Japanese Black Pine Autumn Needle Work

[Scott Roxburgh]

Splitting off from another JBP Thread...

I recently presented a talk on Autumn Needle Work on Japanese Black Pine. Many members of the Canberra Bonsai Society enjoyed the talk so I thought I’d add the notes here.

The following are the techniques that I use on JBP at this time of the year, having learnt them from Boon Manakitivipart. I advocate finding someone with the best pine bonsai that you have seen, find out what they do, and do it diligently. If you try to follow everything everyone does, you will just get lost. Boon had the best pine bonsai that I had ever seen, now mine are getting better.

In Canberra, this work can be done anytime from mid-late Autumn (April-May) to when the buds are opening in spring (July-August). If you use these techniques too early the new ‘summer’ needles may be too soft and are very easy to snap off, even by brushing with your hand. Again, this work is not time imperative like decandling, it can be performed as long as the tree is dormant. It is better to wait for the needles to harden off than do it too early and have the tree’s health suffer.

The aim of this work is to clean up the tree for next spring. The tasks that we do are:
Old needle removal;
Bud selection; and
New needle reduction.

Before work begins
One of the first things to learn in pine care is how to handle the tree. We don’t come at the tree with fingers spread wide, ‘Poking’ at it. Use your tweezers to get into the tree, lay the needles down and make space for your hands. This avoids bending the needles, and causing them to snap. The needles will look fine, but in 2 weeks they will brown off and die. Learning the proper handling techniques is about respecting your tree.

Another tip for pine work is to spray a fine mist of water on the needles before you start working. This will reduce the amount of sap that will get stuck to your fingers and tools.

[Scott Roxburgh]

Old needle removal
This consists of removing last year needles. The idea is to let more light and air into the interior of the tree, stimulating back budding. Without back budding, the tree will get leggier and leggier.

We remove the old needles to promote adventitious buds. Adventitious buds are buds that break without needles being present, that is, on bare wood. We preference adventitious buds over needle buds because they can break along the entire length of the branch, needle buds will only ever break as far in as the needles go. Saying this, if you have needle buds close to the trunk, do not remove them, eventually you may cut back to this point to induce more taper in the branch. It is highly unlikely that you will get adventitious buds on the trunk, so don’t count on it.

The technique
■Firstly, when removing needles, start at the top of the tree and work down. As you work down the tree, the needles that you remove will stack on the lower part of the tree. As you continue, you will clean these needles off the tree. If you start at the bottom and work up, you will then have to go back and clean the entire tree of stacked needles.

■Remove all needles from the past spring, leaving only summer needles, and needles on weak interior buds.

■The way to tell a spring needle from a new summer needle, is the generally colour and length, but also the way it is growing. If it comes out almost straight from the branch it’ll be an older needle. Spring needles may be shorter and a brighter green.

Old-New Needles.jpg

■A tip to ensure that you do not miss any old needles is to work systematically. Start at the left hand side of a branch and work to the right, this will reduce the chance of missing any old needles.

[Scott Roxburgh]

Bud selection
After decandling, we usually get between 1-4 buds. During summer we leave them to grow uninterrupted all season so no one bud gets excessively strong. Now is the time to thin back to 2 buds. We thin back to 2 buds to avoid excessive thickening, the same as in all bonsai, we want to avoid reverse taper.

The technique
■Depending on the size of the tree, I mentally divide the tree into three sections. The top is the strongest, the middle and lower exterior is of mid strength, and the interior is weakest.

Branch strength.jpg

Tree strength.jpg

■Select buds that are growing left and right, and remove buds that grow up and down;

■Keep weaker buds in the strong top section of the tree, and the strongest buds in bottom and interior of the tree.

[Scott Roxburgh]

New needle reduction
Once we have completed old needle removal, and bud selection, we move onto new needle reduction. This task is again used to even out the comparative strength of different areas on the tree. We pull needles in areas that we do not want budding, for example the bottom of the branch.

The technique
■We remove upward and downward growing needles, preference side-to-side growing needles.

■We remove more needles in stronger areas of the tree, and remove fewer needles in weaker areas of the tree.

■The number of needles kept on each bud depends on the vigour of the tree, on strong trees take more, on weak trees take less, but a rule of thumb is KEEP:
+7-10 pairs on the top, that is the strongest part;
+10-15 pairs on the middle/bottom of the tree, the weaker parts; and
+All needles on the interior and very weak parts.

■If you encounter a pair of buds, one significantly bigger than the other, take more needles from the larger one.

■If you plan to wire the tree, leave a few extra pairs of needles on it, because no matter how hard we try, we will break some when we wire.


Additional Resources for pine work
If you are after additional information on the seasonal techniques used in Japanese Black Pine care, I recommend Boon Manakitivipart’s DVD series in the subject. This four part series outlines all of the necessary care techniques for growing great Japanese Black Pine bonsai. The DVDs can be purchased from me or at http://www.bonsaiboon.com

Another option is my Blog, I try to keep it updated...

[kcpoole]

What an excellent thread
I gather the same processes can be applied to other pines as well? if not, how do they differ?

Ken

[Scott Roxburgh]

Ken,

I have limited experience with other pine bonsai. I would not apply these techniques to White pine.

Other two/three needle pines, your guess is as good as mine...I have limited experience with Radiata this year, but no results...

I would give it a crack with other 'low-growing' pines, not mountain ones though

[bodhidharma]

Thanks for taking the time and making the effort Scott. it is appreciated and will be informative to people venturing into JBP Bonsai and people with trees as a work in progress.

[fireworks]

Thank you, Scott, for this thread. This technique is very informative and very much appreciated.
Would love to learn more as time progresses please.

[FatMingsBonsai]

Good work Scott, thanks for the time.

[Bretts]

It's a great explination of the process Scott
Do you have any examples of the results this process has done for your trees ?

[shibui]

Well presented Scott. that's one of the clearest presentations of this technique that I've seen so well done.
This is pretty much how I've been treating my black pines for the past couple of years after advice from Jow so pleased to see we're using the same techniques.

I seem to remember instructions many years ago that had different techniques for red pines and different again for white pines but I've been doing pretty much the same to my red pines and they seem to be responding well. Maybe some of the experienced radiata growers will be able to tell us whether P. radiata is treated same or different?

[Andrew Legg]

Hey Scott,

Thanks for the info! This is actually pretty funny as I have been going through the Pines & Junipers Section from the very first page, and am working forward to look for info on exactly this - JBP care. One of the reasons I really like Ausbonsai is that the basic season's are similar to those in Cape Town, South Africa, so it is that much easier to get one's head around the timing of doing things.

One thing that I find sad is that there seems to be this generally held view that pines are difficult trees. In my mind, this is completely unfounded. If one understands the pine calendar and the concept of balancing energy, they are in my mind simple trees.

One of the things that I found brilliant about Koreshoff's book was the one illustration that showed when to repot a deciduous tree. It is a pencil illustration that shows the buds breaking. I think one area where we can improve advice we give to people is to show them graphically or photographically when to do things. It is so much better as people in different climates can then wait for the correct time as dictated by their tree's physical appearance, and not just try to work to a calendar. Reading the correct time from a tree is just that much better than reading it from a calendar!

Good info, and thanks for the post!

Cheers,

Andrew

[Scott Roxburgh]

Do you have any examples of the results this process has done for your trees ?

Most of the results have led to branches being cut off so not much to show but I have managed to find a few:
Please excuse the Iphone pics

This one was from the year before last, I think...

Back Budding old.JPG

Back Budding.JPG

Back Budding 2.JPG

Back Budding 3.JPG

Places on the tree that back budded, you'll notice that most are at the top of the tree, where it is strongest. Obviously this tree is not show ready yet!

Back Budding spots.JPG

Oh, and I will not be cutting back to these buds this year, they are not strong enough yet.

[Scott Roxburgh]

One thing that I find sad is that there seems to be this generally held view that pines are difficult trees.

Not difficult, just technical. Once you learn the techniques your trees advance with every season.

[Tony Bebb]

Great post Scott.

Very well presented and explained. Just did a demo at our club last month on JBP with a focus on not difficult, just tecnical. The concept of growing and pruning trees is the same, but the technique and timing is a little different. Hopefully you have helped more people grow and enjoy the beauty of JBP as Bonsai.

Tony