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Encouraging grafted foliage

November 12, 2013 by Jonas Dupuich

The grafts I made to some young black pines have now been in place for 10 months. If I continue to let the original foliage grow unchecked, the trees will have little reason to invest in the grafted branches. As I want to replace the original growth with these scions from a cork bark pine, I’m starting to reduce the original foliage. I first removed about half of the existing branches and then pulled last year’s needles.

Grafted black pine

3.5 year-old black pine with cork bark scion

Grafted black pine

After removing half of the branches

Grafted black pine

After removing old needles

Here’s the same process repeated on two other young pines.

Grafted black pine

Before removing branches

Grafted black pine

After removing branches

Grafted black pine

After removing old needles

Grafted black pine

The third young pine

Grafted black pine

After removing about half of the branches

Grafted black pine

After pulling old needles

✕

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Filed Under: Bonsai Care Tagged With: Black Pine, Grafting

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. brendenstudio says

    November 12, 2013 at 9:00 am

    Jonas–since you’re on the subject of grafting, would now be a good time to do so? I have some cork bark scions I saved from doing fall work and this gave me an idea to use them on some black pine seedlings I have sitting around.

  2. Jonas Dupuich says

    November 12, 2013 at 9:12 am

    Hi Greg – I usually try to graft on cold days around the end of the year, not long before the spring growing season kicks off, so I don’t have as much experience grafting pines in fall. What I do know is that when grafting on the early side care must be taken to shelter the scions from hard freezes.

  3. JP says

    November 12, 2013 at 2:44 pm

    nice job, !!
    could you please tell me the size and age of the black pines?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      November 12, 2013 at 10:20 pm

      The trees are about 3-1/2 years old and around 5-6″.

      • JP says

        November 12, 2013 at 11:14 pm

        thx
        so 3 years is a good time for grafting

  4. brendenstudio says

    November 19, 2013 at 6:36 pm

    Thanks for the reply. I guess there’s no rush, I can hold off until February.

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