AusBonsai

Homer911 wrote:Great summary, thanks....

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pureheart wrote: ↑August 18th, 2020, 8:21 am

bunce wrote: ↑August 13th, 2020, 8:18 pm Hey guys, if you'd like to find out how I manage to get homogeneous growth on my black pines, I did a blog post about it here https://hakujuenbonsai.com/blogs/blog/autumn-blog

We all end up doing it slightly differently, and do what works for you, this is just how I was told to do it when I studied abroad, and it seemed to work really well.

Hope this helps,

Matt

Thanks for the article Matt, would you please help me understand if I have to remove more needles from my pine below? According to your guide I should be leaving only five sheaths (10 needles), do I have too many now?
Thanks

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Thanks for the article Matt, would you please help me understand if I have to remove more needles from my pine below? According to your guide I should be leaving only five sheaths (10 needles), do I have too many now?

shibui wrote: ↑August 19th, 2020, 5:54 pm

Thanks for the article Matt, would you please help me understand if I have to remove more needles from my pine below? According to your guide I should be leaving only five sheaths (10 needles), do I have too many now?

Looks like there are way too many needles on those shoots but pine development is more than just numbers. Initially we need to get some smaller shoots happening so the tree will have better ramification. If you do a traditional needle pull on those shoots you will be left with long, bare sections which is not good for ramification.
It would have been better to have cut the shoots last summer to initiate short replacement shoots but you can still start now. It seems that the shoots all have needles close to the base which is great. I would trim those long shoots to leave the 4-6 pairs of needles AT THE BASE of each shoot instead of pulling needles to leave a few at the tips. JBP are good at new shoots. It should develop buds in the needles you leave. Those buds will grow in spring. If they grow really well you should cut them in December and proceed with the pine maintenance schedule from there. If the buds are smaller you could skip decandling this summer and get into the schedule at bud selection and needle pulling in autumn.

That's great thanks Neil! Truth is that I did all that I was supposed to do last year (first year), decandling and all of that... I thought I did well but clearly you think the shoots are still too long...I may have cut the elongated shots too early I'm thinking... I will clean as suggested!

shibui wrote: ↑August 19th, 2020, 6:33 pm

That's great thanks Neil! Truth is that I did all that I was supposed to do last year (first year), decandling and all of that... I thought I did well but clearly you think the shoots are still too long...I may have cut the elongated shots too early I'm thinking... I will clean as suggested!

When I saw that all the shoots had needles close to the base I though those may have been second flush shoots but they are pretty big and strong. Strong second flush can be from cutting early or from too much fert or from leaving too many needles on the previous shoots. It can also occur if the tree only produces a few replacement buds after pruning.
It can sometimes take a couple of years of the maintenace program for the tree to get with the program and behave as it should.

When did you cut last summer?
I have not tried it but have been told that if second flush candles are too strong they can be snapped while they are still elongating. That stops them elongating and the remaining section opens out with needles as normal but on the shortened shoot.