Finding a Front

[treeman]

To develop good JM bonsai you must be rigorous with pruning and pinching and thinning multi shoots. By all means have fun learning with Jm but better JM bonsai need advanced skills and lots of experience.

Agreed! They are not as easy as they make it seem in Bonsai Today. (Although these are numerous excellent articles on them there) They are really brittle so wiring anything thicker than a match is out of the question. It you try you'll only stuff it up.
You have to keep on top of JM all the time.

[Pearcy001]

I'm a fan of the first of treeman's 3 virts with the yellow outline to the left (in picture jm5), but as stated by earlier posters its hard to tell the thickness and may still need to be thickened significantly.

I think you first need to work out what sort of tree you are after, then how long you are willing to spend cutting back hard / regrowing.

I personally am happy to cut hard and regrow for the long term, possible better tree. But if you don't have many trees on the go you may not be so patient?

All I can suggest is think hard about what it is that you want your tree to look like. Remember you can't glue back on a cut branch, but it can possibly be regrown with better taper.

Goodluck C8ltn.

Cheers,
Pearcy.

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[C8lyn]

Thank you all so much for your input! The response has been amazing
I am willing to cut this tree to buggery if it means a better result in the end. I do only have two on the go at the moment that I can actually work on, the other being a small grevillea. I've also two young prunus of some sort growing in the garden, plus 15 or so cuttings of a prunus from my brother's place I'm hoping to get at least a few from). I have a thread in the progression series section which has some of my other plants.
I'm always on the lookout for more Every time I'm at a nursery I'm looking for interesting trunks on all sorts of small plants.

Those drawings are going to be a huge help! The centre trunk is currently about 1.5cm at the base so it's not a thick one just yet but has actually thickened up a lot more than I expected in the time that I've had it (less than a year).
Thank you all again.

Feel free to keep adding opinions!

[kvan64]

OK. If you'd like to thicken the tree a bit more and don't mind to wait for some more growing then I would recommend to leave all the trunks to help speed up that. As we all know that the more trunks = more foliage = more materials for photosynthesis --> more growth...
Chopping can be done in almost any time. If you leave it for too long and the plant gets too big...then carving is fun too.
If you chop now, it may look more like a bonsai quicker but will remain small for longer. To me, it's not just the result, it's the process of growing and training the bonsai that contribute to the success feeling of this hobby.

[shibui]

You are correct that

that the more trunks = more foliage = more materials for photosynthesis --> more growth...

BUT when growing bonsai, maximum growth needs to be balanced against scarring. Leaving 1 very large sacrifice branch will increase growth but after it is removed you're left with 1 very large scar that can take a long time to heal over. Yes, carving is an option but I think JM looks vastly better with fewer scars on the trunks so I am growing them slower.
Another thing I have noticed is that cutting back does not really set growth back by that much. Pruning does make more branching which makes more growth and has the added benefit of also creating taper and bends which is not usually the case when just 1 or 2 sacrifice branches are grown.

I'd much rather have a better bonsai, even if it takes me a couple of years extra.