Japanese black pine 2 progression

pitchpine

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Finally starting to get a plan in place for this tree, which I purchased from New England Bonsai Gardens just over 3 years ago for $49. (It was the 2nd JBP I acquired, so it's "JBP 2" in all my notes & photos & I'm going to stick with calling it that here to avoid confusing myself, lol).

First photo is poor and just of the base, but stupidly is the only one that I saved from back then:

20140305_203218-1.jpg
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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Nice start. One of the first 3 branches will be your tree, one the sacrifice to thicken the trunk, and the third should be cut off.

Begin working the "tree" branch to keep internodes short. Get it bushy so you have choices once there is enough there to think about styling. Right now you don't have much to work with.
 

pitchpine

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Hi Leo,

Sorry, got interrupted in creating this thread, and my draft post didn't save :confused: I have several more years worth of progress to cover before we get to the present day! Will finish the progression tonight. Thank you for your suggestions, though, and we'll see soon if I followed them;)

Laura
 

pitchpine

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So I acquired the tree in early March 2014, and potted it into an approximately 10" colander a month or two later. Most of the needles were very long, so at that time I cut them back and did some pruning to encourage the lower growth.

The candles elongated well, and when I got back from a 2 week vacation at the end of June I was surprised to find that it had pushed ANOTHER round of growth, but this set was oddly stunted. Here is the tree in early July 2014:

2014-07-08 22.32.08-1.jpg

While the pumice you see is actually a top dressing of sorts, I also incorporated it into the soil mix. I think I may have used too high a ratio of pumice, at least at this particle size, and the tree dried out too much while it was under the care of my neighbor.

In any case, shortly after the above picture I decandled the large branches, and by November the tree looked like this:

20141109_154342.jpg
 

pitchpine

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I was apparently very lax with the photo documentation in 2015, or else I'm just not sure where I moved my photos from that camera phone! :rolleyes:

In any case, I just let the tree grow through 2015 except for removing a couple small redundant branches and decandling the lowest branch to try & get some tight internodes. So it was looking quite vigorous by mid-April 2016:

IMG_20160414_184251177_HDR.jpg

A week or so after the above picture, I took the tree back to New England Bonsai Gardens for a spring pines workshop. It had spent the late winter / early spring on a very sunny south facing porch, and John Romano agreed that the candles were already too far along for a safe repot.

So I didn't do much more in the workshop than try to come up with a rough plan for the final design. I'd been thinking about changing the planting angle and trying for a shohin cascade, but John convinced me that an informal upright had more potential. So I decided to aim for something along these lines:

JBP 2 informal upright 2.jpg

Since it was too late to repot, I just nested the existing colander inside a larger one to keep the outer roots from drying out quite so much summer.

Here is the tree in late June 2016:
JBP 2 June rotated.jpg

I went back to NEBG for a fall pines workshop in October, and with my informal upright shohin design in mind, did some selective pruning and needle removal.

Here's how it looked in mid-November 2016:
IMG_20161120_140621628.jpg
You may notice I'd decided on the front by this point, and have two potential candidates for the new trunk once the sacrifice is removed.

Just a couple more pics to bring us up to present day....
 

pitchpine

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And here's where I stand now:

IMG_20170326_155253908.jpg

Most recent developments:
  • A couple weeks ago I made the tiniest of v-cuts at the first branch's juncture with the lower sacrifice branch to hopefully improve the angle at which it emerges from the trunk.
  • I also wrapped a solo cup "sleeve" around the base of the trunk and filled it with akadama, which I hope will encourage the nebari on the right side to fill in a bit.
Additional photo angles and detail shots are attached below. I'll add one more post laying out my goals for this growing season and the questions I'm pondering, but it'll have to wait for a bit because my phone battery is about to die, lol!

Laura
 

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pitchpine

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I've been pondering which of two shoots to develop into the new leader. So I did a rough photoshop, stripping the tree back to only the existing branches that are part of the final vision and the two candidates for leader:

JBP 2 simulation.jpg

As an experiment, I pasted in BonsaiNut's Fibonacci diagram (from this thread a while back https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/design-the-divine-proportion-and-natural-sequences.17298/) and projected the measurements out onto the tree (with the right-most shoot used for the leader): JBP 2 Fibonacci.jpg

As you can see, the first left and right branches lined up pretty well! So I sketched in a centerline and continued the pattern, and this was the result:

JBP 2 Fibonacci 2.jpg

I like it! And it's not too different from my original rough design sketch from a year ago.

So with this as my current end goal, here are my goals for this growing season:
  1. Continue to develop and ramify the existing left and right branch
  2. Try to encourage some backbudding on the existing back branch, as the current sub-branching starts too far from the trunk (as you can see in the final image from my last post)
  3. Maximize the growth of my newly selected leader
  4. Improve the nebari (I don't have any current pictures of it, but suffice it to say that it's a good start but could use some filling in)
And here are my main questions at the moment:
  • When should I remove the lower (left side) sacrifice so that the scar this will leave on the lowest branch can start to heal?
  • What's my best option for encouraging the existing backbudding on the back branch and hopefully getting some needle buds to pop even closer to the trunk?
  • Since I'm pretty certain of my choice of new leader, should I remove the slightly larger shoot to the left of it, or keep that one around for another year as a backup plan?
Critiques and/or advice are both most welcome!

Laura
 

pitchpine

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Anyone have any advice on the questions I have as to how to best achieve my goals for the season?

I've got another workshop at NEBG in two weeks, so can ask John Romano then, but am wondering if there's anything I should do now before the candles extend much more. We've got some really warm weather forecast up here next week and I have a feeling they're going to really take off!

  • When should I remove the lower (left side) sacrifice so that the scar this will leave on the lowest branch can start to heal?
  • What's my best option for encouraging the existing backbudding on the back branch and hopefully getting some needle buds to pop even closer to the trunk?
  • Since I'm pretty certain of my choice of new leader, should I remove the slightly larger shoot to the left of it, or keep that one around for another year as a backup plan?
Critiques and/or advice are both most welcome!

Laura
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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When to remove the sacrifice? When the trunk is close, say within 10% of the final diameter you're looking to achieve. If you want smaller scar, you could use a second sacrifice, talk with John Romano, his advice may be better than me.

Don't think I can give a useful answer on the others.
 

pitchpine

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Thanks for the advice, Leo! The sacrifice I was referring to is actually not the big top leader, but the one coming off the left side near the site of the first branch. I do have a spare branch on the back of the trunk, right above the first curve, ready to serve as a future taper-building sacrifice once I cut that lower existing sacrifice off.

I'll ask John tomorrow how/when he recommends removing that left sacrifice branch to maximize healing of the scar and development of the final lowest branch.

Laura

When to remove the sacrifice? When the trunk is close, say within 10% of the final diameter you're looking to achieve. If you want smaller scar, you could use a second sacrifice, talk with John Romano, his advice may be better than me.

Don't think I can give a useful answer on the others.
 
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