ralfish
Sapling
A few years ago I responded to a marketplace free ad where a landscaper had a lot of mugo pines available for free. I went to the place and saw a huge pile of trees that were on their way to the dump the next day. I unfortunately didnt have the resources to save more trees than I did or i would have. Of the 40 to 60 trees there only one was a mugo the rest were white pines. All were relatively recent plantings, ie the roots were still more or less still in the pot shape so i doubt the trees had been in the ground for more than 5 years. They were about 10 gallon sized (guessing). Some had trunks upwards of 3inches in diameter but all were standard round ball sort of shaped. Not super great material to start from but the price was right. My regret was not having a yard of pumice and an acre of land( I live in the city). Regardless I collected 6 or 7 trees and started down the road of learning about white pines. The first year was about recovery. Year two I started shortening branches and trying to force back budding and more recovery. Right away though I tried my hand at grafting, both approach and scion. Trying to find relevant info didnt really work as the local bonsai group seemed to be more of a cliquey group of young minded beginner types who didnt offer anything useful to a new stranger and the more mature skilled people kept to themselves. So I was on my own except for Japanese language Youtubes and whatever I could find on-line. Eventually I did find this group. Any how while the trees will never amount to anything in my lifetime in terms of show quality one or two aren't terrible if you ignore the multiple trunks and other structural flaws. But still I try and that means every year I try grafting. Dozens of failures, mostly I suspect because white pines arent easy to start with and I drop the ball on after care and timing. This year, being the 4th year since getting them, I have had success with a couple of grafts. One I promptly killed when I took the cover off it too soon another was killed when I seperated it too soon . ouch. But I even have one living scion graft and a few healing approach grafts. The approach grafts were all done simply by bending branches to a hopefully appropriate contact point. Ive since leaned about better placement, how deep to make the groove and how much you should cut the underside or contact side of the branch before you kill it. Regardless its all about learning and bettering our skill set. If I get something thats sort of halfways presentable down the road hopefully while Im still alive then thats a win. The first pic is a scion graft thats seems to be alive and growing, and the second pic is one of the partially decently healed approach grafts. Whats interesting about that one is how its so well healed on this side but the back side is still quite un healed. I carved the joining surfaces on that side a bit more, to get healing tissue to form. So its a matter of waiting and feeding it a lot. At some point Ill be confident enough to remove the wire holding the branch. The original plan was to shorten the main branch to just above the union and jin it, but Ill cross that bridge when its ready to. Anyhow, this is my win
