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Another look at balancing vigor on a black pine with a sacrifice branch

July 26, 2019 by Jonas Dupuich

The pine below is getting close to its final shape.

15 year old black pine

Japanese black pine – 15 years old from seed

As you can see from the photo, there is a large gap in vigor between the sacrifice branch and the lower branches. After decandling and thinning needles on the lower branches – standard work for pines at this stage of development – the gap is even more apparent.

After decandling lower branches

After decandling the lower branches

If I put the tree back in the garden like this, I’d expect a very weak response from the decandling. The tree would continue to invest its resources in the upper branches and produce little, if any, summer growth on lower part of the tree.

Because the sacrifice branch has already fulfilled its role in thickening the trunk, I can reduce it to encourage the tree to produce stronger growth in the lower branches.

After reducing sacrifice branch

After reducing the sacrifice branch

As you can see, even though I removed a large portion of the foliage on the sacrifice branch, the remaining shoots are still quite vigorous compared with the small shoots below. To balance the top and bottom branches, I decandled the shoots on the sacrifice branch and removed more than half of the remaining needles.

After decandling sacrifice branch

After decandling the sacrifice branch

After thinning needles on the sacrifice branch

After thinning needles on the sacrifice branch – 14″ tall

The lower branches now have more needles than the upper branches. This will help me shift vigor away from the upper branches and encourage the tree to produce strong summer growth on the lower branches.

I plan to remove the sacrifice branch once the branches that form the future apex get bigger. In the meantime, I can work on pruning, wiring, and styling the rest of the tree tree.

✕

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Filed Under: Bonsai Development Tagged With: Black Pine

Previous Post: « Balancing vigor on pines with sacrifice branches
Next Post: Sometimes you only decandle the sacrifice branch »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Louis Dallaire says

    July 26, 2019 at 5:06 am

    Can you tell us at what time of year you did this work in your region please ?

    Thanks

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      July 26, 2019 at 8:21 am

      Hi Louis! It was either the end of June or beginning of July when the tree was decandled. I plucked the needles and trimmed the sacrifice branch two weeks later.

  2. Keegan says

    July 26, 2019 at 10:49 am

    And why wait to remove the sacrifice branch, if it has served its purpose? You’d think the branches in the apex would get bigger faster if you remove it, no?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      July 28, 2019 at 11:48 am

      Hi Keegan! Good question. My best answer is that I wait because I like to remove sacrifice branches incrementally in the later stages of development. I don’t know that this is necessary – it could be that the tree will remain balanced and that I’ll get bigger branches near the apex in less time if I cut it all now. My focus is more on quality more than on time so I don’t mind reducing sacrifice branches like this incrementally to help preserve the short internodes below. Once I have short internodes where I want them, I can always let a branch grow to thicken the new apex.

      Put simply, the biggest “problem” with an incremental approach is that it might take a bit longer. The biggest problem with cutting it all now is that I’ll have to deal with longer internodes.

      Hope this helps!

  3. Tony says

    July 28, 2019 at 7:04 am

    When is the best time of year to remove a sacrifice branch from a pine (once it has served its purpose)?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      July 28, 2019 at 11:52 am

      Good question Tony! The best times are the end of winter/early spring, decandling time, and fall/winter. I like removing larger sacrifice branches at the start of, or in the middle of, the growing season to give the wound time to heal. I’ll remove smaller sacrifice branches on refined trees or larger branches on trees in early development in fall or winter.

      When it’s time to make the cut, I usually leave large stubs on larger sacrifice branches and then clean up the area up to a year later.

      Does this help a bit?

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