How To?... Shortening branches on Juniper Procumbens Nana.

mp29k

I have a couple of JPN that are being started in their nursury pots. I have removed a lot of the unessecary branches, and done a litle bit of wiring on one of them. I have also consistently been removing new growth, and this has induced some back budding that will be cricial to the final design (in my mind) many years down the road.

I was curious how you all reduce the length of the branches to fit the scale of the tree. I do not want to leave large unsightly scars where I chop the length, and I don't want to induce branch die back either, but the length of these branches NEEDS to be reduced if these are ever going to be beleivable bonsai. I think I have good material for an informal upright, and a semi/ full cascade with a large jin (jin is nescessary to remove some undesireable reverse taper in one of the branches.

Please help. I love some of the JPN that you all display on here, but am hesitant to just cut the branches back to where they would need to be to "look right". I am "new again" to bonsai after a couple years off after killing a few trees .

Just so no one thinks I am clueless, I am going to wait to do the major styling in the spring when new growth is vigorous.

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Staselwood

I did this on a very large Juniper as well. it took me about 3-4 years to get them to really move back in. I started off my cutting, reasonably hard, maybe by half the length. so that there was still a sufficient amount of branches and foliage to support the tree. it responded by some back budding... then i kept on pinching as often as it need, usually several time a year, to keep it back budding. after the 3rd year it was about half the length it started out being and it has hugh foliage masses. just this past year (june) i used it in a final styling demo. wired every little branch, took me about 12 hours, and i just took all the wire off, started to cut already. Pinching really keeps it growing good. (obviously feeding and watering too... haha)
You will have to be paient and keep it in a grow container for faster results.

i will try and get a pic on here of it, before and after.

Jeff

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Jeffery Carr

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Camay123

You need to cut at an angle right after the last secondary branch you want to keep.

Red line on drawing is showing the technique.

This way, the growth of the secondary branch will help cover the scar faster.

Attached Images

cuttech.JPG (7.5 KB, 45 views)

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