Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post photo's of your bonsai under-construction for discussion and inspiration.
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Patmet
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Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by Patmet »

I thought I would start a thread for my five Radiata Pines I’ve been growing from tubestock since 2019. I’ve always found it interesting to see how people go about growing a tree/trees from a very young seedling or tubestock all the way up to a refined bonsai. Radiata became an interest of mine early on as it was the only pine species available to me for years.

So the story is I bought five of these tubestock for $5 around August/September 2019. I was only a year in to bonsai as a hobby at the time. I Potted them into some larger pots and twisted some movement into them, as you can see in the earliest photo I took. Two of them were bent down to train into cascades. Before too long the wire started to bite in pretty hard, so I removed it. I put them to the side and never reapplied wire to the trunks :palm:

As you will see in the next photos which were August 2020, the movement I initially put in to the trunks straightened out quite a bit and the two cascades bounced back to upright trees :P

At this stage I gave them all a repot and tried to tidy up the surface roots and lay them out better. They all had a healthy mycorrhizae growth around the roots. You will see one of the pines that is singled out I tested repotting earlier than the others which it didn’t like and in turn was set back for a while hence the much skinnier trunk.

It has now been almost 3 years and they have started to fatten up, and are growing vigorously. I just need to make some decisions for the direction I want some of them to head in moving forward.
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October 2019 Initial movement
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Late 2019 on the bench
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August 2020 After Repot
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August 2020 the one repotted too early that was set back.
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September 2022
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September 2022
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Sept 2022 (the skinnier set back one now bouncing back). Thinking Literati for this one.
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Sept 2022
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Sept 2022
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Sept 2022
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Sept 2022. Thinking about cutting the main trunk and using that strong low branch as a new leader.
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Sept 2022 Trunk
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Ryceman3
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by Ryceman3 »

Love a progression thread, probably love it a little bit more than most when it relates to pines.
These are great, I’ll enjoy watching what you make of them as things develop. Great work to date! I only own one Radiata but have worked on a few… plenty of scope to make these into something interesting.
:yes: :beer:
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by HeyLuke »

I dug a few Radiata Pines locally just a few weeks ago for future projects, so I will be watching your thread to see how you get on and to pick up some tips.
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by jofi »

With Monterey Pines being so abundant & easily acquired from seed or yamadori (much like Olives, Hawthorn etc in some states), we could argue that these are underutilised & undervalued as bonsai, particularly as larger trees.
Grow hard, cut hard, wire hard
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delisea
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by delisea »

I just saw this post now. Nice start. Keep at it and update us.
Cheers,
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Patmet
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by Patmet »

Updates on these. I have since sold one of them but still have four.
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Re: Radiata Pine Projects From Tubestock

Post by ACooke »

These look to be progressing really well - certainly a species I've considered adding so I plan on eagerly watching along with this.

I've never grown something from seed and am amazed at how quickly and easily they seemed to have shrugged off that early wiring; I'm really glad I saw this as it's certainly not something I'd have been conscious!
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