news.

First the good news: The layering worked extremely well and I have some base flare and a radial root system. I ajm very pleased with the progress mad in such a small amount of time.

The bad news: I did all this work on less than perfect stock to start with. This is why the best possible stock should always be obtained before wasting huge amounts of time on something that will never be any good no matter how much one works to improve it.

The new good news: I plan on going ahead with my first impulse and take as many trees off this as possible. The branches are quite large (as far as shohin goes) and have adaquate taper and can be taken off as individual trees. The topp will be layered of as one unit and made to be shohin. The trunk will require some carving to conceal a bad chop at the top but I think I can work around that. After that I will cut it back at the base and start over with a new shohin tree with new found techniques for doing low chops on tridents and how to best grow them out. (article soon, with pictures!)

The new bad news: I will lose all this time over again. so far I have about four years in growing branches after the first chop at planned height. Then I layered off the bad root base, that took a year, plus the last two years getting the roots to flare and fatten at the soil line. Now I plan on losing about 5 more years to get where I am today. Jeessh I hope I don't die before I get at least one good tree out of this poor Frankenstien tree.