I posted this garden centre pine on another thread. Scots pine, variety i think is blue pearl.
I grabbed it as I liked the thick base and the fact there were a few trunk line options - if I mess it up, it will be a nice garden tree anyway.
Healthy roots, maybe not the best substrate, and the bottom (as of sept) is a bit compact and damper than the rest of the soil.
Old needles dropped recently and small minor cleaning helped to clear up the structure.
I took it to my local bonsai club. The suggestion was to strip the top inch or two to get a better idea of the nebari and see if a front comes out of it. A few suggestions about trunk lines were also made. Repotting was advised for spring and big branch removal for mid summer next year.
A nice chunky buttress type root on the left and a mix of a few girdling roots.
This side and too the left, seems to have some good horizontal roots that can probably be positioned nicely to give a pleasing future root spread.
For me, a possible trunk line has started to emerge.
To my beginner eyes
The base is not bad and the roots can be improved.
There is good movement in the trunk line, not only with changes in direction but also the length of trunk sections.
There are two branches that emerge as natural 1st and 2nd branches, that also have enough thickness that maybe helps to convey age, and get thinner up the trunk.
Next steps:
Spring repot into a grow box or big pond basket.
For now the removed top soil was replaced. I may mix in some sand for drainage and use some stakes to keep those roots apart.
Structural pruning to prevent any inverse taper getting worse
Minor tidying of dead branches.
Questions:
Hard to tell without seeing the tree but any thoughts in trunk line ?
Any thoughts on report and structural pruning in one season next year ? - it's a young healthy tree so guessing it might be ok ?
Pine cone removal, it has loads of small pea sized cones and some larger ones - remove ?
Repotting for next year, I am thinking of doing the "top down" method that is explained on the BSOP youtube channel which looks to have lots of advantages in terms of really seeing what the nerbari is like and correcting it.
Any comments welcome !
