Undigging - re-potting black pines

 The ubiquitous black pine. 

I can use that word for now. Because it's true. Many, many decades ago that wasn't so true. Pine material was, in the past, rather hard to find here in the central valley. Sure, there were trees that had been around for a while that would come up for sale, but they were rather expensive to purchase. They also might have been for sale for a reason; they weren't very good! I started bonsai in 1984 and didn't own my first pine tree until the 2000's. Why? First, they were expensive. Second, they were mysterious and I didn't know how to work on them. Third, and most important, conifers don't bud on old wood.

What does that mean, conifers don't bud on old wood. On a pine there are three kinds of buds.  Terminal buds, adventitious buds and needle buds.

Terminal buds appear at the terminal of untrimmed naturally growing branches

Adventitious buds grow out of old needle fascicles or branches pruned back short. The squiggly line represents dormant adventitious buds ready to pop when heavily pruned. Notice that I have left all this needle growth on the branch. New people always want to remove this as soon as they work over a new piece of material. They want to "clean it up". Don't clean up pines until your branch is built. This may take twenty years. These needles growing on the branch are the only way you can cut back a pine and have new buds. Remove them all and after that year's growth they are pretty much done for adventitious growth. Please don't remove them until someone knowledgeable with pines has looked at your structure and can give you some guidance.

Needle buds grow out of the base of a pair of needles, usually after pruning stimulating budding.

Terminal buds are the ones we most often encounter but are the most dangerous. These buds continue the linear growth of the branch by elongation. If not pruned back leaving only a few needles pairs the branch will just get longer and longer with growth out on the ends. Remember those trees I talked about that come up for sale by members, these are the kind of problem most of them have. Long unpruned branches with no inner growth and a pom pom out on the end. These types of problems are very difficult to overcome due to the older wood having no adventitious buds to sprout. If you own one of these types of pine, put a for sale sign on it and unload it at the next yard sale. Someone will like it, buy it,  and soon learn that fixing it is almost impossible. Like all things bonsai, one has to learn the hard way as to why you should learn early how to discern great material. In my workshops I try to point out the things one should look for in buying great material and then how to prepare it for the future.

So now on to the project and how it has progressed. These were two-year-old bare root seedlings that I purchased for this project. I'm 70 years old, hope I get to see them with one-inch trunks?

The one-year growth mark is easily seen here.

All the seedlings were wired with 2 mm wire and all were bent wildly.

Here are the seedlings all wired and ready to plant. 10 of them total.

I planted all the seedlings in the ground. I felt that having just ten and, in my backyard, I could control them and build nice plants.

The seedlings planted in the ground.

The problem.

I have wonderful ground here sandy loam on top of a crappy clay under story. Water just does not soak in very fast, sure it soaks in overnight but daily watering was pooling around the trees and a couple drown. Pines don't like having wet feet so this year I dug all of them up.

 First, I had to decide what I was going to grow them in. I decided to plant them in cut down one gallon nursery containers. I built a stand assembly for my battery 90-degree grinder. Put a cutoff wheel in it and just spin the pot and the blade does the rest, easy peasy.

After I cut them down, I had to cover the holes to accept the soil that would fall right thru the holes. This was accomplished with some extra-long plastic stitchery canvas I bought years ago.

All the trees were prepared for planting by fixing the wire. Last year when I bent them some of them had loose places in the wire from bending in the opposite direction of the twist of the wire. If you go against the twist the wire will open up and take the shorter route leaving a big space between the wire and the stem. Most of this was on the outer ends of each tree and only needed to be unwired and rewired tightly and paying better attention to how I bend them. You can see how much larger the trunks are this year. After the growth I got on my show potted pines this year with good fertilizer, I am anxious to fertilize these as heavily and let them go.

This little one still has some green in the needles and a good terminal bud. It was drowned in the ground. The above ground planter and mulch should dissipate water much better.

Now this one has no green, no terminal bud, and no hope. I am praying for a miracle that just maybe one of the adventitious buds may pop. I'll share it here first.

So now I have all the pines in a planter. The planter needs some work, and I won't be able to really prepare it properly until the neighborhood Home Depot gets bags of walk on bark to help fill the planter. The clay planters have two-year-old bareroot trident maple seedlings in them. I'm learning more and more about pines, and they don't seem to be so mysterious anymore. I now find them pretty bullet proof, and they take to bonsai training very well. Maybe in a couple years one of you might purchase one of my pines.