[Eastern White Pine - Pinus strobus]
Hello everybody and welcome back to Appalachian Bonsai. It's been a while.
Audio for this is going to be a little bit weird and bouncy because I'm in a small room.
There's no sound insulation here.
Today I'm going to be working on this Eastern white pine.
This is a Pinus strobus that I collected four or five years ago.
I have not done any pruning or training on this tree other than a few guide wires
to bring some branches down. It was repotted this last year,
this last growing season 2022, and now I'm going to go ahead and start thinning it out
and wiring it and styling it in preparation for the coming years. Let's get started.
I just wanted to show you real quick. This is an Eastern white pine - Pinus strobus - and
you don't think that you can get needles that small. Normally they're just this big, right? But
this is the size that you can get with good genetics, which this tree certainly has,
a lot of ramification, and also some needle reduction techniques by my friend Julian Adams.
It's a little book called "Growing Pines for Bonsai" that he has put out. He's not a sponsor of this video,
but you can order that off adamsbonsai.com. Speaking of sponsors, let's go ahead and talk
about today's sponsor. Today's sponsor is Wazakura at wazakurajapan.com. Really really
nice handmade tools. I really do appreciate their sponsorship. You can get 10% off of their tools
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Thank you wazakurajapan.com. Let's get back to this thing.
So there it is folks, for now. I finished up wiring last night. We've got
today to look at it with a little bit more light outside this window.
I'm pleased with the work done, though it is not over. In fact I would like to remove these two
branches - this long one here and this one right here. You might be able to see them in the camera.
The reason is that even though this is spaced out well, this tree still looks very juvenile.
I don't want it to be that. I want it to look a little bit older.
I don't like the way that these lower branches are just folded flat.
It might fill in, but you'll still see this when you get up close to it. In order to make this
have a little more maturity with this diameter trunk, I need to bring the foliage in tighter
to the trunk. That's difficult to do on an eastern white pine. It doesn't bud back. So
with that in mind, I'd like to remove these two branches and bring the rest of the foliage
down. It'll look more like a Short leaf pine, which I have a really nice example of outside.
Short leaf pine has some nice twisted funky branches, so this would not be out of the
ordinary. That's my intention in the future. I'm not going to do any more work on it today and not
for at least another year. The reason is that I've removed about 30% of the foliage mass.
I have severely weakened the tree by doing that, and I don't want to weaken it anymore. I want it
to grow as strong and healthy as it can with what it has left. Being as flexible as these
branches are, even if they lignify a little bit, I'll still be able to bend them into
place next year. We'll look at that next year, and I'll make sure to get an update for you.
[Japanese Black Pine - Pinus thunbergii]
This is a Japanese black pine. This was given to me, but not in the best of conditions. You
can see it's got a bunch of dead stuff here. I'm going to be just removing this dead stuff,
cleaning up the needles a little bit, and getting this thing ready for spring.
Let's clean up all these dead needles.
All right. That's pretty much all I'm doing to this thing.
There's a lot of branching and buds that have happened right here. It's gonna make this little cluster,
but this should be removed in the future. Everything that's happening down here is
really what you're wanting to keep. You just want this thing to grow and allow this trunk to get
bigger. Right now it's about three quarters of an inch in diameter at the base. Once this thing gets
a little fatter then all of this down here, all this small branching, this is what's going to be
used for bonsai. It's hard to see because of the lip of this pot, but we're looking at about two
inches below this right here. All of this would be what is usable for a future bonsai design.
[Virginia Pine - Pinus virginiana]
This pine, as I was told, is a Japanese Black Pine, and it does react like a Japanese black
pine. But the needles are telling me and the buds are telling me that this is a Virginia pine,
which is another type of two or three needle pine. Yeah, the color of the needles, the twisting type
of the needles, the bark of it at the age that it is, this is all indicating to me that this is a
Virginia pine - Pinus virginiana - not a Japanese black pine.
Two years ago, I did some needle reduction techniques, and you can see how small this can get.
Last year I just let it grow with no needle work done.
You can see what happens when you just let it grow and fertilize it well.
The top of this has a strong cluster of needles, which you may be able to see around my fingers.
This happened whenever I did some heavy pruning on the top side. These can be removed.
You can see these three branches here. I have this large one here, this large one here,
and I have this little small one right there. There is a bud right there that
can be promoted. Let me get this out of the way. There's also one down on your
bottom right hand side. Le me move these out of the way. That can be promoted to grow. If
I allowed all of this to grow at one time we're just going to get a big knot right around this
side, right there. I want this to change some direction but we need to remove some things.
This trunk is straight as an arrow. I should be able to get this curved with a little bit of
bending. That's not going to happen right now, because I don't have the tool to do it with.
I'm debating whether or not to allow this to continue growing in this direction.
We have a change in movement and I'm allowing it to grow more strongly
in this direction, which I think is going to be much more dynamic and much better. This can become
what you might call a primary branch, or first branch. The top section there could be promoted up
and up and up and on we go. I think that's what I am going to be doing here.
When you're wiring from branch to branch, like I'm going to wire from this long branch here to
this long branch here. Go ahead and get a wire cut to those lengths plus a little bit longer.
You see I have plenty of extra on either end. What you can do is wrap it once or twice around
a branch just to anchor it, and then you can come through and wire all the way to the end,
to the tip. Once that is completed on this end, then you can finish the wrapping on the back end.
That has been wrapped twice around that branch there,
and it's anchored. Now I can work a little bit more easily here. I'm
going to avoid this one single bud up front because I'd like to promote that some more.
Turning this around toward me makes it a little easier for me, but maybe not so much for you.
I'm going to remove this back branch right here. We have this
one little bud that I'm going to promote, and this will be allowed to grow into our first pad.
I will go ahead and bend this up. Maybe if I can twist this a little bit, and by twisting
this it may allow this small bud here to be more vertically oriented allowing it to get more sun.
There we go.
This is the one I'm going to promote to continue growing further up so let me wire that.
You may have noticed that I've bent these two pieces of wire around back
toward the branch. This gives me a bit of a handle that I can grab and hold on to
and manipulate. It's the same with this back one over here.You have these little sharp end cuts,
and sometimes bending those and having control is not as easy. So, when you bend it back around
on itself at a reasonable place these allow you to grab a hold of something. Then you
can bend it. I hope that makes sense. I'm going to decrease this cluster over here.
There we go. That should allow this to develop, and hoping specifically for that one to develop.
I've only loosely wired this one in because it's a smaller branch.
It has the potential to grow strongly. I don't want this to have too much wire
bite. I'm just kind of getting this into shape a little bit. This may become a future branch.
This is just the beginning. There are many many years for this thing to be developed some more.
It was repotted last year and it could probably go into a bigger pot to allow this thing to
grow grow grow grow grow. But for right now we're just leaving alone. Especially since
I've just done all this work. Maybe in the fall time I'll give it a repot.
[Shimpaku Juniper - Juniperus chinensis 'Shimpaku']
This is a little shimpaku juniper. I've had this thing a number of years. It was
much taller at one point in time, and it had some good back budding that had occurred.
I have since allowed those buds to grow. I've had this thing for a dozen years or so.
This tree is needing a little bit of work. It's been, well I wouldn't say neglected, but it just
hasn't been worked in a while. I do make sure that this tree is watered, it's fertilized,
and it's given good sunshine, etc. I've cleaned up the base, which had a lot of mulch on top from
its winter bed. I've already started to clean up a few of these dead ends which have occurred. I
think it could be because of spider mites or old age, but we're getting in there to clean it up
right now. So let's go ahead and do that and maybe we can look at pruning it up and wiring some.
[uncut video available]
All right, that's pretty well cleaned up.
I hope that you've enjoyed this video of a few trees that needed some winter work done.
Like and Subscribe because there's always more to come.
Thanks for watching.