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 […]
Decandling
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 […]
Getting the balance right
As I approached the decandling season this year, I checked my pines to see if any were on the weak side but still strong enough to be decandled. These trees need to be decandled on the early side so the summer growth has time to fill in before fall. Looking around I saw a lot […]