Shohin Shimpaku Development – 小品真柏の開発
For my first post I’d like to share a shohin shimpaku that i’ve been working to refine since I purchased it back at the 2020 Kokufu-ten exhibition.
Early in my apprenticeship I was hungry for new personal projects but my budget was tight. A lame little shimpaku waited at the table in front of ours asking to be haggled for. The trunk had some fun movement and decent deadwood for a young field grown tree but the flaws were clear with branches that were too long to make any sense of. It was also brought to my attention that maybe this foliage type would be less than ideal for a tree of this size. I was laughed at by my Oyakata for buying it but I had a plan to make this into a decent little shohin.
To solve the branching issue I applied raffia and copper wire on the trunk to bend the top junction towards the center. Each branch was wired and brought down along the sides with the intent to fertilize heavily and work with future crotch growth instead of long floppy branches which may never keep a nice shape after the wire is off. It was repotted into a larger terracotta pot and I didn’t thin out any foliage in hopes to keep it vigorous through the new year.
Through the growing season it was fertilized heavily and strong shoots were pinched or cut accordingly but was otherwise untouched. This resulted in new crotch growth as hoped for. I removed all the wire in winter and reassessed the tree. Many of the branches were cut back to the new growth, bye bye floppy boys. Kaya helped me pick a new front and the branches were wired to suit.
After cleaning out and wiring, I’m suspecting this one has secretly good foliage type – something I’ll make a post about soon. I’m gonna give it some more time to see if maybe I need to just graft or sell it but it tightened up a lot and I’m hoping with good attention this year it gets a little finer. And in part to achieve that it was repotted again into a much smaller moko pot. As suspected the roots had grown vigorously, and were able to be reduced significantly to fit it into it’s new container.
This tree is turning out to be better than I expected, after this year I’m thinking it will fill in almost if not completely and I’ll update again if it’s looking sharp. I’m pleased that it’s turning out to be almost identical to what I had envisioned for it since the beginning, a bonsai type bonsai.
Update – Fall 2022
This is the last update for this shimpaku. The leaf became one of my favorites to work with and I regret not propagating it in the beginning. It filled out brilliantly and it sold on Japan’s Yahoo Auction for 80 000円 which helps me cover costs while living as an apprentice. But I miss it already.
bonsaiharmony.ca 