Niwaki. Question about Scot's Pine

[Three Crows]

I have a basic question about pine growth and pruning that i think applies to bonsai and niwaki. I have a 20 year old Scot's pine that i rescued from a garden store. It is now about 6 feet tall. I bought it at a good price to reshape it into a cloud-pruned feature in my Japanese-style garden. It was machine pruned into a pom pom style. I pruned the pom poms to be reasonable looking pads. To shape what's left of the pom poms into pads, as each new spring's growth emerges as a candle i manually break off about 2/3 to 3/4 of the new growth. The candle hardens off as a branch and continues to grow, producing another candle next spring. Over time, 5 to 10 years, won't this candle become a branch that is just a long ugly, twig with needles only on the end resembling a brush? If this is the case then how do we keep the pad of green needles close to the tree and not be on long twigs grown away from the tree's centre? i can only surmise that other "new" candles will emerge and i will encourage them to grow while gradually removing the long brushy twigs. Does this make sense? I can provide a drawing if it will help. -Geoff-

 

[leatherback]

Normally I would expect a scots pine to produce multiple buds at each branchend, of which you keep 2. This way you create ramification. Or am I misunderstanding the question?

 

[Kadebe]

I have a basic question about pine growth and pruning that i think applies to bonsai and niwaki. I have a 20 year old Scot's pine that i rescued from a garden store. It is now about 6 feet tall. I bought it at a good price to reshape it into a cloud-pruned feature in my Japanese-style garden. It was machine pruned into a pom pom style. I pruned the pom poms to be reasonable looking pads. To shape what's left of the pom poms into pads, as each new spring's growth emerges as a candle i manually break off about 2/3 to 3/4 of the new growth. The candle hardens off as a branch and continues to grow, producing another candle next spring. Over time, 5 to 10 years, won't this candle become a branch that is just a long ugly, twig with needles only on the end resembling a brush? If this is the case then how do we keep the pad of green needles close to the tree and not be on long twigs grown away from the tree's centre? i can only surmise that other "new" candles will emerge and i will encourage them to grow while gradually removing the long brushy twigs. Does this make sense? I can provide a drawing if it will help. -Geoff-

Do you have a picture of the tree?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Over time, 5 to 10 years, won't this candle become a branch that is just a long ugly, twig with needles only on the end resembling a brush?

Yes. That's why it's sometimes better to chase back the foliage by removing the shoot entirely in fall to produce backbudding. Snipping the elongating candle is less reliable on scots pines.
They elongate and elongate and elongate, and we cut back to a branch close to the trunk and start building the entire branch it again from scratch. At some point that becomes impossible, so the branch is either removed or replaced by a graft.

 

[sorce]

Is that enough for a murder?

Welcome to Crazy!

Every now and then just cut it back a little further, eventually you'll have enough inner growth to chop all the way back to that.

Sorce