JBP Trunk Thickening & sacrifice branch care

[tstrum]

Hey everyone! I have a JBP I acquired late last summer, its my first and only jbp so I am still learning. Its fairly tall, about 30" and the trunk is about 3" at the base but then is a static 1.5-2" all the way up. So it very much lacks taper. From what I know, there are only 2 options to improve the taper, beyond putting it in the ground, then trunk chopping. Being that I live in a rental I don't want to put anything in the ground long-term. So my two options I think are to make it a bit shorter and develop some sacrifice branches. I don't want to chop too much as I do want to keep it as at least a medium sized tree. So i'll take a little off the top, but I don't know how to grow sacrifice branches on a pine. What I mean by that is: if I am growing sacrifice branches do I perform any of the "standard" jbp maintenance techniques? Decandle, bud selection, needle pluck... or just let it grow untouched?

I put a couple pics, but not sure they are necessary as I'm wanting to understand what should/shouldn't be done for a jbp sacrifice branch. On a deciduous, its straight forward: just let it go untouched. But not sure to what extent that applies to jbp.

Thank you

 

[KeithE]

Strum- It depends on your final vision for the tree. Your pine has the movement and branch placement ready to create a larger sized bonsai. You don't need drastic taper for a tall tree. I would select the lowest branch you want to keep... then allow the one or two branches below it grow strongly to bulk up the bottom (ensure they do not shade your future branching). Do some light trimming of the top leaders to limit their strength. Just over halfway up your tree, there is a bar branch with inverse taper. One of those branches should be removed if that area of the tree will remain in your final design. Your road may be more difficult if you want a small/medium sized tree. Your branching will be limited and you may not have buds near the trunk. Before considering any of that... it appears that you recently repotted the tree. If you bare-rooted and trimmed any roots then you should use extreme caution (aka... leave it alone at least until fall). You don't want to kill your first black pine by overworking it, like I did many moons ago. Do not overwater!
Jonas at Bonsaitonight recently posted an article about sacrifice branches that could be helpful, as well as many other articles about pines. Hopefully some of the pine connoisseurs here will chime in as well.

 

[tstrum]

Strum- It depends on your final vision for the tree. Your pine has the movement and branch placement ready to create a larger sized bonsai. You don't need drastic taper for a tall tree. I would select the lowest branch you want to keep... then allow the one or two branches below it grow strongly to bulk up the bottom (ensure they do not shade your future branching). Do some light trimming of the top leaders to limit their strength. Just over halfway up your tree, there is a bar branch with inverse taper. One of those branches should be removed if that area of the tree will remain in your final design. Your road may be more difficult if you want a small/medium sized tree. Your branching will be limited and you may not have buds near the trunk. Before considering any of that... it appears that you recently repotted the tree. If you bare-rooted and trimmed any roots then you should use extreme caution (aka... leave it alone at least until fall). You don't want to kill your first black pine by overworking it, like I did many moons ago. Do not overwater!
Jonas at Bonsaitonight recently posted an article about sacrifice branches that could be helpful, as well as many other articles about pines. Hopefully some of the pine connoisseurs here will chime in as well.

Thank you Keith! By leaving it alone until fall, since it was just repotted, are you saying to forego decandling this summer? Then in the fall all I would do is bud selection for next year?

 

[aframe]

Needle mass, sun exposure and apical dominance are going to dictate which branches become stronger. Pulling needles is a way to direct the trees energy; the tree will direct its resources towards areas with more needles. You're not going to see a huge response to this method in the current growing season if the pine was repotted this year (fall-now). However, next year the effects of needle pulling will be more apparent.

Cutting off entire branches at this point is not necessary unless the branches are so large that they will deform your final trunk line. You may experience better results if you reduce branches in stages while encouraging a sacrifice. How many old and new needles you can pull and how many branches you can reduce or remove depends on the root work you did. If the root mass was severely reduced and the soil was changed, I'd suggest taking this year to educate your self on what to do in the fall. Thinning the older needles low on the trunk and getting light to interior buds that will be used as final branches won't hurt anything.

This is what I have done to encourage sacrifice branches on nursery stock:
Fall or spring:
the first thing done at the nursery is we remove old needles from the bottom half of the trunk.
The branches causing bulging at whorls are removed from the bottom half of the trunk. 2-3 branches per whorl higher up are ok because that area or trunk or branch will be removed and replaced with a new leader at some point.
Then branches that shade 'final branches' are thinned or completely removed. However, branches are retained whenever possible and will be wired and moved to allow light to hit small, lower branches.

By doing the above, you will be left with a few options for a sacrificial leader - you need to make some decisions. You'll then want to remove old needles from secondary branches on your leader, leaving one or two rings of old needles nearest the base of the bud. However you want to keep many old needles (1-2 year old needles towards the terminal bud) on your sacrificial leader. Older needles are rich in plant growth regulators, the hormones like auxin that signal the roots to send growth nutrients to the terminal buds. This is why you always want to keep some old needles on your sacrificial leader. This will create a strong leader relative to all other branches.

I keep 2-3 of the largest buds/candles on the sacrifice and remove the smaller buds. I remove the 2-3 year old needles on the secondary branches.

Plan and nurture your replacement sacrifice that will form the next trunk section above the truck section formed by the current sacrifice.

 

[Adair M]

A sacrifice "branch" will not start building trunk thickness on JBP until it is the tallest "branch" or "trunk" on the tree.

Once it is the tallest, the tree will send most of its energy to it. And the trunk section below the sacrifice will thicken.

So, it is really better to think of it as a "sacrifice trunk" rather than a branch.

 

[tstrum]

Needle mass, sun exposure and apical dominance are going to dictate which branches become stronger. Pulling needles is a way to direct the trees energy; the tree will direct its resources towards areas with more needles. You're not going to see a huge response to this method in the current growing season if the pine was repotted this year (fall-now). However, next year the effects of needle pulling will be more apparent.

Cutting off entire branches at this point is not necessary unless the branches are so large that they will deform your final trunk line. You may experience better results if you reduce branches in stages while encouraging a sacrifice. How many old and new needles you can pull and how many branches you can reduce or remove depends on the root work you did. If the root mass was severely reduced and the soil was changed, I'd suggest taking this year to educate your self on what to do in the fall. Thinning the older needles low on the trunk and getting light to interior buds that will be used as final branches won't hurt anything.

This is what I have done to encourage sacrifice branches on nursery stock:
Fall or spring:
the first thing done at the nursery is we remove old needles from the bottom half of the trunk.
The branches causing bulging at whorls are removed from the bottom half of the trunk. 2-3 branches per whorl higher up are ok because that area or trunk or branch will be removed and replaced with a new leader at some point.
Then branches that shade 'final branches' are thinned or completely removed. However, branches are retained whenever possible and will be wired and moved to allow light to hit small, lower branches.

By doing the above, you will be left with a few options for a sacrificial leader - you need to make some decisions. You'll then want to remove old needles from secondary branches on your leader, leaving one or two rings of old needles nearest the base of the bud. However you want to keep many old needles (1-2 year old needles towards the terminal bud) on your sacrificial leader. Older needles are rich in plant growth regulators, the hormones like auxin that signal the roots to send growth nutrients to the terminal buds. This is why you always want to keep some old needles on your sacrificial leader. This will create a strong leader relative to all other branches.

I keep 2-3 of the largest buds/candles on the sacrifice and remove the smaller buds. I remove the 2-3 year old needles on the secondary branches.

Plan and nurture your replacement sacrifice that will form the next trunk section above the truck section formed by the current sacrifice.

I'm still reading through all the great information but I have a question from the start: if pines are apically dominant, and I want to build trunk width, wouldn't removing more needles from the bottom half of the tree weaken the lower part even more?

 

[tstrum]

A sacrifice "branch" will not start building trunk thickness on JBP until it is the tallest "branch" or "trunk" on the tree.

Once it is the tallest, the tree will send most of its energy to it. And the trunk section below the sacrifice will thicken.

So, it is really better to think of it as a "sacrifice trunk" rather than a branch.

I was hoping to do something like this post: https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/does-this-work.25457/ where I could let some branches grow to thicken the trunk below them so as to build width and vis a vis, taper in the tree, without have to chop the tree. But it sounds like I cant do that with branching on a jbp, only with the leader?

 

[Adair M]

I was hoping to do something like this post: https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/does-this-work.25457/ where I could let some branches grow to thicken the trunk below them so as to build width and vis a vis, taper in the tree, without have to chop the tree. But it sounds like I cant do that with branching on a jbp, only with the leader?

You can do the technique of using a lower branch, but you have to let it get tall.

On that Shohin tree he had those long branches on, if he had wired them so that they grew up, not out, they would have grown thicker faster.

JBP is very apically dominant. It wants to grow tall. Left to themselves, they will allow the apex grow up, and if it shades out the lower branches, and they get weak, it doesn't care! It just lets them die, while the top gets ever taller.

We, of course, dont want that to happen. We want low branches. The tree would rather have a strong leader.

So, what I'm saying is if you want to use a low branch to be a sacrifice to thicken the lower trunk, you need to do something (like wire it to be vertical, or at least upwards) and don't trim or decandle it. While suppressing the other parts of the tree. Once it becomes taller than the rest of the tree, THEN the tree will start to direct its energy to it, and it will start to bulk up. The trick is how to do this and still not have it "shade out" the permanent keeper parts.

And, you will have large scars low on the trunk that will be slow to heal.

The better way to do it is to build the trunk and taper by chopping the trunk, letting it grow out, then chopping, and repeating as many times as needed. You chop where you have several branches, choosing one to be the next section of trunk, and another to be a branch.

This method works better because each time you let a leader grow, from the apex, the pine will callous over the previous wounds. By the time you have the height you want, the early wounds from the first chops should be healed up. And subsequent wounds will be in the process of healing. Once you start decandling and refining, pretty much all trunk growth and wound healing stops.

And I am not a fan of the method to fix reverse taper by puncturing the bark and cambium. Better to grow it out right and not have that problem.

 

[Adair M]

Also, if you look at his little Shohin tree with the 4 long sacrifices, there really wasn't much trunk thickening happening! Why? They were growing "out", not up, and the tree was in a tiny pot. If you want a lot of top growth, you have to provide space for a lot of root growth.

Bonsai pots are small, not only because they look good, but the small pot helps to keep the tree from growing. So the tree stays small. That's fine for a "finished" refined tree, but not good for a tree you're trying to "develop".

See MarkyScott's thread "Ebihara maples" for examples of how to develop deciduous bonsai.

And think of the scarring that's going to happen when he removes those sacrifices on that little tree. Scars bulge when callous forms. I'm afraid he's going to find he's created reverse taper! (And then he'll start poking the lower trunk with his scissors!)

 

[Anthony]

Please get at least 10 to 20 more to learn on - seeds - seedlings.
Not the main and only tree.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[aframe]

I'm still reading through all the great information but I have a question from the start: if pines are apically dominant, and I want to build trunk width, wouldn't removing more needles from the bottom half of the tree weaken the lower part even more?

No, pulling needles on the lower trunk may actually cause buds to form on a vigorous tree. It will also cause the trunk to start producing bark and increases air flow and light - which discourages pests and disease. Not applicable to tree less than 3 years old - we don't start pulling needles until the trees are about 4 years old.

Using low branches to thicken the trunk will work, but if left on too long the sacrifice branches may create ugly knobs/reverse taper and uneven trunks unless managed properly. That is why it is better to use sacrificial 'leaders' to grow trunks, and sacrificial 'branches' to thicken branches. These are basic concepts, not rules.

 

[KeithE]

Thank you Keith! By leaving it alone until fall, since it was just repotted, are you saying to forego decandling this summer? Then in the fall all I would do is bud selection for next year?

That would be the safe route, but that does not mean you cannot trim a couple branches to start planning for the future. If the tree responds strongly in spring you should be fine to cut to trim back a few strong shoots to encourage energy towards sacrifice branches. Just avoid 'bleeding' it to death by pulling needles, trimming shoots, chopping branches, etc throughout the growing season. Perform some very minor adjustments now before the sap starts to flow and then start feeding in spring. Keep in mind, you slow the overall growth each time you interfere with the tree's own plans. Thus candling is typically reserved for refining well-developed trees.
As others have mentioned, plumping the trunk is going to be tough in your situation. It just comes down to what you want to get out of the material. I'm facing a similar dilemma with a pine I've tortured for years. Do you want a fat trunk with great taper on a medium sized tree or average trunk with minimal taper on a large/medium tree. If you are shooting for a well-tapered traditional pine, follow Adairs advice and chop down to one leader (first or second branch). Let it grow several years and repeat. You will likely have to do some grafting down the road. Or you can roll with what you have and create a solid bonsai much sooner by maintaining most of the tree's current structure, building skillz while you save for another nice tree.
Anthony gave the best advice, get several more young pines to keep you occupied!