When decandling season comes around, I start with the biggest pines in the garden and work my way down to the smallest ones over a period of four-to-six weeks. This gives the larger trees enough time to develop needles over summer that are just the right size (see “Decandling overview” for details). Two of my […]
Decandling
Branch refinement – controlling vigor with decandling
It’s been fun watching the branches develop on some of the older pines I’ve grown from seed. When these trees are healthy, it only takes a few years to reduce the internode length and fill out the basic silhouette. The main challenge at this stage is managing the tree’s vigor to reliably produce two shoots […]
Approaches to managing new shoots on pine bonsai
Last Friday’s post resulted in fantastic feedback from readers around the world (see “What pine species can I decandle?” and the comments on this Instagram post for details). For those who contributed, thank you! The response also made it clear that different people have different ideas about what the phrase “decandling” refers to. I learned […]
Which pine species can I decandle?
Decandling is a great technique for refining selected pine species trained as bonsai. At its most basic, decandling refers to the removal of spring growth with the aim of stimulating summer growth (see “Decandling” for details). Decandling a Japanese black pine As great as this technique is, its full application is limited to a small […]
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 […]