Too late for pruning and wiring Mugo?

[Ozz80]

Do you think that it is too late for branch selection (removing unnecessary branches) and wiring for young nursery Mugos? How much work can be done in this time of the year?

In these videos the work seems to be done in November and repotting at next March. Isn't it risky?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Mugos are high alpine trees. They get rock slides and avalanches and snowloads and high winds in winter. The only time they seem to catch a break in the wild is somewhere late summer.

My experience is that every time is fine for working them, except for summer. All things I have done in summer were disastrous, whereas all things outside of summer have been not disastrous.

For the record: I am going against Vance Wood's Mugo manual because it does not work for me.

 

[Treelord]

Mugos are high alpine trees. They get rock slides and avalanches and snowloads and high winds in winter. The only time they seem to catch a break in the wild is somewhere late summer.

My experience is that every time is fine for working them, except for summer. All things I have done in summer were disastrous, whereas all things outside of summer have been not disastrous.

For the record: I am going against Vance Wood's Mugo manual because it does not work for me.

It didnt work, why? different climate?

 

[Ozz80]

Mugos are high alpine trees. They get rock slides and avalanches and snowloads and high winds in winter. The only time they seem to catch a break in the wild is somewhere late summer.

My experience is that every time is fine for working them, except for summer. All things I have done in summer were disastrous, whereas all things outside of summer have been not disastrous.

For the record: I am going against Vance Wood's Mugo manual because it does not work for me.

Thanks for your help. Probably hot summers will be a worse problem in my climate. I will follow your advice.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

It didnt work, why? different climate?

I need to work during daytime. So I can't water recovering trees six times a day.
I repot my mugos in spring and that works just fine. In the alps, the spring is when the rockslides happen, when the thaw lets water seep into cracks and freezes again at night. My idea is that this is the time when mugo gets the most root damage and since they've evolved there, they're most likely to recover. Thus far, I have a 90% surival rate in spring repots and 0% for summer repots.
I hear the same from different climates. But careful people might get away with summer repots too! I'm not careful at all - I over do root prunes, I bare root when I shouldn't and I over and underwater. That's why I prefer safe bets.
I started treating mugos the same as I treat my scots pines and it seems to be effective. I need a couple more years to ensure those techniques are safe bets.

I respect Vance and his legacy, he did a lot of good work. And a lot of good work is done in his memory. He is and always will be a legend; he was the first to put his technique in writing and he had a voice I would love to have heard in audiobooks.

I just disagree(d) with his mugo techniques a lot, because they don't work for me.

 

[Shibui]

I have only ever repotted Mugho in Spring. Usually mid Spring when I'm doing the other pines and after the maples have come into leaf.
I prune almost any time of year. We know that Mugho is single flush so buds will form but not open until the following Spring.
If I prune late Spring, the buds form but do not open for around 8 months. The foliage looks pretty thin for all that time but, come Spring it fills out with new growth.
If I prune late Summer, buds form but don't open until the following Spring. The foliage looks thin for 5-6 months but, come Spring it fills out with new growth.
Winter prune, new buds don't form until Spring but they open almost immediately and the tree fills out with new growth.

I guess that's the long way of saying it doesn't matter what time of year I prune. Still end up with the same result the following Spring.

 

[MaciekA]

I've had a lot of success with mugo and similar to @Wires_Guy_wires and @Shibui repot it exclusively in spring with extremely reliable results. I have a lot of respect for Vance's legacy and advocacy, but quite a few of his mugo ideas are a complete 180 turn away from what my current and former teachers teach in pine techniques. Mugo is not actually an unusual outlier pine among pines as far as I can tell, you could mislabel one as a scots pine or lodgepole pine and not much would change about what you do, when you can do it, what signals to wait for, foliar vs. vascular growth periods of year, etc.

I agree with @Shibui and @Wires_Guy_wires on timing completely. For my climate (mild winter warm dry summer coastal/valley zone 8-9, not that different from Turkey zone 9 in terms of growing days / temperature extremes) it's easier to define the part of the year when I do not work on a pine, which is basically just during candle extension itself. Prior to extension, I can do work. Then once the candles are extended and are starting to push needles out, pinching is in-scope, and soon after that I can work on that pine any time until the next spring. A single pine (mugo or scots or whatever) may only find itself worked on once or twice in that period, but I am likely to be working on SOME pine almost every month of the year.

In these videos the work seems to be done in November and repotting at next March. Isn't it risky?

With all due respect to the creator of these videos, beware of interpreting camera/presentation skills as advanced bonsai skills from which you should learn your core pine bonsai techniques lessons. If you want to learn pine I would strongly consider looking away from the Vance threads, away from the Youtube channel you posted, and look to resources like (if it has to be video online) Mirai Live (not the YT channel, the actual video service), or Bjorn's Bonsai U service, or Mario Komsta's ShuHaRi content on patreon. That last one is potentially ideal for you because it is produced in a zone 9 / 10 European-focused mediterranean-proximate climate. Learn pine from professionals and not beginners.

 

[Ozz80]

With all due respect to the creator of these videos, beware of interpreting camera/presentation skills as advanced bonsai skills from which you should learn your core pine bonsai techniques lessons. If you want to learn pine I would strongly consider looking away from the Vance threads, away from the Youtube channel you posted, and look to resources like (if it has to be video online) Mirai Live (not the YT channel, the actual video service), or Bjorn's Bonsai U service, or Mario Komsta's ShuHaRi content on patreon. That last one is potentially ideal for you because it is produced in a zone 9 / 10 European-focused mediterranean-proximate climate. Learn pine from professionals and not beginners.

Thanks for the recommendations. I subscribed to Mario Komsta's patreon. It's a bit difficult to translate from Spanish English to Turkish English but I guess I'll cope with it .