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 […]
Decandling
Decandling a red pine forest bonsai
Although I’ve only posted a handful of explicit bonsai experiments, I tend to think of all bonsai work as experimental. We know what happens when we cut – some amount of foliage is removed from the tree we’re working on. What we don’t know is how exactly the tree will respond. We may have a general idea […]
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 […]
It’s time to feed pines
One of the best ways to ensure decandled pines produce strong summer growth is to feed heavily in spring. Although people living in cooler climates are just wrapping up repotting season, others have been feeding their pines for several months. If you haven’t started feeding yet – and you live in the northern hemisphere – […]