u/PlebbitIsForSoylords

I've included a photo of Small Steve from 2024 at the end :)

I know, I know, it's technically not a bonsai, but I love these little freaks, my house is full of them.

Tiny Dave is exactly one apple tall.

(The before picture from ~February 2024 included, Small Steve was the left one.)

Hiya! Firstly, yeah it's a bit scruffy, two (albeit horrible) years in the making; my blue arrow juniper forest bonsai project.

At first for almost a whole year, I was using tiny wires to pull down the branches; which obviously didn't work so well due to this plants upwards habit.

It was only really this spring after attending my first bonsai fair last year that I decided to scrap coil-wiring altogether and instead use tension to emulate snow. The tree responded in a way I'd never seen before; absolutely exploding in growth!

(!) At the moment, the plan is to leave this thing the hell alone now and let it recharge.

- It has plenty of good growth, although it's all at the back and doesn't get much light, due to moving soon that'll change. For now it spends most of it's time facing the wall.

Here's my predicament:

The angle on these trees is great, but they're just too damned close together. I originally got this tree as a salvaged plant a neighbour was throwing out, and figured it was destined for more.

Problem is, after two years, the root systems have basically intertwined.

Come winter/early spring I will have the chance to properly space these guys apart and continue their growth, however, it'll possibly kill one or more of them due to my pretty shoddy care of them so far, and the fact that these ARE junipers, so that'll also probably kill them.

If I leave them an additional year to recover more strength, I fear the roots will fully fuse.

At the moment, I'm using a combination of tension and physical wedges (that stick at the moment) to gradually separate them at the base month by month.

So here we are, and I'm still sort of stuck at a decision point.

Obviously it's not the prettiest at the moment, and had I known more at the time, it may have stood a better chance.

What do?

I collected this tree in February from my parents back yard, they were doing some landscaping and needed a big ugly stick yanking out the ground. Well I turned up, and decided to keep it. Wasn't expecting it to live whatsoever, but god damn was I wrong. It's beautiful too, probably going to chop it back in the next few years utilising those trunk shoots and turn it into a kind of "haunted tree" type thing; although with the way it's growing, I'm not sure if I have the heart to do it.

​

This is my first successful retrieval, and it really couldn't have gone better (aside from misidentifying it as an oak for three months)

Ignoring the elephant of no tree yet, how might I go about permanently welding these rocks together?

I bought them for about £36 from a specialty pet shop, fairly sure they're a type of lava rock.

They're quite unbalanced as they are, realistically I'd like to do something like drill a couple holes through both and attach them together with a metal rod, then use this as the base for a root-over-rock, but the metal rod may be overkill.

I particularly like how they look like a rocky cliff edge when combined and form a lovely central groove for something to grow from in time.

Over all, easily 15KG of rock here lol.

I'd love the ability to share my photos AS WELL as the video documenting the process, but reddit moment. Skip to the end for the tree :)

Anotha one (I have issues)