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Spring maintenance on black pine – pulling needles and decandling

June 11, 2019 by Jonas Dupuich

I’ve been working on the black pine below for twenty years. Every year, near the end of May or the beginning of June, I remove the spring growth and reduce the number of old needles.

Black Pine

Japanese black pine

I typically begin the work by removing the spring shoots (decandling) before reducing the number needles on the tree.

Instead of plucking to a pre-determined number of needle-pairs per branch, I usually work on a small area of the tree until I see the density that I’m aiming for. In this case, I left about five needles per branch near the top of the tree and six-to-seven pairs on the lower branches.

Along the way, I removed small branches in crowded areas. I save most this work for fall, but enjoy making these small improvements mid-year as it can help refine the silhouette.

Here’s what the tree looked like after this work.

Black pine after decandling

After decandling and thinning old needles – 16″

Right side of the tree

Right side

The silhouette is fairly well defined as the tree was lightly wired last year. I’ll make a plan for doing more significant cutback and wiring when I see how the tree looks this fall.

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

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michael C Cole says

    June 11, 2019 at 6:40 am

    Jonus
    nicely done.
    in an off year when you don’t decandle do you still pull some old needles in June>
    thanks, Mike

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      June 11, 2019 at 6:44 am

      Thanks Mike! I can typically decandle this tree every year, but if I don’t decandle a pine, I wait until fall before plucking needles to avoid damaging the new growth and to give the tree time to build strength.

  2. Dave Martin says

    June 11, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    Jonas,
    Wonderful result you should be justifiably proud of your work.

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      June 11, 2019 at 6:04 pm

      Thanks Dave, I really appreciate it!

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