AusBonsai

As it turns out the spring growth was vigorous and so it was back to the decandling bench this year.
A quick before and after for progression sake. I left more needles on than previously just to try and mitigate the loss of vigour that is sure to come from the yearly repots combined with yearly decandling as it moves forward. We'll see how that pans out. It needs a bit of wire to neaten things up but there are more pines to get through so that will wait until autumn.

Autumn clean up for this tree today.
Not just your standard "pluck needles and back to 2" this year however. It was time to make some hard decisions about branching, and cut off a bit of ramification that I'd been working hard on to keep the overall silhouette within scale. It's amazing how long you can ponder the potential impact removing a branch will have and then once it gets removed, you move other stuff around and barely notice the loss.
There's a lot more light/air now ... I'm happier with this density long term.

Very nice indeed.. can you share your soil mix in the pot and how do you go about watering in summer?

Full sun or do you use any kind of covers?

The Specimen wrote: ↑April 30th, 2025, 2:43 pm Very nice indeed.. can you share your soil mix in the pot and how do you go about watering in summer?

Full sun or do you use any kind of covers?

Soil mix is pumice, pine bark and zeolite predominantly. I add coir peat also to my mix because my trees are fully exposed to sun/wind etc which can be quite extreme in the middle of summer. No explicit shade/protection is offered so coir peat is good at retaining water for a bit longer. I have also added akadama in recent years for more advanced trees, and this tree is in that mix currently. Is it any better?? I'm not sure yet ... but it doesn't negatively impact the open/free draining properties I like so I am happy enough to continue having a go with it.
Watering in summer is weather dependent (as at any other time of the year). On very warm days I might need to water 3 or more times but generally 1 to 2 times per day is enough.

That is super helpful and thanks for sharing Ryceman.

Its great mojo to see the journey and development of these fine trees