[8/16/16 – See the updated and expanded version: How to grow Japanese black pine from seed] After picking and prepping your pine cones, sunshine, when available, and dry air, work to open the cones. With good weather, which we’ve had in spades lately, this only takes a few days. When you remove the open cones […]
Black Pine
Pine cone technique
[8/16/16 – See the updated and expanded version: How to grow Japanese black pine from seed] I’ve often heard the lament that there isn’t enough good black pine bonsai available. I can sympathize. Returning from a visit to Japan can forever skew one’s perspective toward very high quality trees – trees that are hard to […]
Preparing a display
A few weeks after this year’s BIB exhibit in January, I started thinking hard about what trees to display in 2010. Depending on the work a tree needs, twelve months is not always enough time to prepare it for exhibit. I’d been thinking about showing a large Sierra juniper or a large corkbark Japanese black […]
Summer ritual – decandling black pine
Japanese black pine bonsai entails a set of refining techniques known as decandling. At its most simple, it refers to the process of removing spring growth to encourage summer growth. At its most complex it involves more variables than I can address in a single post. Regardless the approach, the goals remain the same – […]
Sizing up candles
You’ve seen the pictures in the books and magazines. Before decandling your Japanese black pines, divide the new growth into four categories of differing vigor. Below that simple instruction one will find a photo that resembles the following: Spring growth as reported by the mainstream bonsai media Actual spring growth Our trees, however, tend to […]