chinese juniper

order: pinales
family: cupressaceae
genus: juniperus
species: chinensis

Chinese juniper in autumn 2013.

In August 2012, as the summer was at its hottest, we went down to Arcen in the Netherlands to attend the yearly koi show. On the show there were also a bonsai exhibition and stands selling small young plants meant to be trained into bonsai. There were many Chinese junipers styled into miniature bonsai on sale. I was about to bring home one of those, but the friend I went with kept on dissuading me, saying the price was too high and that I should at least get a bigger plant to begin with. Eventually I put the chosen tree back to the shelf. Once back home, I regretted greatly.

My friend must have sensed my regret or have been irritated by it that he offered to help me find one on ebay. I couldn't believe we were very fortunate to be able to beat one on ebay. The seller had two of his Chinese junipers for sale. I was actually interested in his other tree but the price went way too high. I won this half-cascade form juniper by outbidding the other bidder by only 0.24 EUR. It was SOOOO close! You can imagine how happy I was.

After the plant arrived in my garden, I mostly let it grow freely, keeping trimming to near zero. I wanted it to grow strong and put on more foliage, which it did. Frequent feeding and consistent watering resulted in tight and healthy-looking foliage. Next year, I'm going to have to thin out some of the foliage masses, so that inner branches will not go bald. I just hope nobody is going to steal it from my garden.

common juniper or temple juniper?

order: pinales
family: cupressaceae
genus: juniperus
species: communis? rigida?

I acquired this plant at the end of last year. Since the tag was gone I had to go with the assumption that it was the most common juniper. After I brought it home I almost directly placed it in a cold frame. Having not experienced overwintering plants outdoor at minus degrees before, I wasn't sure if my plants were going to make it. As it seems my juniper tree came out from the cold frame in March without any damage visible to the eyes. Shortly afterwards it resumed growth by first throwing out cones. My plant happened to be a male plant. So there was a lot of yellowish pollen cloud to be seen when I disturbed the plant. The needles are sharp enough to puncture through my fingers, so I don't do that often. As you can see in the picture above, it's in a bonsai pot now. After repotting I cut it back to two third of its original height.

I'm wondering if this could be a juniperus rigida since the branches are kind of pendulous. I pinch off new growth once it reaches the length of half of my thumb (that's about 2.5cm) so that the tree has a more compact look. When pinched it gives off sweet scent. Juniper is used to distill gin. And gin and tonic is one of my favorite drinks. Therefore I enjoy the scent very much. Instead of thinning out the tree manually I intend to just let some of the branches in the middle die off naturally first, so that its structure becomes more visible. I'm confident that with time, it's going to turn into an admirable specimen.

When it comes to the cultivation, I'm still not sure as to whether it's better to keep the soil it's growing in basic or acidic. Some people suggest adding bitter salt to it, others recommend infrequent dosage of acidic fertiliser. This is rather confusing for me. The same holds for rhododendrons. Well, we know that rhododendrons are acid loving plants. Somehow my rhododendron fertiliser has a pH of more than 8. Either the manufacturer of the fertiliser is trying to fool people, or there's something more complicated that I still don't understand.