Hey check out Ryan Neil @bonsiamirai. He has an updated way to decandle. I think you would like. He is decandling the whole tree at one time.He is teaching I can get to decandle 2 times a year or more here in my area with a long growing season. JBP and JRP are multi flush pines and will produce candles more than once a year. You can find a couple of his Videos here on youtube. Ive only been doing bonsai a couple years now, so Im no expert.You are saying you have to skip a year on decandling but I have not heard Ryan saying anything about skipping years on decandling and needle plucking It looks to me as if you should leave a few more pairs of needles especially on lower branches say 6 to 8 pair instead of the 3 or 4 pair you are leaving. 3 to 4 on the upper branches If the candles on the top are from last year they aren't very strong, but I think you said you had already decandled earlier. I think if you leave a few more pairs of needles you can get more growth from you tree and be able to decandle more often. Anyway check out Ryan if you can maybe it will help you on your pines.
@@AppalachianBonsai I'm sure they do and I'm actually going to meet them at the end of this month, so that'll be cool. However, I think I like Ryan's approach here. Why stress the tree out when you can develop the tree by leveraging its strength instead? Feed it like crazy, decandle in June to achieve ramification or decandle in August if you want to shorten developmental/sacrificial branches. Shoot select late fall. Tree is super happy. Ryan will needle pluck if one area of the tree is getting more resources than others. Typically in the apical region, but even then he's leaving 10-20 needles. If I had access to more material I'd actually like to try both approaches just to compare the results. With bonsai there are multiple ways to achieve goals. It's just a matter of finding which one suits you best.
Wow !!!!at least someone that explains clearly all different phases of work on a black pine !!!! 40 years of bonsai making (me) and finally a clear explanation with an excellent film to review and check what we already know !!! ❤️❤️❤️🍀
I done something similar to this on my pine, but i stripped the tips of each stick. Now it's regrowing with thicker but shorter needles and is starting to flower, about 4months later. Really helpful video.
Thank you Ben!!! I have a few dozen Japanese Black Pines all germinated Dec 18'. They have a ways to go, but this was very informative for the future. All the best.
Thank you.... 🙏 😔 🙏 A great complete explaination of you technique. I greatly enjoyed the video. It is loaded with good information. I saw in some of the comments a cold reminder of why I have not participated in groups. Thank you for your videos, they are great. And I especially appreciate Rocky's "supervision and clarification". 🎄🙏🖖🙏😔🙏🙏🙏🎄
Thanks. It’s a very informative video. Im just getting into learning about JBP for few months now & i think im ready to try this technique; however, i have one question to ask. When doing such procedure, is it possible to get “budding” on the branches without needles? Thx again
No, the branches of conifers, like pine, require needles on the branch in order to live. However, it is possible with JBP to have budding occur on old wood, but only if there are still needles at the tips to provide energy.
General questions: the candles get pruned, then the needles are removed systematically over the month of June, resulting in buds at the base of where the candle was. Do these buds result in more candles? Or do they result in a small cluster of needles? And do these buds stay over winter or do they open up the same year? Also, is this technique valid for mugo, scotch, ponderosa pines which are all 2-3 needle? Thanks in advance.
This is specific to black pine, but I have heard that it can be used with some other 2-3 needle species. I took this advice from the Bonsai Learning Center in Charlotte, NC. It's available on the net. It does produce a multitude of buds, the first of which form & open up by the end of summer. They are significantly shorter in length. Then more buds form behind that flush for the following year. This is really good for ramification and branch refinement, but can only be performed once every other year. This year I let it go, but with almost double the buds, there was only enough energy to produce a little more than half the foliage, so needle length is still short. This is different with Mugo. I'll be creating some videos about that soon. In the meantime, check Harry Harrington's Bonsai4Me website on species specific info like mugo & others.
This is off subject, but what breed of dog is that blue and black; tailess dog playing in the background? I'm sort of looking for a dog that is not real big since I live in town and won't be letting him/her run loose. Thanks, and have a Blessed Day.
That's a border collie/aussie shepherd mix. Super active working dogs that require constant action. That means lots of walking, running, and ball/frisbee tossing. If they're not worked, they'll destroy a house.
@@AppalachianBonsai LOLOLOL, thanks for the fast reply an the info. I'll keep looking because I can't be THAT active and definitely don't want my house destroyed.......such as it is. LOLOLOL. Have a blessed day.
I think I understood your reason for a staggered needle reduction plan but I think you could get away with reducing all the needles in one go by leaving some more needles at in the lower parts of the tree to achieve the same result since the top of your tree will always stay stronger even if there are the same amount of needles everywhere. The staggered method in my opinion can have a disadvantage since you can't really be sure if the lower branches are receiving equal amount of energy; and indeed it makes more sense (to me at least) that they wouldn't since the top of the tree, where it is closer to the sun, has more needle and so that is the part of the tree where more resources will be moving to and from.
Why do you only keep the ends? If the idea was the compact the tree I’d assume you’d want to keep the lower needles?? Not faulting your technique just curious
I know it works on Pitch pine (P. rigida), but not on the others. I think Mugo responds to hard pruning with back budding, but I don't know about austrian black pine (had a gorgeous one I wanted to work on, but it sold before I could get to it).
I wasn't sure what the sylvestris actually is, I only know it's native here in Finland and I have chosen one for my collection. It's a young seedling, maybe not more than five yrs old and still in the ground but I started pruning it this year. They just call it pine here, not blacks or whites in the names 😃
