Pine trimming

I've been nibbling away at my large pines over the last few weeks to keep the new growth in check. As you can see there were many candles that needed trimming. It's quite an even growth with no slow zones and no dominant apex - just good balanced growth.

I have taken off the very strong candles as they show up and left the little ones untouched. I'm not pinching but rather waiting until they are mostly extended and I can see the needles forming. This allows me to cut precisely and leave the number of needles I want in the area. I'm leaving 10 pairs mostly.

I am also trying to leave things a little untidy as I don't want it to look like topiary.

I am also undecided as to the front as there are several good angles. Initially I liked the left immediately above image on the left as the front - but the crown is too heavy for this. A little trimming may fix this - not something I want to do in a hurry though. Plenty of time to decide.

The medium pine is running a few weeks faster than the large one as usual even though they sit together on the bench outside in identical conditions. I have also only trimmed the dominant areas or candles to keep things balanced. I do need to do another round to get everything down to the desired length.

Both of these were repotted this year so I am going gently on them.

Tomorrow if I feel energetic I will do the final fine trim on this one for the season. I want to get it done early so I don't miss the timing for setting next years buds.

The entire apex has grown after I purchased the collected tree - and is now taking a lot of work to get under control - but I have the luxury of almost infinite density there now. Every single needle on the top has tried to shoot - so its been a lot of nibbling.

Also - neither of them contain any wire at the moment so that's all got to go in still. I think they will look quite good by the time it's all done.

It's been enjoyable getting to know these pines and seeing now differently two trees of the same species can behave under near identical conditions.

Pine musings

With summer arriving for a few days in southern England I have been paying close attention to my watering and fertilising - watering sometimes 3 times on the very hot days. I have been looking at the trees a lot but not doing much to them. The two large pines are interesting to watch as they are next to each other on the benches and on the same watering and food regime and yet the larger one is about 6 weeks behind in its growth cycle.

Today I noticed that the late winter wiring on some inner branches had already bitten in very severely and needed to be taken off before it was lost under the new growth. 

I had also nibbled off all the long candles a while ago and the shorter ones have come out nicely - so they are pleasingly balanced for growth. They are now all evenly cut back to a minimum of maybe 12 pairs of needles and longer where needed. So both of the larger pines are now trimmed up and without wire. I will have a think about when I will apply the wire again. Certainly not soon as they are gaining weight so quickly I would need to redo it every few weeks. 

Quite a lot of material was removed from the larger pine and a fine trimming of the smaller one was done. I won't cut again this year as I want the buds to form for next years growth. I may remove some buds. Last year I made the mistake of cutting back some branches in winter and they didn’t grow at all this year.

The larger pine is now cut for the summer and looking quite nice. Needs wire to bring a bit of order. I removed a large branch about halfway up a few weeks ago. I am trying to leave a lot of the branches I remove so that I can leave some deadwood - without creating a deadwood monster - as the wild trees I see often have some dead branches on the way up and that is the effect I want. I want the right side a bit lower to separate the foliage pads a bit better so I may do a guy-wire to get it down.

Also going to need a new pot - something a bit bigger as its starting to look very unbalanced to my eye. Probably a similar Jixing - but a little bigger. The pot for the other one is more complicated. I seem to be doing some sort of a semi-cascade thing.

Scots pine

I spent a few hours today working on my large Scots pine. Its very healthy and established in its new pot so I began with some of the heavy work. Several large branches were removed and the new growth was cut back and balanced - it was growing very strongly and had some huge candles which were cut back to a few pairs of needles - but some of the weaker areas are untouched. I don’t want to de-candle it at this stage as i still want some extension of the branch structure.

This tree is now down to its third level of ramification. Hoping that at the end of summer I’m in place for final layer. I’m maybe 35% of the way through the work on it for this season. All of the old wire is removed and its ready to be wired again.

I've spent the last 3 years looking at it and waiting for the right time to work - and now all I’ve done is refine the intrinsic shape of the tree - i haven’t imposed a design on it. Once its plucked and wired I’ll have another think about it - but for now I’m quite pleased with the direction its heading in.

Native ladybirds

While i was on the lawn with the cat today i saw some native bugs on my Scots pines. The red one is the native 7 spot ladybird. ( i think )

The tiny black one is a variety of the native 2 spot. The light was good and the bark on my Scots pine was looking very fine.

Love having them around to eat the nasty bugs.

repotting season

Time to re-pot some of the yamadori i bought last year. They have settled down nicely and its time to get rid of the old akadama that's turning to mud and get them into pots that drain freely.

I cleared the top soil till i hit the upper roots. i also wanted to get the grass and weeds out of the soil as i find these can impact the growth and health of the plants.

This is my large Scots pine and is 105cm from the ground level potted.

please note my high tech rake.

The roots are gently combed out radially. moss and weeds cleared until the major radial roots are reached.










I took my time clearing out as much of the original soil and akadama as possible without cutting any major roots.

There was plenty of good fungus on the roots and i preserved as much of this as possible to "seed" the new pot.

I kept several long sections of heavy fungied root to jump start the growth in the new pot.

Some of the roots doing laps at the bottom were also grass roots. some sort of forest grass that just wont give up.

Sadly there was a lot of rot at the bottom which pulled clear freely as a disc.

The pot i bought it wasn't very good for drainage.

Ive got some sphagnum down in the bottom of the pot to make the roots happy.

There is also a generous drainage layer under the moss.

The cat approved of the moss.





If this puts out good candles this summer and is vigorous i hope to be able to cut it back quite hard so i can begin to place the structure for some good foliage pads. Plenty of time though - i see this one as a 15 year project.