There has been a lot of enthusiasm lately for the scientific side of bonsai. I’ve been a part of this, sharing stories, for example, of testing and acidifying water in an attempt to green up my garden. I started pursuing the topic when I noticed how much harder it had become to keep my pines […]
Black Pine
Decandling a mini-size black pine
Although I’ve been growing shohin pines for years, last year I decided to try making mini-size trees around 4″-5″ tall. As most of these pines were over 12″ at decandling time, I did a lot of cutback when I decandled. Here’s an example. Black pine – about seven years old The tree above has a […]
Decandling a shohin black pine
Late June through mid-July marks the end of the decandling season in my area. This means it’s time to start working on the smaller pines in my garden. The tree below is sixteen-years-old. It grew strong this spring which is a reflection of the fact that the tree is still young and not fully ramified. […]
Slowing down sacrifice branches on black pine
When the trunk of a tree has reached the desired thickness, I evaluate the sacrifice branches to see if it makes more sense to remove them all at once or to remove them in stages. In many cases, removing large branches can cause vigorous new shoots to develop. This is especially true for species like […]
Starting the refinement process on a field-grown Japanese black pine
About two years ago, I picked up some field-grown pines from Lone Pine Gardens in Sebastopol, California. The next winter I repotted the trees into smaller containers and let them grow freely to encourage as much root growth as possible. This year the trees are healthy and ready to be worked on. The process is […]