Lazylightningny
Masterpiece
Compiled Posts by Vance Wood on Mugo Pines
UPDATED WITH VANCE'S REVISIONS 8/13/2014
Vance, I have gathered posts you made on B-Nut over the years from the archives. I have consolodated this info below. If you are amenable, please look over these points and make any changes needed.
I appreciate your sharing your years of experience with this species. I have a Mugo that I started last year, and I want to make sure I do everything correctly to ensure its survival and development.
Thanks, on behalf of all of us here at B-Nut...
Vance Wood on Mugos, from 2010 to present:
Posts taken from bonsainut.com archives
EVERY YEAR FOR 3 YEARS:
• Cutting back this year’s new growth (extended candles) in July.
• Can repot in July, but not root prune.
• Bud selection in early fall.
ON THE FOURTH YEAR:
• No cutting back of this year’s new growth (extended candles).
• Can repot and root prune in July.
• Bud selection in early fall.
POSITION: Full Sun, although full sun is not necessary in the winter. Shelter from the wind is prefferable and if your temperatures are warm definately not full sun in winter. The goal in winter storage is to keep the tree frozen and dormant. Too intense of sun exposure can cause the sap to rise and when the temperatures fall further the water in the sap can expand and blow out the cambium layer.
FEEDING: I feed full strength every week with Miracle Grow, and once in the Summer with Miracid then, continue with Miracle Grow till October.
CARVING AND SHARI: I can do any carving work that needs to be done after the middle of summer the same as every thing else.
I have never noticed an adverse reaction to anything I have done provided, it is at the right time of the year. The only adverse effect I have noticed is when I get impatient and start wiring the tree before the end of June. Then I might slip the bark, bust off a bud or two and the wire might start to bite into the bark too early.
REPOTTING:
• Repot anytime after Father's Day through August.
• Repotting nursery trees: remove the tree from the container. Remove the soil from the top of the soil mass until you encounter roots.
• Once accomplishing this, take a saw and cut at least one third to one half off of the bottom of the soil mass.
• Pick a couple of spots along the soil mass and saw out a couple of slices like a pie, then rinse out the soil as far back toward the trunk as possible. Leave the rest of the soil alone. You should remove at least two segments totaling about 1/3 of the remaining soil mass. Try to avoid cutting major roots. What I meant by this is avoid cutting roots that are vital to the nebari, cut around them but leave the source intact.
• Alternatively, make 3 cuts into the soil mass in towards the trunk, but do not remove any soil.You should locate areas that are between existing roots as much as possible to make these cuts.This simple process will stop the further complicating of the circling roots. In a couple of years it will be possible to start raking out the old soil in these areas. I have found that for the most part, especially on older trees or larger trees, it is really difficult to straighten these roots out. It is better to cut them and regrow a new root system, but this has to be done slowly.
• Plant the tree with a well-draining bonsai mix into a pond basket, colander, or specially designed bonsai planter and allow it at least three years before disturbing the roots again. A pine tree is not a garden flower that you can totally disregard the way the roots are handled, there are protocols that should be followed if you expect the tree to survive. One of those protocols is that you do not disturb the roots more than once every three years for Pines.
• Bare rooting a Mugo should never be done. You can bare root if the tree is young and not root bound. You can take three or four repotting cycles to replace all the old soil.
• Planting it in a larger pot or pond basket will allow the trunk to thicken. Your goal is to get the trunk to thicken instead of the branches, which is the tendency for young Mugos. I have found that planting in a basket will thicken the trunk better than ground planting.
• Thick bark comes from many years growing in a container. You cannot get great quality bark from growing in the ground.
CANDLING:
• Don't think about de-candling until you start getting some vigorous ramification. I have found that it takes roughly two growing seasons on a new tree before things develop enough that de-candling becomes an option. Let the tree grow freely, with only selective bud selection in the fall or early spring.
• When ready, in July I totally remove the new growth all the way down to the starting point from the current seasons growth plus about an eighth of an inch of the new stem.
• There should be needles left from last year- this is where the new buds will form. These buds will not break until the next season.
• Mugos will not produce a second flush of growth as with a JBP. You are looking to produce an abundance of new smaller buds up and down the branches that will, next spring, produce shorter internodes and shorter needles.
• This de-candling method is best done for three consecutive years, letting the tree rest on the fourth year.
• At this time I also repot, but not root prune. I wait to root prune until the fourth year, in which I do not candle prune.
• Water only as needed for the next couple of weeks until new buds start to form. Provided your tree has been fertilized enough, this method will give you many new buds, especially if there are needles present to fuel their growth.
BUDS AND NEEDLES:
• When using the above method Mugos have a tendency to grow branches with only one bud at the end, instead of the three to six you normally see. I remove these single buds by the middle of August. I remove these buds using a pair of tweezers. Grasp the bud firmly at the base and twist it firmly and quickly at the base. This is best done in the early morning after watering when the growth is turgid and crisp. The buds break off cleanly without leaving a mashed mess at the base that can turn brown.
• Remove any excess buds in autumn, or in the spring before they open. Retain only two buds per terminus, in the direction of desired growth.
• Also in the Middle of August I remove all of the downward and upward growing needles. I cut them leaving just a tiny bit of the fasicle behind. If you pull off the needles you may damage the bark. If a bud later forms in an undesired location, you can remove it.
• On the old wood, leave needles in the places you hope to develop new growth. These needles will be growing side to side as described previously with the removal of the up and downward growing needles. There are the dormant buds that reside right between the two needles in the fasicle and there are the latent buds that are under the bark beneath the group of needles. It is important that the tree is well fertilized or your results will be less than expected. You can often tell if your work is being rewarded if the old needles you have left start to elongate. This means that the dormant bud at the base is starting to function.
• Keep in mind that these needle reduction techniques can actually work against a tree that should be in development mode for a while.
PRUNING:
• Let the tree grow without pruning or candling until July.
• Do your branch pruning from the third week of June through August, with July being the best time, if you need a lot of back budding. For styling purposes I often do a lot of stuff in the spring like pruning and wiring. But when you do this you have to be careful and have a lot of soap to clean the sap from your hands.
• Try to limit yourself to pruning around 60% to 50% of the foliage mass, provided you are cutting back to an active small branch. It may to take a number of seasons to get it to go in the right direction.
• The process of chasing growth backward is to allow new buds down low to develop, then cut back the branch to a lower branchlet once it is strong enough to pull its weight. From this point you allow the new branch to develop unchallenged for a couple of years until it show that it can a grow well. When new buds break down on old wood they tend to be very fragile and irreparably damaged. It usually takes two years for these new branches to gain enough strength to stand the normal abuse of life as a bonsai.
• I usually leave my Mugos alone after November. A tree stores up energy in the branches to pull it through the winters. If you start eliminating them right before winter you risk the health of the tree.
• You can reduce small branchlets about 50% in early spring without damage if the tree is healthy, and established in bonsai soil.
• Make sure you leave at least a one inch stub or you will lose portions of the trunk or larger branches they are connected to, due to a die back of the roots they were associated with.
• Often a trunk line is formed by following a group or successive branches upward to establish a single trunk line, whereas initially you may only have a fat base with a lot of branches coming out all over the place.
• As we open up the tree to light, new buds are likely to form on the interior branches. Grow the tree inward and try to increase branching in close to the trunk.
• Shari on the trunk will, in time, cause the trunk to thicken on the areas around the shari. Because of this you may want to consider continuing to extend the shari down to the surface level to thicken the trunk.
WIRING: Wiring can be done in the summer, after pruning.
PESTS AND DISEASES:
• There are two diseases which Mugos are prone to: needle cast and pine scale.
• Needle cast is a fungal infection that attacks the two and three year old needles. They turn yellow and then fall off. There is little danger in it killing the tree but they do make cutting back to green growth a bit more difficult. I spray with Captan or Daconil in the fall and early spring to hinder or eliminate needle cast.
• The other is pine scale. This species of scale looks like speckles of white paint sprinkled on the needles. These bugs can decimate a tree in short order and Mugos are more susceptible to it than other pines. Look for the slightest sign of it. It can spread rapidly during the summer. You will see it first between the two needles. It’s easy to miss until it spreads to the outside of the bundles. If you catch it early it is easy to control with a tooth brush and some denatured alcohol. You simply dip the brush in the alcohol and gently scrub the bug off the needle in the same direction the needle grows- outward. The alcohol kills the bug and dissolves the white shell which forms its scale. It is also possible to control with an early application of some insecticides designed for scale. I stick with the alcohol treatment, I detest insecticides unless absolutely necessary.
WATERING:
• Mugos like a lot more water than JBP& JWP,but don't like to have their feet wet. This means that your soil mix has to be fast draining and you have to be willing to water more. Mugos need to breathe.
• This means that they need the process or cycle of the air being driven out of the soil when watered and the air being drawn in as the water drains out. Mugos cannot stay dry like other pines. They need to be watered constantly; sometimes two to three times a day when it's hot. However, they cannot sit in wet soil.
B & B MUGOS:
• A tree balled in burlap is much different than one grown in a container. A container grown Mugo is usually root bound and cutting back a massive amount of the soil mass is possible.
• A B&B is never root bound; it is in fact in most cases root deficient, because most are freshly dug from the growing bed. Usually there is a large quantity of clay in the soil mix because it will hold the root ball together well. Most of the B&B Mugos I have worked with went straight into a screen sided planter and stayed there for several years.
• I have washed soil off the roots until 50% of the soil mass was removed. That is usually enough to allow room in the screen planter for developing feeder roots.
• Do nothing else to the tree. It should not be sprayed, pruned, wired, or otherwise worked on. Simply leave it alone.
BRANCH KNUCKLES:
• Knuckles form when multiple branches grow out of the same spot, thereby eventually thickening the trunk or branch at that point. If possible, it is best to not allow knuckles to form in the first place. If already present when you get the tree, they are best dealt with by cutting all the branches back as far as possible to induce new buds below the whorl. If new buds form and grow, then remove the whorl altogether. You encourage growth below the whorls. With care it is then possible to cut below the whorl/knuckle, provided there is viable growth below it. Try not to incorporate one of these features in a design if it can be avoided. It is true that as a tree ages their visual dominance will diminish but it takes years, and it is better when possible to develop growth without them.
• In young trees with a knuckle that is only one or two seasons old, you can prune below the knuckle, as long as there are needles existing below the cut point. Any buds forming below the cut should be saved. These give you future points to cut back the branch and keep growth close to the trunk. You can then select two buds to retain per terminus on these new branches.
• To prevent knuckle formation in the future, carefully manage what buds you allow to develop. I have also noticed for years but have never addressed: If you get one of these trees you will know what I mean. Mugos unlike many other Pines tend to put out branch growth that is almost as large and thick as the trunks that support them. This demands that you have to cut back most of the branches to obtain new branches of less mass than those they replaced. Often you will see some long and straight branches that have expanses of bare wood that have a lot of needles but no buds. These branches will have to be dealt with sooner rather than latter and in general will be of little use to you as a bonsai. A good percentage of the time most nursery Mugos need to have their branches regrown over time.
OVERWINTERING: Mugos do not need special shelter in the winter except a wind break of some kind. I have found most of then huddled together like a clan of wolves shelter each other with a bale of straw on the windward side to stop the effects of the wind. I have found that they can even endure being left out fully exposed the entire winter and survie.
UPDATED WITH VANCE'S REVISIONS 8/13/2014
Vance, I have gathered posts you made on B-Nut over the years from the archives. I have consolodated this info below. If you are amenable, please look over these points and make any changes needed.
I appreciate your sharing your years of experience with this species. I have a Mugo that I started last year, and I want to make sure I do everything correctly to ensure its survival and development.
Thanks, on behalf of all of us here at B-Nut...
Vance Wood on Mugos, from 2010 to present:
Posts taken from bonsainut.com archives
EVERY YEAR FOR 3 YEARS:
• Cutting back this year’s new growth (extended candles) in July.
• Can repot in July, but not root prune.
• Bud selection in early fall.
ON THE FOURTH YEAR:
• No cutting back of this year’s new growth (extended candles).
• Can repot and root prune in July.
• Bud selection in early fall.
POSITION: Full Sun, although full sun is not necessary in the winter. Shelter from the wind is prefferable and if your temperatures are warm definately not full sun in winter. The goal in winter storage is to keep the tree frozen and dormant. Too intense of sun exposure can cause the sap to rise and when the temperatures fall further the water in the sap can expand and blow out the cambium layer.
FEEDING: I feed full strength every week with Miracle Grow, and once in the Summer with Miracid then, continue with Miracle Grow till October.
CARVING AND SHARI: I can do any carving work that needs to be done after the middle of summer the same as every thing else.
I have never noticed an adverse reaction to anything I have done provided, it is at the right time of the year. The only adverse effect I have noticed is when I get impatient and start wiring the tree before the end of June. Then I might slip the bark, bust off a bud or two and the wire might start to bite into the bark too early.
REPOTTING:
• Repot anytime after Father's Day through August.
• Repotting nursery trees: remove the tree from the container. Remove the soil from the top of the soil mass until you encounter roots.
• Once accomplishing this, take a saw and cut at least one third to one half off of the bottom of the soil mass.
• Pick a couple of spots along the soil mass and saw out a couple of slices like a pie, then rinse out the soil as far back toward the trunk as possible. Leave the rest of the soil alone. You should remove at least two segments totaling about 1/3 of the remaining soil mass. Try to avoid cutting major roots. What I meant by this is avoid cutting roots that are vital to the nebari, cut around them but leave the source intact.
• Alternatively, make 3 cuts into the soil mass in towards the trunk, but do not remove any soil.You should locate areas that are between existing roots as much as possible to make these cuts.This simple process will stop the further complicating of the circling roots. In a couple of years it will be possible to start raking out the old soil in these areas. I have found that for the most part, especially on older trees or larger trees, it is really difficult to straighten these roots out. It is better to cut them and regrow a new root system, but this has to be done slowly.
• Plant the tree with a well-draining bonsai mix into a pond basket, colander, or specially designed bonsai planter and allow it at least three years before disturbing the roots again. A pine tree is not a garden flower that you can totally disregard the way the roots are handled, there are protocols that should be followed if you expect the tree to survive. One of those protocols is that you do not disturb the roots more than once every three years for Pines.
• Bare rooting a Mugo should never be done. You can bare root if the tree is young and not root bound. You can take three or four repotting cycles to replace all the old soil.
• Planting it in a larger pot or pond basket will allow the trunk to thicken. Your goal is to get the trunk to thicken instead of the branches, which is the tendency for young Mugos. I have found that planting in a basket will thicken the trunk better than ground planting.
• Thick bark comes from many years growing in a container. You cannot get great quality bark from growing in the ground.
CANDLING:
• Don't think about de-candling until you start getting some vigorous ramification. I have found that it takes roughly two growing seasons on a new tree before things develop enough that de-candling becomes an option. Let the tree grow freely, with only selective bud selection in the fall or early spring.
• When ready, in July I totally remove the new growth all the way down to the starting point from the current seasons growth plus about an eighth of an inch of the new stem.
• There should be needles left from last year- this is where the new buds will form. These buds will not break until the next season.
• Mugos will not produce a second flush of growth as with a JBP. You are looking to produce an abundance of new smaller buds up and down the branches that will, next spring, produce shorter internodes and shorter needles.
• This de-candling method is best done for three consecutive years, letting the tree rest on the fourth year.
• At this time I also repot, but not root prune. I wait to root prune until the fourth year, in which I do not candle prune.
• Water only as needed for the next couple of weeks until new buds start to form. Provided your tree has been fertilized enough, this method will give you many new buds, especially if there are needles present to fuel their growth.
BUDS AND NEEDLES:
• When using the above method Mugos have a tendency to grow branches with only one bud at the end, instead of the three to six you normally see. I remove these single buds by the middle of August. I remove these buds using a pair of tweezers. Grasp the bud firmly at the base and twist it firmly and quickly at the base. This is best done in the early morning after watering when the growth is turgid and crisp. The buds break off cleanly without leaving a mashed mess at the base that can turn brown.
• Remove any excess buds in autumn, or in the spring before they open. Retain only two buds per terminus, in the direction of desired growth.
• Also in the Middle of August I remove all of the downward and upward growing needles. I cut them leaving just a tiny bit of the fasicle behind. If you pull off the needles you may damage the bark. If a bud later forms in an undesired location, you can remove it.
• On the old wood, leave needles in the places you hope to develop new growth. These needles will be growing side to side as described previously with the removal of the up and downward growing needles. There are the dormant buds that reside right between the two needles in the fasicle and there are the latent buds that are under the bark beneath the group of needles. It is important that the tree is well fertilized or your results will be less than expected. You can often tell if your work is being rewarded if the old needles you have left start to elongate. This means that the dormant bud at the base is starting to function.
• Keep in mind that these needle reduction techniques can actually work against a tree that should be in development mode for a while.
PRUNING:
• Let the tree grow without pruning or candling until July.
• Do your branch pruning from the third week of June through August, with July being the best time, if you need a lot of back budding. For styling purposes I often do a lot of stuff in the spring like pruning and wiring. But when you do this you have to be careful and have a lot of soap to clean the sap from your hands.
• Try to limit yourself to pruning around 60% to 50% of the foliage mass, provided you are cutting back to an active small branch. It may to take a number of seasons to get it to go in the right direction.
• The process of chasing growth backward is to allow new buds down low to develop, then cut back the branch to a lower branchlet once it is strong enough to pull its weight. From this point you allow the new branch to develop unchallenged for a couple of years until it show that it can a grow well. When new buds break down on old wood they tend to be very fragile and irreparably damaged. It usually takes two years for these new branches to gain enough strength to stand the normal abuse of life as a bonsai.
• I usually leave my Mugos alone after November. A tree stores up energy in the branches to pull it through the winters. If you start eliminating them right before winter you risk the health of the tree.
• You can reduce small branchlets about 50% in early spring without damage if the tree is healthy, and established in bonsai soil.
• Make sure you leave at least a one inch stub or you will lose portions of the trunk or larger branches they are connected to, due to a die back of the roots they were associated with.
• Often a trunk line is formed by following a group or successive branches upward to establish a single trunk line, whereas initially you may only have a fat base with a lot of branches coming out all over the place.
• As we open up the tree to light, new buds are likely to form on the interior branches. Grow the tree inward and try to increase branching in close to the trunk.
• Shari on the trunk will, in time, cause the trunk to thicken on the areas around the shari. Because of this you may want to consider continuing to extend the shari down to the surface level to thicken the trunk.
WIRING: Wiring can be done in the summer, after pruning.
PESTS AND DISEASES:
• There are two diseases which Mugos are prone to: needle cast and pine scale.
• Needle cast is a fungal infection that attacks the two and three year old needles. They turn yellow and then fall off. There is little danger in it killing the tree but they do make cutting back to green growth a bit more difficult. I spray with Captan or Daconil in the fall and early spring to hinder or eliminate needle cast.
• The other is pine scale. This species of scale looks like speckles of white paint sprinkled on the needles. These bugs can decimate a tree in short order and Mugos are more susceptible to it than other pines. Look for the slightest sign of it. It can spread rapidly during the summer. You will see it first between the two needles. It’s easy to miss until it spreads to the outside of the bundles. If you catch it early it is easy to control with a tooth brush and some denatured alcohol. You simply dip the brush in the alcohol and gently scrub the bug off the needle in the same direction the needle grows- outward. The alcohol kills the bug and dissolves the white shell which forms its scale. It is also possible to control with an early application of some insecticides designed for scale. I stick with the alcohol treatment, I detest insecticides unless absolutely necessary.
WATERING:
• Mugos like a lot more water than JBP& JWP,but don't like to have their feet wet. This means that your soil mix has to be fast draining and you have to be willing to water more. Mugos need to breathe.
• This means that they need the process or cycle of the air being driven out of the soil when watered and the air being drawn in as the water drains out. Mugos cannot stay dry like other pines. They need to be watered constantly; sometimes two to three times a day when it's hot. However, they cannot sit in wet soil.
B & B MUGOS:
• A tree balled in burlap is much different than one grown in a container. A container grown Mugo is usually root bound and cutting back a massive amount of the soil mass is possible.
• A B&B is never root bound; it is in fact in most cases root deficient, because most are freshly dug from the growing bed. Usually there is a large quantity of clay in the soil mix because it will hold the root ball together well. Most of the B&B Mugos I have worked with went straight into a screen sided planter and stayed there for several years.
• I have washed soil off the roots until 50% of the soil mass was removed. That is usually enough to allow room in the screen planter for developing feeder roots.
• Do nothing else to the tree. It should not be sprayed, pruned, wired, or otherwise worked on. Simply leave it alone.
BRANCH KNUCKLES:
• Knuckles form when multiple branches grow out of the same spot, thereby eventually thickening the trunk or branch at that point. If possible, it is best to not allow knuckles to form in the first place. If already present when you get the tree, they are best dealt with by cutting all the branches back as far as possible to induce new buds below the whorl. If new buds form and grow, then remove the whorl altogether. You encourage growth below the whorls. With care it is then possible to cut below the whorl/knuckle, provided there is viable growth below it. Try not to incorporate one of these features in a design if it can be avoided. It is true that as a tree ages their visual dominance will diminish but it takes years, and it is better when possible to develop growth without them.
• In young trees with a knuckle that is only one or two seasons old, you can prune below the knuckle, as long as there are needles existing below the cut point. Any buds forming below the cut should be saved. These give you future points to cut back the branch and keep growth close to the trunk. You can then select two buds to retain per terminus on these new branches.
• To prevent knuckle formation in the future, carefully manage what buds you allow to develop. I have also noticed for years but have never addressed: If you get one of these trees you will know what I mean. Mugos unlike many other Pines tend to put out branch growth that is almost as large and thick as the trunks that support them. This demands that you have to cut back most of the branches to obtain new branches of less mass than those they replaced. Often you will see some long and straight branches that have expanses of bare wood that have a lot of needles but no buds. These branches will have to be dealt with sooner rather than latter and in general will be of little use to you as a bonsai. A good percentage of the time most nursery Mugos need to have their branches regrown over time.
OVERWINTERING: Mugos do not need special shelter in the winter except a wind break of some kind. I have found most of then huddled together like a clan of wolves shelter each other with a bale of straw on the windward side to stop the effects of the wind. I have found that they can even endure being left out fully exposed the entire winter and survie.
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