Pulling off all of the pine needles.

[jkd2572]

Never say never. Check out this post from Peter tea. He completely defoliates a pine tree to see what would happen.
http://peterteabonsai.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/1941/

 

[Bonsai Nut]

He defoliated it in May... I didn't see any progress photos

Let's hope for the best.

 

[Attila Soos]

Sounds good.

I will start defoliating all my conifers beginning next spring. In fact I may do it twice a year, for the same tree. It's funny how they never metioned this technique in the older bonsai books.

BTW, this reminds me of the instructor doing a class and demo for suicide bombers: "Listen up folks, and pay attention, because I am going to show this to you only once!"

 

[jkd2572]

I just found it interesting I was not saying its the way of the future, just that it can be done. The post I had listed was the second year he did it. At the beginning of the link there was a link to the first year he did it. Go back and check it out.

 

[jkd2572]

Here is the progression of the first year he did it. Just saying very interesting. The tree lived and appeared to be healthy.
http://peterteabonsai.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/remember-me/

 

[ghues]

Why are you surprised that it survived?
I think the key is that it was healthy to start with.
Defoliation and survival isn't that odd, as mother nature does it all the time.....I've seen stands/forests/individuals of western hemlock come back from a hemlock looper infestation where most needles were eaten off.......as well as a stand of young mature douglas fir come back from a defoliation caused by a spruce budworm attack.
Cheers
G

 

[Alex DeRuiter]

I thought that Peter actually did report back about this tree. . . .

(pause in posting while looking for article [that's right, this post is in real-time])

It's doing well.

*Edit - Dang, you beat me to it. Oh well. lol