Cleaning of RMJ

[Bonsai305]

When is it okay to clean a Rocky Mountain Juniper?

One of my native - collected RMJs is making great progress after potting, pruning and styling over the last two years. I comprehensively wired and pruned the entire tree in April / May and it is beautiful and thriving. Now I want to clean it; I'm excited to see the live veins and deadwood by removing the bark while using the opportunity to clean the trunk and inspect for borers.

Here in Denver we have 30 more days of 85 - 95 degrees, then 3 - 4 weeks of growing season left.

I'm excited, how soon can I do this without risk?

 

[Colorado]

I am far from a RMJ expert, but since no other responses yet I’ll offer my 2 cents, but take it with a grain of salt.

I think you are probably fine to do it now if you’d like and as long as you’re reasonably careful. This stormy cycle has been nice and looks to continue next week. Doesn’t look like any super high temperatures in the foreseeable future.

Could also wait a couple weeks and make sure we don’t have another 100+ heat wave. I don’t like to work on trees too late in the year. We all remember the Labor Day snowstorm last year

Let’s see some pics of this RMJ!

 

[Esolin]

I think Ryan Neil talks about cleaning live veins in one of his Youtube videos. Ah, it's this one. Looks like he does it in the Fall, but it depends on the particular health of the tree:

 

[Bonsai305]

I'm sure Fall is best as I assume borers stay active through the season.
I appreciate the Mirai link, I'm pretty sure I've seen it but it will be great to revisit.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

You can clean bark whenever you want, as long as you keep the freshly exposed bark protected from high heat.
The layers of old bark protect the tissue below from sunburn and exposing fresh bark takes some time for it to adjust. I guess that takes a week or two.
I've done it in mid summer with no issues, but safer is better.

I found that I need to clean bark once every three years, if I try to do it every year it gets really difficult to peel such a thin layer.

 

[Bonsai305]

Thank you for the great input, I’m going to wait a couple of weeks and then dive in!