Rolling Stones Gather No Moss

I said I was going to wait a little while longer, but I got to thinking that the longer I waited to thin out some of these roots the worse the scarring was going to be, and the greater the chance that one in a bad position would choke out one in a good one.  So, did some root pruning today.  This is one of those times where less is more.  We get a much more visually appealing result by removing some of that root mass than we would have had by keeping it all.

After I was done, I found some roots with slack and some previously empty areas of the skull (like the space behind the cheekbones) that hasn't had any soil in it, so I pushed the slack roots into those crevices and then packed them full of damp soil.  While I have some vain hope that maybe it'll encourage them to put out more roots in those areas, in reality the soil will dry out in this heat far too fast for it to do much in the way of new root growth.  But they will help keep the roots I pushed in there in place long enough for them to fatten up and hold that shape permanently.

As some of you may remember from last year, I collected some moss starts from out in the woods that I can use in the final project as cover for the bare soil that won't send down invasive roots and threaten to choke the pepper out of it's limited bonsai pot space.

Since moss takes no nutrients from it's substrate (the stuff it grows on), it is VERY slow growing.  I mean, this is seven or eight months of growth (and about half of what I currently have).  Much like the bonchi itself, it takes a lot of time and patience, but the payoff is worth it.  The hope here is that when the bonchi is done, I'll have a nice thick sheet of this moss already attached to this pliable mud that I can use to make a shell around the actual bonsai soil underneath.  And since its moss, I can just mist it with a sprayer on a regular basis to keep it green and happy without having to worry about overwatering the pepper.

And lastly, an update on the Cumari.

It had a small pulldown today, mainly because these little ornamentals don't grow long deep roots very quickly.  But You can see the plant is healthy and happy, and that we're finally seeing dominant roots appearing.  Which actually is one of the main indicators for this one as to when to pull down, I didn't want to do so when there wasn't signs of good strong roots.

And on the off chance that anyone is wondering why the soil is always sopping wet when I take these pictures, its because when I do pulldowns in containers I typically dig a trench around the plant about twice as deep as I want the pulldown to be, then use water to pour over the top and wash the excess dirt down even.  Much less traumatic to the plant that way than trying to dig it all out by hand.

That and usually I'm out watering things in this near 100 degree heat and checking in on them as I do it, and then if something interesting is going on I finish up then go inside to get the camera.

Getting a Grip

Okay, the relative lack of roots going across the back of the skull has been bugging me.  The more we have back there, the better the grip the overall plant will have on the stone/skull, so while I was out tending I did some re-positioning of some medium sized roots (including that one in the front that was bugging me enough to consider pruning it).

Its not a huge change, but I'm hoping in the long run it will pay off.  I personally think the face is already looking better now that we got that big almost perfectly vertical root out of the way.  Just seems to flow better now to me.  Blech, I sound like a hippy.

The main project Reaper also has some fruit set.  I've been waiting for this just to be 100% sure that I actually do have a Reaper in here and that they didn't just send me a damned banana pepper or something like that by mistake.

Well, good news is that these do look like the pods on one of the other plants, so I'm fairly sure it is actually a Reaper.  The downside is that it looks like this plant is one with short tailed pods.  I was really, really hoping this plant would have really pronounced stingers (like the Zombie Reaper does), but it looks like that might not happen.

Bit premature to call it from just three pods so far, and even the Zombie Reaper has some short tailed pods.  Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll make longer tailed ones in the future, but as of right now I'm rather disappointedly scaling back my plans for how to display this.  I was wanting to have it keep nice red pods on it with their long stingers as part of the default aesthetic, but I don't know if I want to do that with short tailed pods.

Incremental Improvements

Spent a little time cleaning up the roots on the main Reaper.  Mostly I just removed a lot of the small dried up roots, but I also trimmed a few small ones that were going the same direction as a bigger ones (no need to double up on those) and re-positioned some into more interesting places.

We are finally starting to get some idea of what the finished bonchi will look like now, or at least what the roots will look like.  There was a very nicely twisted and convoluted root coming from the eye socket on the right (skull's left) that was going across the face over to the left (skull's right) that I re-positioned to curl up inside the nasal cavity and down through the teeth.  I accidentally broke the root a little shorter than I wanted, but it still had enough root below the soil line that I think it should retake.  I hope so at least, because roots twisting down through the teeth would look incredible, which is why I chanced it.

There's still more roots on the left (skull right, bottom picture) than I really want, but I don't want to start trimming any of them right now.  I can't see yet how they are wrapping and developing underneath, and I don't want to risk snipping the perfect root now just because I couldn't get a clear picture of where it was going.  So, going to leave all of that there for the time being.

Also kind of want to cut that one root thats going straight down and flexing out from the front of the face, but like the side ones, it might be doing something interesting on the lower jaw or otherwise making an interesting shape.  Its definitely on my "keep an eye on it, and prune it if it doesn't put out" list though.

The Laughing Buddha Peter Pepper is looking good.  Been letting it set as many pods as it wanted while keeping the main canopy trimmed into a basic shape (it keeps wanting to put up a leader on the right).  I think the pot ended up being a very nice compliment to the plant, and by end of the year it should be done.

Oh, and yes, the other Reapers are putting out tons of pods, and the main bulk has started turning red.  Already got some early ripeners from the best shaped pods/plant for seed, but whoo boy, gonna be able to make lots of Reaper flakes!  Thats just one plant...

Steady as She Goes

The roots on the main project Reaper have stiffened to the point I was able to remove the ties.  Kind of wish we had been able to get more roots over the back of the skull for aesthetic reasons, but it looks like we'll have enough for practical anchoring purposes.  I have read about some techniques to get lignified roots to put out new growth in specific places, so I'll probably try those out later once everything else is done.  Not worth the risk of messing with things that aren't technically broken at this point.

We've also got a lot of big roots across the face that look like they may all stick around.  Have to see how it goes, but we may end up pruning some of them to give better visibility to the skull.

The Cumari is doing well after it's pulldown.  Just like with the Peter, you can see where key roots are fattening up while lesser roots are drying up.  The grip isn't as skin tight as I had hoped (really wanted roots snaking around the little surface details), but that might be something we can improve upon later.

The Halloween mini skull is coming back better than I expected.  It's been struggling a bit but seems to be doing better now.  Not 100% sure the small roots going around the back of the skull will make it, but we'll just have to wait and see.  They're not all going to be winners, it's always a bit of a numbers game.  Make lots, and then only show off the best ones.  Outsiders don't always get to see the failures like you are. ;)

Speaking of it being a numbers game, just the other day I took the strongest of the spare Halloween peppers and started it out over the rock wall Buddha decoration that I think I showed you a while back.  Again, doing this on the phone makes it hard to go back and check, sorry about that.  But like the others, I've spread the roots out over the front and a good chunk over the back to give it some grip.

This one didn't really have much if any in the way of dominant roots, so it's just kind of splayed out there at the moment.  Should prove interesting to follow along with, because I have no clue exactly what direction this one is going to go in!

Visible Progress

While out doing some pulldowns on the various secondary peppers, I started looking at the main project pepper.  It has been at a slower growth pace than the others ever since I put the skull under it, and some of the trimming I did earlier slowed it down even more.

Now, I'm not sorry I did those things, because I still think its for the best in the long run, but I got worried that the larger sister plants so close to it may have been shading it out a bit, making it even slower going.

As you can see, the project plant there on the end is much shorter than the backup/production Reapers, and they do shade it out in the late afternoon.  More I looked at it, more I questioned it, and long story short I've dug the project pepper up and put it in a container.

Two reasons for this.  One, as already stated, I can make sure it gets more sun this way.  Two, it also means I could check up on the root and start doing some pulldown on it as well.

Good thing I did too, because there was definitely some issue with the root placement.

The good news is that there is some good shape going on here in the front.  You can't tell from this picture (I can't even find it in the picture and I saw it in person) but there was a pronounced bulge on the inside from where I had pressed the roots into an eye socket.  What you might be able to tell from this picture though is that almost all of the roots are in the front.  Now, we want the roots to be fairly front heavy because thats where the main center of focus for the piece will be, but we still need some in the back to help hold everything in place.  That just wasn't there the way I wanted it, so the potting let me catch a defect in plenty of time to correct it (hopefully).

Since the roots were not in just the right places, the plant wasn't able to lock onto the skull completely on it's own yet, so I had to resort to using some twine to tie it down in place.  But you can see where I was able to pull some roots back over to the rear of the skull.  Was actually pretty happy with the amount of roots it had, if not exactly with the layout of them.  With some work though we should have some very interesting placement later on.

You can tell by the leaves here that it was indeed getting crowded out by the plant next to it.  Had to tie it back a bit to pull that branch over so that it would fill out a bit better.

Since I had plenty of root length to work with, I've gone ahead and left this as the pulldown soil level.  Its a little lower than I had originally intended, but it looks like all the roots are plenty long enough to get good purchase in the soil, so should be fine.

And since I mentioned working on the other projects, here's updates on them as well.

The Cumari on the skull made of skulls.  Had a lot of small roots, but not much in the way of anything well defined.  Pretty much just spread it all out evenly over the skull and reburied.  Much like the main Reaper, the length of the roots were enough that I felt I could safely pull it down fairly far on the first go.

The Halloween pepper on the miniature skull is turning out to be less than I expected.  Did a pulldown and had to tie it down to hold in place.  This strain of ornamental pepper stays pretty small, so there is less root structure here to work with than I thought there would be.  This one may end up being a failure, but I'll see it through to the end, maybe it'll surprise me.

Was out shopping the other day and found this ceramic pot that was just perfect for the Laughing Peter pepper.  Since the plant was showing no signs of stress from the pulldown, I went ahead and repotted it in this smaller container.  I figured that since the pulldowns were done, I might as well go ahead and put it in something more decorative and let it really settle in.

Final Peter Pulldown

The Laughing Buddha Peter Pepper is entering the home stretch in it's bonsaification process.  Today is a little over a month since the last pulldown, and it was ready for one last round.

The soil has now been pulled all the way down to the base of the statue.  The smaller roots have been flared out to ensure a nice wide base.

Since there's no way to know which ones of these will end up filling out like the top ones did, we're trying to give the plant as many positive options as possible.  That way, no matter which one it selects (or even better yet, which ones), we'll end up with something nice.

You will have noticed by now that I have tied the roots down once again.  There isn't anything wrong with the roots, as you can see by the above picture they are still pretty firmly locked onto the statue.  However, the bottoms are still new enough that they aren't locked into shape yet, so some jute twine to pull them in close while they thicken up will help ensure a nice flow down the contours of the statue, as it already has on top.

Now, just because we've done the final soil pulldown doesn't mean we're through, far from it.  It just means that we've finished elongating the roots.  There's still a checklist of things that need to be done over the next several months to finish this one out.

1) Base Roots

Its going to take months before those roots fill out enough to be considered "done", and a close eye will have to be kept on it as before to make sure it doesn't suffer any insect damage.

2) Root Polish

Don't know if there is a better term for it, but its what I call it.  You can see in some of the closeups above that the top roots that have been exposed for months still have stubby root nubs coming off the main root trunks.  I've been leaving them there for the plant to clean up as much as it will, but eventually I'm going to need to go in with a sharp knife and start shaving those off so that the main root is nice and smooth.  If this were truly a full sized tree that had any great age to it, those roots would be perfectly smooth, and while we could wait 5 years for the plant to finish the job itself, I'd rather help it along now (or at least in the near future).

3) Canopy Shaping

We've done some basic shaping to the canopy as we've gone, but I've gone fairly easy on it so far.  Reason being that we've been stressing the plant by messing with it's roots this whole time, so messing with the leaves at the same time would have probably been a bit too much for it to handle.  Oh, it would have lived through it, but that much stress would have stunted it and slowed it down quite a bit.  Not what we want when we're trying to get everything done in a single season.  Once the roots are done, we can really go at the canopy though.

Number 3 there will be the most long term need.  Up until now, we've been basically shaping roots and only paying lip service to shaping the limbs.  Now that the roots are almost done, we can start treating the top like a proper bonsai.

Its easy to get discouraged by the slow pace of projects like this, as when you're looking at it every day you don't really notice the changes.  So, here's a picture of how it was looking in February:

And way back in last November when we started him:

So not too bad, considering we've only been actively working on him for about 8 months.

Fear the Reaper

Even when buying from a reputable source, you always have that nagging doubt in the back of your head "Did they actually send me the rare pepper I ordered, or did they pull a Pepper Joe on me?".  But h yeah, these are definitely Reapers.

The one with the twisted trunk is also proving to have some quite interesting root development going on.  While I was pulling back the soil to expose the top roots on all of the big Reapers, I noticed the name that was on this one, Reaper #1.  I had forgotten that this was the lone survivor of that first batch, the ones that died when I went to New Orleans.  This is the zombie reaper that looked dead but came back to life, and it looks awesome!

Going to have to come up with an equally awesome pot to put it in, because this one is definitely a champ!