Summer care for Korean hornbeam typically consists of minor cutback, defoliating and/or leaf pruning. As I completely defoliated the tree last summer – something I don’t necessarily recommend: see Defoliating a Korean Hornbeam for details – and repotted the tree in winter, I’m taking it a bit easy this year. I reduced long shoots to […]
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Decandling aftercare
To restate a common theme – decandling is very stressful for pine bonsai. In some cases trees can lose up to 60% or 70% of their foliage during decandling. One-year old needles that have been growing beneath the shade of new shoots are newly exposed to full sun. Scores or even hundreds of small wounds […]
Decandling – where to begin?
So, what if I’m somewhat new to bonsai and I think I have a tree that could benefit from decandling but I don’t know where to begin? Easy – keep it simple. If you’re having trouble finding a starting point and there are no decandling pros in the area, try the following: Remove all new […]
Putting it all together – approaches to decandling
There are many ways to decandle red and black pine bonsai. I don’t believe that some techniques are better or worse than others as I’ve seen many techniques used to great effect by professionals and hobbyists alike. Rather, each technique has its benefits and drawbacks. I tend to use several approaches during any given decandling […]
Making the cut – redux
I mentioned last week that an important aspect of making the decandling cut is leaving some new tissue. Having decandled a number of pines this past week, I thought I’d illustrate the point with a few photos. One thing that can make it difficult to see how far one can cut is that the base […]