The technique you are suggesting is an interesting one. If you look at the picture i posted above of one of my trees you will see the 10+ fertiliser cakes on it. I feed heavily. the only thing i did differently to your technique was to remove all candles around xmass time. I found that doing that the tree didnt really respond. it sulked while the black pines around it all budded up. Perhaps a later prune like you and craig suggest will return better results. I am guessing though that late pruning will not yeild a seccond flush of growth before spring.Mojo Moyogi wrote:Hi Jow, my experience with P.radiata is mostly limited to fairly well behaved trees with established branches, I do have a couple at approx. 30yrs old that would benefit from interior branching in places where there are currently no buds.
I was thinking that perhaps a strategy for getting Radiata to back bud on older wood may be to feed the tree well throughout the growing season and cut deep into the vigourous growth late in the season. I'm not sure if this would be appropriate if you are trying to force budding on existing branches while retaining the structure that you have, it would more likely be a procedure for rebuilding branches from scratch.
With your prefered soil, plenty of water and feed, I'd think that you would be able to get Radiata growing quite vigorously, despite the confines of a bonsai container.
Cheers,
Mojo
Thanks for the input its all helpful in getting a better idea of how to drive these pines a little better than how i currently am.
Your question prompted me to read my notes and the Red pine training is basically the same as JBP's. I have growing and training directions from a collaboration of notes from various Japanese articles including John Naka and collated by Jeffry Farman.This is the tree i am working on and learning with. I also have some Red Pines that i want to develop and i think they are a little similar to Radiata's.
