Redirecting growth on pines – Bonsai Tonight

Decandling and cutback are great techniques for redirecting growth on black pines. Here are some examples. Tree #1 After eleven years, the trunk of the tree below has reached the desired size. Any further significant growth and the curves would begin to disappear. The goal for this stage of development is to reduce investment in the sacrifice branch and further refine the lower branches.

11 year-old black pine

Close-up of the lower branches

First I decandled the spring shoots on the lower branches, then I removed most of the escape branch. I’ll remove the remainder of the escape branch after it helps to close a wound lower on the trunk.

After decandling

After cutback

Tree #2 The goal for the tree below is to generate more branches low on the trunk. The escape branch helped the tree reach its current size, but further growth is not necessary as the trunk is now the desired size.

11 year-old pine

Reducing the escape branches encourages the tree to invest in the lower branches. When these branches are larger I can remove the escape branch and focus on the primary and secondary branches.

After decandling and cutback

Tree #3 The tree below is another future shohin black pine. I’d like the right side to continue to thicken so I left the right hand escape branch in place while reducing the escape branch on the left. I decandled most of the lower branches to encourage new buds close to the trunk.

11 year-old black pine

After decandling and cutback

The challenge here is getting summer buds to develop when the escape branch remains strong. I’ve experimented with this in the past and found that it’s not always easy to generate summer buds without further reducing the escape branch. I’ll find out in fall what happens with this tree. Tree #4 The tree below is slightly further along as the escape branches were removed last year. The goal is to replace vigorous spring growth with more refined summer growth. I decandled all spring shoots and removed extra needles.

11 year-old black pine

After decandling

After removing extra needles