Monterey Pine Pruning/Wiring

[Venrus]

New to the forums and beginning to expand my Bonsai collection/knowledge and hoping to get some advice.

I picked up a 5 Gallon "Christmas Tree" - Monterey Pine (Pinus Radiata) from the local OSH (Nursery) and re-potted in a 15ish gallon container with a mixture of pebbles, pine bark, sphagnum Moss and a couple bags of premixed Bonsai soil (Pine Bark, Lava Rock and Akadama) from the local Bonsai Nursery. Before re-potting, I removed all the nasty nursery soil and bare rooted. This was roughly 2-1/2 weeks ago. It's currently being used as a Christmas decoration, but the main purpose of the purchase was to convert it to a bonsai after the holidays.

As we are entering the rainy season in SoCal, I'm hoping the roots will begin to take off and I'm assuming by early spring it would be safe to trunk chop & wire, but wanted to ask advice on whether this was a good idea or not since it was so recently re-potted...Currently it's about 4 feet tall and I plan on cutting it down to about 1 to 1-1/2ft.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[sorce]

Welcome to Crazy!

Sorce

 

[Alain]

Welcome!

I'm pretty sure a picture will help

 

[jeanluc83]

Welcome. I admire you're enthusiasm and I don't mean to be harsh but you are going to be lucky if it makes it into the new year. You have done too much too fast in the wrong season. Do some research over the next few weeks. Come spring find a local club and join it. It will save a lot of headaches. Good luck.

 

[aframe]

I wouldn't chop it in the spring seeing how you bare-rooted it recently. Pine don't take well to bare rooting, so I'd take it easy until you know it's healthy and vigorous.

 

[M. Frary]

I don't know. Bare root. In the fall then brought inside where it's warm and dry.
Conventional wisdom tells me to tell you to just enjoy it as a Christmas tree because I'm sure if I did this the tree would surely die.
We normally dont bare root pines. I don't know Monterey pines though.

 

[Venrus]

Thanks all....I've found so much conflicting information online it was hard to know what was good advice and what wasn't. I'll put up a pic as soon as I'm able, won't get home until it's dark tonight.

Couple of points though, I guess I wouldn't say I fully bare rooted it, but did knock off a good amount of the bad soil it came in and maybe about 1/3 of the roots went with it. Then I fanned out the remaining roots in the new soil in hopes to get better growth. The tree has been outside in the pot since I got it and we've had temps in the 80's until just recently when it begun to cool down to the mid-high 60s during the day and we've been getting some good rain (finally), so I'm hoping that helped with the shock of the transplant.

This is more of an experiment brought about by compromising on getting a pre-cut tree with a couple boards nailed into the trunk for decoration or a potted one for less money and that I could potentially try to keep alive for some time. Crossing my fingers that it lives.

 

[Shorty54]

Welcome, do you have before and after pics to share?

 

[Venrus]

Sadly, no good "before re-potting" pics other than the first one of the tree in the cart at the nursery. Other pics were taken this morning, Full tree shot (don't mind the xmas decorations) soil composition (top half is what you see & bottom half is mostly small pebbles with some added pine bark and Sphagnum moss) and the trunk (there's some good surface roots below the soil line that I'm going to slowly expose if it survives)

 

[Adair M]

If it survives until next fall, that would be a good time to wire it otherwise leave it alone. If it starts pushing candles this spring, fertilize.

One insult per year.

 

[sorce]

potentially try to keep alive

It's become a Xmas tradition for me.

So far I'm 1 for 5!
And the one sucks!

Sorce

 

[BubblePopScott]

any update on this one?