If you have a lot of bonsai, you might feel like you’re doing assembly line work at certain times of the year. Summer, for those with a number of black pines, is one of those times. When I have a lot of repetitive work, I often line up a group of trees against the workshop wall, start […]
Black Pine
Summer work on black pine
For black pine growers, late spring and early summer offer a lot of opportunity for improving trees. Healthy pine bonsai in the refinement stage are decandled. Depending on needle density after decandling, needles can be thinned and branches removed. If necessary, decandled pines can be wired, too. Like many bonsai techniques, wiring branches is stressful […]
Pulling needles on black pine
Density is a key concept in bonsai. We want young trees to develop good density. With mature trees, we aim to maintain density. Density, it seems, rarely takes care of itself. Some of the young pines I’m developing have been decandled for the past several years. This has dramatically increased the trees’ density. Dense foliage […]
Balancing vigor on black pine
The term decandling gets a lot of attention. Rightly so – it’s a key technique in the development of black and red pine bonsai. It’s the technique that helped me get from here: June, 2013 to here: June, 2016 in three years. By itself, however, the technique is fairly limited. Cutback and needle-pulling are equally […]
How vigorous are your pines?
We all know the basic signs that are our pines are healthy – dark green foliage and long spring shoots. Green growth on a 12 year-old pine Vigorous spring shoot There’s another clear sign that pines are healthy that may not be as obvious. At first glance, the pine below looks like you would expect […]