Newt

The first thing I do with junipers from the nursery is to take a saw or kitchen knife and cut the bottom 1/2 right off. Then loosen the surface soil, find the nebari and loosen the soil/roots around the entire root ball, top and bottom. Then take out the wedges or remove half of the remaining soil. If you don't cut the ends, you will never get roots in near the trunk, just make sure you leave some fine feeder roots, kind of like chasing the foliage back on a juniper or ficus too little branch. Then in three years the half that you removed the soil from should be left alone and bare root the other side, cutting the tips as much as possible while leaving some fine roots, remove all long roots. Long roots are useless in a bonsai pot, in nature they are used for ancorage which is accomplished with wire or twine in bonsai. If the long roots keep getting cut off you are only left with feeder roots.

Remember junipers are very tough and can take aggressive root reduction (as long as the top has been reduced as well).

Newt

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