My pines

[apr]

Summer repot of a mugo. Cleaned up some needles off the sacrifice and wired what will hopefully be the leader.

Experimenting with the top down repotting method and I want to airlayer this anyway (poor graft) so no loss if it doesn't make it.

 

[apr]

I posted this garden centre pine on another thread. Scots pine, variety i think is blue pearl.

I grabbed it as I liked the thick base and the fact there were a few trunk line options - if I mess it up, it will be a nice garden tree anyway.



Healthy roots, maybe not the best substrate, and the bottom (as of sept) is a bit compact and damper than the rest of the soil.




Old needles dropped recently and small minor cleaning helped to clear up the structure.





I took it to my local bonsai club. The suggestion was to strip the top inch or two to get a better idea of the nebari and see if a front comes out of it. A few suggestions about trunk lines were also made. Repotting was advised for spring and big branch removal for mid summer next year.



A nice chunky buttress type root on the left and a mix of a few girdling roots.



This side and too the left, seems to have some good horizontal roots that can probably be positioned nicely to give a pleasing future root spread.



For me, a possible trunk line has started to emerge.



To my beginner eyes

The base is not bad and the roots can be improved.

There is good movement in the trunk line, not only with changes in direction but also the length of trunk sections.

There are two branches that emerge as natural 1st and 2nd branches, that also have enough thickness that maybe helps to convey age, and get thinner up the trunk.

Next steps:

Spring repot into a grow box or big pond basket.

For now the removed top soil was replaced. I may mix in some sand for drainage and use some stakes to keep those roots apart.

Structural pruning to prevent any inverse taper getting worse

Minor tidying of dead branches.

Questions:

Hard to tell without seeing the tree but any thoughts in trunk line ?

Any thoughts on report and structural pruning in one season next year ? - it's a young healthy tree so guessing it might be ok ?

Pine cone removal, it has loads of small pea sized cones and some larger ones - remove ?

Repotting for next year, I am thinking of doing the "top down" method that is explained on the BSOP youtube channel which looks to have lots of advantages in terms of really seeing what the nerbari is like and correcting it.

Any comments welcome !

 

[akillas]

Thats a nice tree! I would concave chop the red branch now as you say to avoid inverse taper, feed+decandle for a season or two to get it to back-bud so you have thinner branches and options, then maybe chop the other trunk too- then finally try to find an angle.

But maybe there are better suggestions..

 

[apr]

Thats a nice tree! I would concave chop the red branch now as you say to avoid inverse taper, feed+decandle for a season or two to get it to back-bud so you have thinner branches and options, then maybe chop the other trunk too- then finally try to find an angle.

But maybe there are better suggestions..

I think the red is going, but I will probably wait til Spring.

I have began to clean up whorls and am tempted to remove some coarse growth, but thinking more that i. Extra foliage fuels growth and ii. Scots will back bud readily enough so I'll keep ontop of potential troublesome areas and otherwise let it grow and take my time with it.

 

[apr]

Looking for some input on this scots pine waterii.

I think its grafted and has some flaws but it's I think it's good enough practice material to get to grips with wiring, pruning and making design choices.

I appreciate pics are hard to gauge but any suggestions welcome





I see two potential trunk lines in blue and aqua.

Left hand first branch has a good thickness and could be developed into a pad.

The new leader and top branch could be formed through picking one of the shoots and wiring it out a bit - better taper and the trunk section above the visible cut is flexible enough to wire that section into a more formal upright.

the other option in aqua is to remove the blue top section and have this long, bare branch as the new leader. It is more flexible so more potential options, but would need some back budding to prune back to eventually to make a new leader, as i think it's too long and taperless to make a decent trunk section - that being said, from a different angle (first pic) it maybe has overall better taper with this option from the base to top, and there could be some tension between the apex shifting over to the left, and the thick heavy first branch providing counter balance to the right.

 

[akillas]

You can try either options, and more, but i personally think it missed the train with those thick branches and no movement in the lower portion- if you are looking to get something decent out of your time

However, its good practice and a beautiful garden tree!

 

[bwaynef]

View attachment 613478

Study this angle. That's the trunk line. It shows the first branch on the right, with a pretty obvious cutback for branching to develop, and a second branch on the left. Cut off the large parts of both of those 1st 2 branches and work on developing a small trunk with lots of movement.