This spring when I was at the nursery picking up some supplies I saw they had some pretty healthy looking junipers for a decent price(~35 CAD). I didn't currently have a juniper and remembered I had an unglazed pot that it would look nice in. So I figured I'd pick the healthiest looking one — I found one that was growing well and beginning to get mature foliage — and start a cheap new juniper from nursery stock this year.
I cut down the height of the root ball out of the nursery pot to roughly the height of the pot — luckily there were several inches of soil at the bottom without roots, so I didn't have to cut back too drastically to get the height down to size although I did remove a couple larger downwards roots.
Then using a root rake I teased away the organic soil from half the root ball to start the transition over to bonsai soil — making sure to leave as many root as I could and make sure the other half was left intact so that I am not bare rooting the whole thing all at once. Then got it wired into the pot and worked bonsai soil into the roots using a chop stick. I then transplanted some moss as a top dressing to help keep the soil in place and gave it a good watering.
Because I did a pretty decent reduction in the root size I left the foliage largely untouched except for removing browning branches, long whips extending too far, branches growing down or inward, and removing some crotch growth where it was getting overly dense. I plan to just let it grow for the year and recover from the repotting.
The plan for the next few years looks roughly like this:
2026: recover from repotting
2027: first major pruning/styling
2028: repot, getting the other half of the roots into bonsai soil.
Any advice of comments on the tree or my plan for it for the next couple years would be greatly appreciated!
by BeautifulDifferent17
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