How strong is your Japanese Black Pine mid-development?

If I had to do a survey on what bonsai technique is most associated with Japanese Black pines I can safely assume a greater than 90% answer would be ‘Decandling’.

Caught between removing all the spring growth ‘Decandling’ or doing nothing at all, to only then remove most of the needles along the new branches and wire out the structure… This is where your mid-game is needed!

A quick explanation on what the ‘Decandling’ process refers to. It is the process whereby the new spring growth (candle) is completely removed in favour of a second flush. Why this is done and the expected outcome is for a future blog.

So mid- development. What is mid-development? At this stage you have a trunk line developed although you could still have sacrifices in place. You may have a couple of branches established but they may still need thickening/ length. You may also have some large wounds that still need healing and as a result need a tree with built up vigour. Conversely you have may have some areas that need to be controlled where more refinement techniques are applied.

Now unfortunately there is no one size fits all, mid-development can be the most challenging time and in my opinion is where the majority fall short. The reason being is that it often requires a multitude of techniques, that could be a mix of refinement and development. It’s like having your foot on the gas peddle, too fast and you either crash or veer off in the wrong direction and too slow, well you simply don’t get to the ‘destination.’

Although this blog’s subject is Japanese Black Pine the concept can and should be considered for every tree.

Pictured here is the result of a late summer (early February in southern hemisphere) cutback of the spring candle. The result of this is as follows: buds near the cut-site, the required length of the branch achieved, thickening of the branch achieved, vigour built up to heal a wound below and assisting in the rebuild a root system. If I had done nothing I would have got the majority of those outcomes except I would have lost the control of the length of the branch and the resultant set of those spring buds, vital in the continuation of the development for the following years. Alternatively if I had decandled I would have achieved far less, less vigour, less thickening, and not achieved the required length.