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Catching up on black pine work in spring

April 10, 2018 by Jonas Dupuich

Spring is typically a season for letting bonsai grow freely. For black pines, some of the main tasks include fertilizing and removing young pine cones.

Tea bag with cottonseed meal fertilizer

Removing young pine cones

Spring is also a good time for catching up on needle plucking and cutback.

I generally don’t recommend working on pines after the new shoots start elongating as it’s easy to damage tender foliage. The alternative is to wait until decandling time.

For the black pine below, I thought the foliage was fairly dense and that the tree would benefit from additional light in the tree’s interior. Here’s the tree before cutback and needle plucking.

Black pine – 16″ tall

And here’s the tree after this work.

After cutback and needle pulling

The tree goes right back into the sun and will receive lots of fertilizer between now and decandling at the end of May.

 

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Filed Under: Bonsai Care Tagged With: Black Pine

Previous Post: « Novel displays at Bonsai Society of San Francisco’s annual exhibit
Next Post: Spring growth on Japanese beech – understanding when to pinch »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michael Eberle says

    April 10, 2018 at 6:54 pm

    Very Nice tree and great and simple advice thankyou

  2. Alessandro says

    April 11, 2018 at 7:50 am

    Ciao Jonas! Please may you tell us which kind of soil is in the first picture?
    Amazing pines!!
    Thank you, Alessandro

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      April 11, 2018 at 8:23 am

      Thanks, Alessandro! It looks like a mix of 2 parts pumice and 1 part akadama – a common mix I use when I don’t have scoria in the garden.

  3. Chris says

    April 11, 2018 at 9:13 am

    These JBP posts have motivated me to get a few black pines to work on. Between reading the blog and the forum I am now feeling more confident on working on a pine.
    Thanks for sharing.

  4. John Richie says

    April 17, 2018 at 6:19 am

    Jonas, how much cottonseed meal goes into the teabags, and how many bags per tree?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      April 17, 2018 at 9:03 am

      Good question John – I aim to fill up the bags no more than halfway as the meal can expand a bit when wet and I want to maintain good percolation through the bag.

      The number of bags per tree is determined by the variety, the time of year, and the development goals. Here are some basic tips on the topic:
      https://bonsaitonight.com/2016/12/13/how-to-fertilize-bonsai/

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