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 – […]
Decandling
Getting the balance right – a follow-up
One of the more common challenges with refining pines is balance. Last summer I wrote about a red pine forest with uneven growth (see “Getting the balance right“). To improve the balance between trees, I decandled the weak trees early and the strong trees later. Here’s how the pine looked last spring before decandling. April […]
Summer growth on black pine
Summer is the time when people who decandled their black or red pines water and fertilize and wait until fall when the time comes for wiring and needle-pulling. Looking around my garden, I see summer growth in different stages of development and already I can tell which trees are too strong or not strong enough. […]
Redirecting growth on pines
Decandling and cutback are great techniques for redirecting growth on black pines. Here are some examples. Tree #1 After eleven years, the trunk of the tree below has reached the desired size. Any further significant growth and the curves would begin to disappear. The goal for this stage of development is to reduce investment in […]
Decandling shohin black pine
The steps are simple. 1) Remove spring shoots. Shohin black pine – 21 years old After removing spring shoots 2) Remove extra needles. After removing extra needles 3) Perform light cutback as needed. The first branch on the right is long After shortening the first branch on the right That’s it. In all I removed 14 […]