Maintenance pruning black pine

[shibui]

It is now the middle of December and time to work on black pines.
I use what I call development pruning for younger pines that I want to increase in size or thickness. See this thread for more on development pruning viewtopic.php?f=131&t=23339
When I'm nearly happy with the trunk thickness and I need to start promoting ramification I switch maintenance pruning
Start with decandling. Here I have found that mid -late December works well but others decandle earlier and still claim good results. I guess it depends on the local climate and the other aspects in the maintenance routine.

This black pine is relatively young and thin but I want to keep it as a smaller, elegant tree so don't want the trunk too thick so I've decided that now is the time to switch this one to maintenance. You can see how advanced the new shoots are.

pine decandle 2016 1.JPG

Cut all new candles just above the base. The new spring candles will still be green. Older parts have brownish bark.
here's an out of focus shot of the spring shoots.

pine decandle 2016 2.JPG

I usually leave around 3mm of the green shoot so I don't damage the join where the new shoots will grow.

pine decandle 2016 3.JPG

There are lots of different pine maintenance schedules which probably all work but some are overly complicated. I'm following the simplified version from Ryan Neill.
Cut all the new candles at the same time, small or large. If there are any really small shoots that don't have bare necks I leave them alone.

You will usually find that some shoots are large and stronger while others are smaller and weak. To help equalise the vigour of the shoots pull or cut some needles from each shoot so that they all have similar amount of foliage.

pine decandle 2016 6.JPG

This shoot is long with no side branches

pine decandle 2016 4.JPG

so it is better to cut back hard to inner needles so new shoots will form closer to the trunk.

pine decandle 2016 5.JPG

After pruning and thinning the needles just put the tree back where it lives and wait for the new buds to grow.

To help keep new buds smaller and compact cease fertiliser a few weeks before decandling ie around the start of December and do not feed until the new buds have grown and hardened.

Next step will be thinning the new shoots in autumn.

[Matt S]

Thanks Shibui for putting this together. This plus the summary of Ryan Neil's maintenance program in the wiki provide a handy reference and simplify the whole process for black pines. I've been implementing a similar program for my black pines for 3 seasons now and the improvements have been significant.

Is there a similar summary for single flush pines, especially Scots and Mugo? I know Ryan covers this in one of his videos but it's much easier to have it summarised in text.

Matt.

[shibui]

I still haven't got my head around single flush pines yet Matt. If someone with a little experience with scots or mughos will post a maintenance schedule for us that would be great.

[treeman]

Is there a similar summary for single flush pines, especially Scots and Mugo? I know Ryan covers this in one of his videos but it's much easier to have it summarised in text.

Very basically, If you cut off the mature summer shoots from a double flush, you get a another, new fully mature growth. On a single flush pine, if you cut of the mature summer shoots, you will get buds forming but no actual shoot until the next spring. Although, if for example you cut off the summer shoots from a black pine (double flush) late in the season (say april) you will get only buds forming. (but lots of them and back budding too, but then the same thing will happen with a scots pine (single flush). So you can easily make a black pine a single flush pine (which it is if growing naturally)
Clear as mud?

[shibui]

From that, and the little I have been able to glean I guess it means that it does not really matter when you prune a single flush species because it will not sprout new shoots until the following spring.

[treeman]

Yep. The only thing is that if you let the shoot grow too long you may end up with too much of it bare of needles, so by breaking off the candle early and leaving just a couple of needle groups you end up with more compact growth formation.
Even with the early candle breaking, the shoot stretches out quite a bit so the more you can restrain that the better. The late pruning is really for the development stage or forcing back budding and the early pinching for the refinement or maintenance phase. Of course the strong centre buds are usually removed completely. Eg on Scots, you might get 5 or 8 buds and you only leave the weakest 2 or 3 and remove the rest. (depending on the branch strength of course)

[Matt S]

Thanks Mike.

I'm assuming if you decandle a single flush pine then the next season you should only pinch the candles? Alternate each year?

Matt.

[treeman]

Thanks Mike.

I'm assuming if you decandle a single flush pine then the next season you should only pinch the candles? Alternate each year?

Matt.

It's probably best to use the tree as your guide but generally I would say yes. When the tree is mature you won't need to completely remove the mature shoots anymore. Just the strong ones and break the weak ones leaving some needles.

[shibui]

Back to Japanese Black pines now.
Some more photos of decandling black pines

pine decandle 2016 10.JPG

pine decandle 2016 11.JPG

I took this pine to the workshop at the NBPCA last march. It grew strongly this spring so time to decandle and start ramification

pine decandle 2016 31.JPG

pine decandle 2016 32.JPG

This is one of the trial pines I used for Grant Bowie's fertiliser trial.

pine decandle 2016 24.JPG

pine decandle 2016 25.JPG

And a root over Rock black pine that I've been working on for a few years.

pine decandle 2016 22.JPG

pine decandle 2016 23.JPG

[The Surgeon]

Hi Shibui

Is that a small grove of Tridents in the last pot?

[shibui]

Yes mate. Seed from the trees in our garden germinate in many of my pots so I end up with lots of little extra tridents at repotting time.

[Rare plant Pat]

Neil,

Thanks for a great couple of threads - both this and the development one - and I know this is an old thread, but could you outline your process for taking your pines from the development stage in the other thread to this stage?

When we see the last three trees that you have photographed, what have you done to get them to that stage - is there a time of field growing, or are they all pot grown the whole time?

[shibui]

I think all those trees above have been grown in pots right through. The larger pine (2016 31 and 32) was in a poly box for a few years to increase trunk size but apart from that just many years of neglect and abuse.
You could achieve a similar size by ground growing but need to be aware and careful as it is really easy to let pines get away and end up with thick trunks but no useful branches where they are needed.

The last couple are in the transition stage which is probably what you are interested in. There are probably a number of ways to transition and I treat each one differently depending what I find.
Basic approach is to do a final hard prune to remove any sacrificial growth. That usually means cutting back to the lower needles on each branch to stimulate as many new shoots closer to the trunk as possible then allow those to grow. If I do that in mid December the resulting buds will be smaller and won't need much other work the same season.
Any shoots that are over vigorous can be tip pruned through summer to reduce strength and length.
If you have lots of buds do bud selection at the end of summer. Also do autumn needle pulling leaving more in weakest branches and less in stronger areas.
Spring growth will usually be quite variable in the first year. I often don't decandle weaker shoots in the first summer but I do decandle the stronger ones. That will allow the weaker ones to grow stronger but they will be overly long - not a problem yet.
Next December assess spring growth. Decandle any strong shoots as normally shown. Some that were left alone last summer will be over long and may even have bare necks. Instead of cutting at the base of these candles you can prune back into previous wood if there are convenient needles. There was a photo of that earlier with the small exposed root JBP.
You may see that this approach is a combination of the maintenance decandling and the harder development pruning. The 2 techniques are not mutually exclusive and can both be used on the same tree depending on need. Basically just use whichever method will give you the results you are looking for on each shoot.
In this way I believe I can encourage weaker areas to gain strength while starting to develop the shorter internodes and ramification I need.
The leaning tree shown above is in that transition phase.

Hope that makes some sense. I have just summer pruned the last of my older pines today and am still using both pruning techniques on most of my trees.