AusBonsai

After a healthy candle prune my Jbp have all thrown masses of new buds, both needle buds and adventurous buds. My question is should I cut these bud back ( to two buds per branch)now to preserve the trees energy and focus it on the buds I want or should I wait for them to extend first?
Any thoughts would be fantastic.

Hey buddy,

Best to post a pic as the aim will be vastly different depending on the developmental stage at which your tree is. Then, one branch may need something different to another branch.

The reason for this is, if you leave all the candles to elongate you end up with shorter candles overall - which is typically required during refinement stages.

If your tree is in early stages, and is still a little stick, I'd cut back now as you're more likely to be aiming to get primary branching set up and perhaps a sacrifice. Cutting back to two now will mean that the remaining buds get the energy that would otherwise have gone into the buds you planned to cut off.

Again, this is only two circumstances, best to post a pic and have a specific plan drawn out for that tree =D

Cheers,
Mo

Many different methods and techniques to look after JBP and as Mo says, Depending on the age state of the tree as to what is best.

Ryan Neil when out here last year suggested his method which is brain dead simple ( and thus good fro me) and is summarised in the wiki page for JBP here
https://www.ausbonsai.com.au/wiki/index. ... Black_Pine
He takes of all the candles to be removed at the same time


Ken

Thanks for the replies. Pictures wouldn't upload but will try again. Tree's are two and three years old.I only turned them back 3-4 weeks ago but some of the sacrifical branches have 6-8 buds elongating from the same wound

Ok pics are good. Being a young tree you shoudl be looking at leaving some for a sacrifice branch, but the problem with that as with them all in the same are it cause reverse taper, which you must avoid.

I would remove enough to leave just 4, Then remove another 2 when they are guaranteed to be growing well in a few months.

Ken