One of the most fun stages of development is when the trunk has reached the desired size and the focus switches to improving branch density. The black pine below was field-grown at Lone Pine Gardens in Sebastopol, California. For the past few years I’ve been slowing the tree down in an effort to develop shorter […]
Decandling
Decandling season wrap-up
Towards the end of decandling season (mid-July where I live), I make a point of checking every pine in the garden to see if it’s a candidate for decandling. Most of my pines are young and don’t require this work, but there are a number of trees between five and ten years old that can […]
Decandling field-grown pines
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 […]
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 […]