Alpineart's Blog

This was collected from a test plot 12 months ago, no-one has been able to  identify this species of pine so it s a 2 needle trainer . They are very easy to collect having excellent feeder roots close to the base and can handle rough treatment .I collect these bare rooted and bring them home . Some say you can’t do that with pines , i collect several species including Pinus Nigra Austriaca bare rooted . The terrain around here doesn’t allow for an easy collection being sticky clay and shale . None of which can be left on the roots as they will rot very quickly . Collecting dozens of pines per season i can basically tell whether or not it will survive before i dig , knowing the species and its dislikes helps . As with all collected material its potted in Red Scoria and pine bark , this seems to work extremely well on all my stock . I have decided on an informal upright trainer in this case using a thicker upper branch for the leader, it was chopped at this point last year when collected . The bark on the younger branch is soft so i have wrapped it in raffia to reduce the damage to the bark when bending and shaping . After the raffia is wrapped the wire is placed onto the trunk and upper leader using 2-3 3mm aluminium wires . Due to the one sided growth the leader will require a major rotation approximately 180 degree then another 90 degree futher up from the exit point to the mid upper section along with some severe bends to shape the trunk . With the trunk rotated and shaped wires are added to the lesser branches and shaped . With all the hard work done including trimming and needle plucking i  decided to have a check of the roots , this was simply a matter of trimming the ugly thick roots out and potting it into a doubled up seed tray as i had  no pots to suit this tree . This will now be set back into the scoria beds and left for another season . The wire will be removed in about 9 months to allow any new shoots to sprout from were the raffia is .Being a younger soft leader i have no doubt that it will back bud in the voids of the upper section . Finished height of the tree is 600mm with a 35mm trunk , the ageing bark on the lower main trunk is something very unusual as it is very similar to a Desert Ash have deep fissures and coarse block bark on the aged trees. Cheers Alpineart

This is a progression to the original Inarching/approach graft JBP’s .While it has been a very good project over the last couple of years it has been a learning curve as to how to approach the layering and inarching process on Pines in general . There has been some failures  ,  lessons learned is a better way of putting it . I consider my glass too be Half full with most things i do , and the benefits are far greater if i have the right mind set . One tree has me puzzled as to why it has died in the middle while the other have grown on , maybe the stock was of lesser quality or had issues before i started , none the less i have gained plenty of info and a few more trainers to play with .These are  the original trunks , now at a manageably height of less than 1meter . They still have the approach grafts in place , they are some of the original layers first taken from the tree in 2010 and used for the approach grafts . All up over 50 inach grafts  have been set and some 20  layers , not all have survived , 45  grafts  have taken and are progressing well while some of the layers have not survived , the 16 that  i have are growing on strongly . These will now be allowed to recover then over the next season they will be turned into trainers , the 1 in the middle back is the original fused apex , yes it has lost 2 of the 4 trunks but more have been added so its slowly progressing .The 2 in the front left are very week and with no roots they are in the hands of another power . I decided to remove them as the trunk had died in the mid section of the tree. Set for a spell in the green house they may very well pull through , although with no roots and only a callous to build on they are basically oversize cuttings .All in all its been a very rewarding couple of years , i have more than quadrupled  my original stock , learnt valuable methods and idea’s as to how to approch pines on a different level . No they are far from finished , i am in two minds as to set more layers on the original trunks after the grafts have been severed .Then there is the bending and styling process that will be something special ,after all these are “Made in Australia” Not collected in the wild

Cheers and Happy Bonsai . Alpineart