Mirai's ponderosa pine needle reduction technique question.

[vp999]

I just finished reading Mirai's technique of reducing the needles on the Ponderosa pine. He said to water and fertilize the trees heavily for a couple years, let the needles grow long and thick and you will see result after the tree back buddings turned into needle count. What I don't understand is... How will those long needles will become shorter after a few years ? He doesn't t suggest plucking them or anything.

 

[0soyoung]

Needles only last so long, then they drop.
But for bonsai one/you will be cutting back to new shoots and thereby eliminating the old long needles, for the most part.

btw
Of course, needles won't shrink. They only stay the same size or get longer, in time.

 

[Potawatomi13]

Older needles do not get shorter. Only new ones. Watch stream over again please. It gets clearer. Feeding/watering well drives new bud count/ramification and health. Explanation is that in small container with limited roots, limited resources to feed individual needles that as needle count increases with ramification each needle has fewer resources so is correspondingly smaller. Make more sense?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I think potawatomi's comment can be clear with an abstract example:

Build your pine, you have 10 energy points in spring:
Divide all energy points over 5 branches, 5 roots.
Every branch gets 1 point, and every root gets 1 point.

After backbudding and a couple years of growth, your pine now has 30 energy points in spring.
Divide all energy points over 20 branches and 20 roots.
Pines invest heavily in their root systems, so every root gets 1 point by default. Now there's only 0.5 point left for every branch.
What happens is that the new needles get less energy due to the fact that there are more branches (energy distribution), and thus will turn out smaller.

At some point, this does mean you'll be fertilizing less, otherwise you're just adding more points to the system.

 

[vp999]

Thank you all! I understood the concept of his technique. I didn’t watch the stream but instead read the article and was confused at the end that’s all.

 

[sorce]

confused at the end

Cuz the needles are still longer than the tree is tall!

I thought the appropriate technique was grafting mugo!

Sorce

 

[vp999]

Thank you all.

 

[0soyoung]

This brings up an interesting (IMHO) two-part question about how needles grow or don't.

Do needles grow from their bases (like they are being extruded) or do their individual tips stretch out like a maple shoot (is the sharp tip of each needle an apical meristem)?​

And the second part of the question (and the part seemingly most relevant to this thead):

Does the bud of any one particular pine species always have a specific number of fascicles. The number of needles per fascicle is fixed of course (e.g., 5-needle pines almost always have exactly 5 needles per bundle), but are the number of bundles per bud/shoot also fixed?​

 

[PiñonJ]

A couple more key points are:
1. Once you get the ramification you want, you don’t fertilize at all in spring.
2. Control growth with fall pruning. Don’t pinch candles in spring, as this will result in fewer needles, which will be longer because there are more resources per needle.

 

[PiñonJ]

This brings up an interesting (IMHO) two-part question about how needles grow or don't.

Do needles grow from their bases (like they are being extruded) or do their individual tips stretch out like a maple shoot (is the sharp tip of each needle an apical meristem)?​

And the second part of the question (and the part seemingly most relevant to this thead):

Does the bud of any one particular pine species always have a specific number of fascicles. The number of needles per fascicle is fixed of course (e.g., 5-needle pines almost always have exactly 5 needles per bundle), but are the number of bundles per bud/shoot also fixed?​

Regarding the first question, since there are latent buds in the fascicles of mature needles, I’m guessing all the meristematic tissue is in the fascicle. Also, the needle tips just don’t look like an area of active growth, i.e. the color and texture are indistinguishable from the rest of the needle.

 

[elroy]

This brings up an interesting (IMHO) two-part question about how needles grow or don't.

Do needles grow from their bases (like they are being extruded) or do their individual tips stretch out like a maple shoot (is the sharp tip of each needle an apical meristem)?​

And the second part of the question (and the part seemingly most relevant to this thead):

Does the bud of any one particular pine species always have a specific number of fascicles. The number of needles per fascicle is fixed of course (e.g., 5-needle pines almost always have exactly 5 needles per bundle), but are the number of bundles per bud/shoot also fixed?​

Needles are leaves not apical meristems. All leaves have all their cells in place in the buds. Cells expand to full size by being filled with water, giving a fully expanded leaf.

Elroy

 

[Potawatomi13]

Does the bud of any one particular pine species always have a specific number of fascicles. The number of needles per fascicle is fixed of course (e.g., 5-needle pines almost always have exactly 5 needles per bundle), but are the number of bundles per bud/shoot also fixed?

No. Each bud has its own particular number of tiny dormant fascicles of needles in waiting depending on if it will be a weak or strong shoot. I see some sprout with maybe one or two fascicles of needles and others may have 25, 50 or 75 fascicles. All on same tree depending on location and strength of branch.