For Eric, late October and November are “the most wonderful time of the year” because he gets to work on his pines! He focuses today on three six-year-old pines that are moving from early to middle development.
00:00:37 Pine #1: Eric decandled this tree a little bit on the early side in the summer. He’s happy with the nebari on the trunk, and examines the shoots to determine where he can reduce to compact growth.
00:02:32 Branch analysis and reduction, again looking to compact growth as much as possible.
00:04:03 Eric examines the trunk after he removes growth. The trunk doesn’t have as much movement as he wants, so to create more movement he will cut the sacrifice branch as low as possible.
00:05:10 Sacrifice branch is removed, and now we have a better sense of the scale of the tree. Eric needs to select the front of the tree based on nebari and branch availability.
00:05:55 Wiring branches. Eric plans to repot into a smaller container next year.
00:06:45 Pine #2 again needs to be thinned out and the longer shoots need to be cut so Eric can see the structure.
00:07:33 Eric wires the top strong shoot and bends it over so buds at the back get full sun.
00:08:44 Pine #3 same as the first two! Thinning for visibility and Eric needs to make a decision on where to cut the sacrifice branch.
00:09:40 He decides to make a less dramatic cut back and then wire, to help him decide what he really wants to do with the tree.
00:10:23 Eric explains the importance of setting the tree’s structure to continue growing it into a better Shohin sized bonsai.
What experiences have you had with Shohin pines in middle development? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for watching! Please like and share; we’d love for you to subscribe to our channel so you can be the first to learn whenever we drop a new video!
