The transition from spring to summer marks the middle of decandling season, the time of year when we remove spring shoots from black pines to produce more compact summer growth. If a tree is healthy and received a lot of fertilizer in spring, it’s a good candidate for decandling. Based on this criteria, the black pine below made a good candidate this year.
Black pine before decandling – tea bags are filled with cottonseed meal
I removed all but the weakest shoots to give them a chance to catch up with the more vigorous ones.
Black pine – after decandling
My large cork bark pine is healthy but not all areas of the tree are vigorous. As a result, I decandled the strong areas and left the weaker areas alone.
Cork bark black pine – before decandling
After decandling the strong areas
Decandling select areas of a tree can yield funny results as the spring needles will be long, the summer needles, short. I don’t typically take this approach, but am curious to see how it goes. It will take at least one more year after this year to produce even growth so I expect to be living with uneven growth for a while.
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