Black Pine Bonsai Needle Plucking

It allows air and light to penetrate the outer foliage to increase the health and vigour of inner shoots and branches.

Black pine bonsai needle plucking. Depending on needle density after decandling needles can be thinned and branches removed. We pull pine needles by grabbing the base of a needle pair with tweezers and pulling. For black pine growers late spring and early summer offer a lot of opportunity for improving trees. The japanese red pine is more delicate and slender has softer thinner paired needles and looks similar to the scots pine.

This technique is used in conjunction. Healthy pine bonsai in the refinement stage are decandled. If necessary decandled pines can be wired too. For trees that have been decandled needles can also be removed at decandling time.

Older needles tend to separate easier than younger needles so care must be taken when removing healthy vigorous needles. The japanese black pine is a strong tree with long dark green hard needles in clusters of two. Needle plucking during the more advanced refinement stages of development of a pine is mainly used. Grip the needle bundle near the base and pull off in the direction of growth outward from the branch.

We recommend a good pair of pine tweezers. It also helps to spread energy throughout the tree in the same way that bud selection and candle pinching do. This is a technique which if you have done any prior reading regarding the development of pine as bonsai you will have read a lot about. Needle plucking is an essential tool for pine bonsai maintenance.

This is typically done by pulling needles forward in the direction the needles grow to avoid tearing the skin of the branch. To balance the tree s energy producing more evenly distributed growth. The majority of needle thinning should normally be done from autumn to early spring or before any repotting takes place. Needles may also be cut back to the sheath as well.

A fellow club member asked me to look at his japanese black pine pinus thunbergii at a recent show as he was concerned about this. It grows a bit more uphill from the shore. The best time of the year to pull needles on black or red pines is when the needles are mature fall through early spring. It is ok to leave the needle sheath on the branch.