Need some guidance on where to take this young JBP

[Lawlcat]

I'm new to pines in general and picked up this tree a month ago in a nursery visit because I wanted to dabble into pines. I liked the trunk but I couldn't really come up with any styling ideas on where to take it or how to handle it in the future. I was hoping I could get someone who could give some guidance on possibilities with it. The top Y trunks were pretty obviously grown as sacrificial from what the nursery owner said to me, and I was originally planning on just leaving them to grow for a few years to thicken the trunk a lot. I could end up then using one as jin and pulling the whole tree back down to have a nice long tall jin and the fat trunk tree under it. I thought that would look nice but...

I don't know what to do about it not having any lower branches. If I let the two current heads grow fully to thicken up the trunk, what is a plan in order to get back buds down further for branch selection? Would I be able to trim the candles throughout next year's growing season (or now, since it's in one) to try to promote backbudding? I could then try to build a lower set of branches and then continue growing the top out again over the next few years after that.

There's an album available here of all four sides, but here's a direct image of what I consider to be the "front":



With no lower branches I'm just at a loss here.

The only thing I could come up with is to use a side as the front and use one of these 2 Y leaders as a "left branch", then use the other leader to grow straight up and try to thicken the entire thing to bring the new left branch back into scale.

Really super awful photoshop job here:



I'm open to other suggestions though. Any other suggestion, really. Help!

 

[sorce]

Welcome to Crazy!

I doubt you'll get any buds lower on the trunk.

To get them you'd have to grow the top out so far, the top would become useful and you wouldn't need the low branches anymore.

Cutting back ain't always required, grow it out!

Sorce

 

[BonsaiDawg]

You can easily make the shortest branch closest to the front a lower branch. And yes I agree, do not cut anything now. Let it grow out for two years and do not candle prune and let the tree accumulate needle mass and grow roots... Then you will get back budding and have more choices than you ever thought you would.

 

[Shibui]

I assume this is a black pine.
Your only sure option is to use the lowest shoots to make your tree. you will need to prune and manage those while letting the sacrifice leaders grow to get thickness. If the lower shoots ever start to look weak chop the taller sacrifice branches or lower them below the height of the desired shoots so the tree reallocates resources to keep your shoots alive.
I can see that even the lowest shoots are fairly high up the branches. If those are too high for you you could try for lower back buds now. Pines don't really like to grow new buds on bare wood so you'll need to frighten the tree into doing it by pruning the tops quite hard. Now, while it is actively growing, is a good time to do that and the tree looks healthy enough. Cut the highest leader back to the second layer of branches and cross fingers. If it doesn't bud you still have plenty of branches to grow on.

 

[Lawlcat]

So either let it grow for a few years and tackle it again later, or go for the hard prune now and hope to get something back. Such drastically different options and hard choices to make. I think I'm leaning towards just doing absolutely nothing to it and then in a few years when everything has thickened up and gotten dense, I can re-evaluate if I need to hard prune or if I can come up with a different plan with the bigger size post-growth