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Fall decandling – thinning new buds

May 20, 2011 by Jonas Dupuich

My fall decandling project has been moving along slowly – as expected. After trimming spring growth last October, small buds appeared before the tree slowed down for winter. By March, the buds had begun growing again. Some of the more vigorous branches produced five or six new buds. To keep these areas in check, I removed extra buds leaving just two young shoots per branch.

Fall buds

Japanese black pine – March 2011

Thinned to two buds

Thinning to two buds

I used tweezers instead of plucking buds with my fingers to keep from damaging the remaining buds. I tried to keep buds that were equal in vigor and positioned opposite each other.

Many fall buds

Too many buds

Removing extraneous buds

Grabbing unnecessary bud with tweezers

Bud removed

Bud removed

Two buds left

Branch thinned to two buds.

As I worked on the tree, I noticed a few peculiarities, like the large spring candle below. Last fall this branch was too weak to decandle. After the surrounding branches were decandled, this shoot become the most vigorous of the bunch. I’ll likely decandle it in June to prevent it from growing even stronger.

Spring candle

Spring candle among fall buds

I was happy to see some of the adventitious buds that sprouted last fall were continuing to grow. The main purpose of decandling the tree in fall was to produce these buds that will eventually allow me to reduce long branches.

Adventitious buds

Adventitious buds

After thinning the extra buds, the pine looked just as rangy as when I began. By not wiring the tree last fall, I guaranteed that the tree would look funny for at least a year or two.

After thinning extraneous buds

Bud thinning complete

I’m currently feeding the tree heavily in hopes of strengthening new shoots, but a cool spring has kept growth to a minimum. As soon as it warms up a bit, I expect the new shoots to develop quickly.

✕

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Filed Under: Bonsai Development Tagged With: Black Pine, Decandling

Previous Post: « Restoring an old Japanese maple
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kathy Sloan says

    May 20, 2011 at 11:42 am

    Thanks Jonas for such detailed articles and the pictures are great! Really helps beginners like me to understand what you are talking about. Thank you, Kathy

  2. Kaneshin bonsai tools company says

    May 20, 2011 at 3:43 pm

    Dear Sir

    Hello.How do you do?

    We are the maker of the bonsai tools in Japan.

    My company name is “Kaneshin Cutlery Mfg. Co. Ltd ” .

    http://kaneshin.shop.multilingualcart.com/

    My name is Masashi Nishimura

    Would you please link our website to your website and Blog if you are O.K?

    I have already linked your blog.

    http://kaneshin.shop.multilingualcart.com/free7.php

    Please allow me if there was the part that my English expression was impolite.

    I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

    Thank you.

    Best regards
    Masashi Nishimura
    Kaneshin cutlery
    http://kaneshin.shop.multilingualcart.com/
    http://www.kaneshin-seki.com/kaneshin.e-1.html
    http://bonsai-tool.net/

  3. bonsaijapan says

    May 22, 2011 at 3:52 pm

    Hi Jonas,

    As this was a bit of a test case for Autumn decandling and now the results are somewhat showing themselves, how do you feel the technique worked? Would you use it again? Do you see a vast difference to spring decandling?

    It will be interesting to see what kind of length the new bud’s needles produce, I am assuming they will be longer than those of a spring decandling, but who knows.

    • xwires says

      May 23, 2011 at 5:04 pm

      Good question! It appears that decandling late produced a few more back buds than I would normally expect – a good thing. I’ll leave the final judgement until I see how the trees do for the rest of the season. Knowing now that it’s a safe technique, I won’t hesitate to try it again if the opportunity arises. I’ll provide another update before long – the trees are growing quickly now.

  4. bonsaijapan says

    May 23, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    It definately brings a lot of questions to my mind. It is always exciting to learn of a new technique. Do you feel that this candle pruning timing is less stressful on the tree than a spring candle prune?

    I will have to give this a go myself next season.

    I look forward to your follow up articles.

    Joe.

    • xwires says

      May 23, 2011 at 6:54 pm

      Hi Joe – decandling in fall is quite a bit more stressful than spring decandling. When we cut candles in spring, new shoots appear that are fully productive by the end of the growing season. When we decandle in fall, the tree goes without new, productive needles until the following spring. For this reason, I’ll likely limit my fall decandling to very healthy trees.

      Thanks for the note!

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