COVID shutdown

[PeachSlices]

'Dual flush' - my understanding is the plant has 2 growth spurts, once you cut the first flush of spring growth a summer growth sprouts and it most of the time smaller in growth due to the spring growth using most of the tree's energy?

sorry to hijack
i did my decandling in 3 stages for the different sections of the tree the bottom branches look fine the middle is alright but the top looks like 3cm needles they look like they wanted to grow but just stopped is that still sound ok?

how many pairs of needles are you leaving?

[shibui]

It is always hard to say what is right just from a description. Especially when the person describing does not know what they are looking at. A photo would help remove ambiguity.

Your understanding of dual flush is correct.
Many pine growers have now moved to a single decandling session over the entire plant. There may be some slight advantage to doing it in stages but all at once is far easier to manage and seems to do a good job.
3cm needles and 2-3 cm shoots is what I would be aiming for after decandling. Longer and it puts a mature bonsai out of proportion.
Timing varies depending on the climate and how long the new shoots have to grow. I guess Sydney would have a slightly longer growing season than here so later decandling may be possible. When did you do yours? How long apart for the stages?

[PeachSlices]

This is the Apex of the tree




This is the bottom of the tree where i first cut the candles



I have another tree where it looks as the candles weren't cut the first flush. could i cut them off now and will the spring flush grow at the base of the cut?


Simon

[shibui]

Those little shoots on your pine look great. That's the sort of shoots I aim for after decandling because I'm aiming to minimise growth on the mature trees. If you want longer shoots just cut a couple of weeks earlier to give them a chance to grow a bit more or maybe feed a little more while they are growing out. Now is the time to get in and remove all older needles from the pines that were decandled. Reducing needles lets you see the structure better, allows light into the inner branches to encourage more inner buds and reduces the strength of te branches so that all parts grow equally next year.

Unpruned tree: The new green shoots looks as if you may have had a second flush of growth in summer. Quite a few of my unpruned pines did that here this summer. I'm not sure of all the ramifications of pruning now. Healthy pines should still produce buds that will grow in spring but decandling again may be a bit too much. I would assess the strength of the growth in December and make that decision then.
You don't just have to limit pruning to the new candles/shoots. On this tree it looks like some of those shoots are quite long and they have healthy needles lower. You can prune back further than the new shoot and still expect new shoots from many of the needles that are left. That can be done in late spring or early summer.

Leaving the long shoots for a while will help bulk up the trunk and branches. Grow and prune back hard is a technique I use for developing trees where I want thickening.