AusBonsai

Hi Everyone

Ive let the top of this JBP grow unrestricted for the last 3 seasons to get come more truck girth. it is now about 2 meters tall, very top-heavy.

for practical reasons as much as anything else, i am thinking its time to chop it down low - Red line in the attached photo is where i intend to cut. My questions are:
- is it a good time of year for a major chop?
- will a jpb survive losing and estimated 70% foliage?

it may not look it from the foliage colour in the photos, but the foliage is super vibrant and it grew like crazy this season.

any advice is very much appreciated!

Its difficuly to see what is under the red line due to all the growth. I have cut JBP down to about 6" it did however have lots of needles and a few small branches under the cut and it did fine. I'm about to cut it down again. This time of year is fine and all through winter just seal the cut.
Cheers
Kirky

Trunk Chopping this time of year will be fine.

Just it will give a lot more light to the lower portion of the tree, which again at this time of the year is not a bad thing. I would watch your watering after the chop as you will not have as much foliage to maintain.

Being the cheap B@st@rd I am, I personally would layer off the top and get two trees for one.



Cheers,
Jeff

Yes. A black pine will survive losing 70% or more of the foliage. As long as there are healthy shoots below the cut it should do fine. Your tree seems to be very healthy so should rebound very strong.

I've cut black pines like this at all times of the year. I have seen some growers say that pines should not be cut hard in summer because they bleed but that is not my experience.
Autumn pruning pines seems to stimulate strong growth the following spring. Strong candles usually have a long bare neck so if that will cause problems in future you should follow up by candle pruning in late spring to get some more compact growth to prune back to in future.
Summer pruning stimulates smaller, more compact new shoots similar to summer candle pruning.

I leave a sacrifice leader on tree that are still growing to thicken the trunk. reduce the height but leave one lower leader , you can cut it off in a few seasons and start again. this will help develop thicker lower trunk.