Pots for juniper shohin itoigawa

[Rob_phillips]

Ok, you have a nice little tree. I’m going to say a lot of things about it... please don’t take offense. All the things I’m going to say are about ways to improve it. (We’re always improving trees! At Intensives, Boon shows us pictures of Kokofu winning trees, and asks his students (us) what they would do to improve it!)

So, first thing you should decide is whether you want a tall literati style tree, or a shorter twisty tree.

A taller literati should have a rather sparse canopy, with a lot of negative space, dropping branches to convey a feeling of great age. Now good literati have tall, slender trunks. Usually graceful, sometimes more angular. Your tree starts off down low with dramatic movement, which changes to more serpentine up higher in the tree. It’s a rather different feel up in the canopy than down below. And then, some of the branches up in the canopy appear to be rather heavy when compared to the girth of the trunk.

For all those reasons, I think crunching it down would be the better option.

Using a jack and guy wires and rebar, you ought to be able to shorten the whole tree. Probably several guy wires. And several sessions of crunching! Don’t try to do it all at once, crunch a bit, wait another month, crunch some more!

The next thing is the branches. The trunk has lots of curves, but the branches look to be fairly straight. Whatever forces are at work making the trunk curve would be acting on the branches, too! Make ‘em move!

That is some sound advice and i will over time look into making some changes i would imagine a more crunched up version of what i have could work and i will definatly look into that in some way.
This is only my second year in the hobby so being able to reach out and have trees critiqued by someone will help me in the long run be able to spot and execute these types of changes to improve a tree from the material i am working on. But this will take time and im sure I will make alot more mistakes in the future.
So i understand that so thank you for your honesty on your reply and i will get to work on researching and evaluating this tree and see if I can put some of your ideas into play in the next few years. So thank you.

 

[Adair M]

Thanks for the reply yeah I can thin it out next year i have it a year to recover after the work done last February as that must have stressed it out so this year it should be stronger and more vigorous so i will let it wake up through spring then get to work on it late spring.

Shimpaku junipers need to be thinned a couple times a year.

My rule of thumb is I like to be able to set the tree on the ground, and look down thru the canopy. F I can see the pot and soil, that means the sun can get thru. If I can’t, then it’s too dense and needs thinning! When ya that dense, the interior buds won’t get any sun and will die off. Then, you end up with an outline of green, and nothing in the middle.

 

[JoBalz]

I have found a company in the uk called Walsall ceramics and they make some good plane glazes that might work what do people think
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I was thinking getting a rectangular pot with maybe one of these glazes. What do people think would they suit the tree

Man, they all look nice. If I were choosing for myself I'd probably go for either the Red Oxide (next to last photo) or the Snake Skin Brown (the last photo).