That’s a cool little tree. Not to hijack the thread but how are rigida treated these days? General consensus a few years back was that these were legit double flush pines but then I heard Ryan Neil bringing that into question on one of his podcasts. How will you proceed with this tree? Decandle or just candle prune and bud select? I have a couple very nice yamadori from here in Maine and I like to not screw them up.
This may be long, but I think it will help a lot of people with this species that I have developed a special relationship with.
I have been working with pitch pine here in coastal NJ (7A) for the past 4 seasons. Previously, I had advocated for treating them the way that Ryan Neil does, but over time I have seen some issues with this particular species. For those who do not know, Ryan Neil advocates fertilizing pines heavily with nitrogen in the early spring, and withholding nitrogen fertilizer a month before decandling to get small needles and small internodes. For three years, I saw vigorous spring growth at the tips followed by less than desired development in the fall. After decandling this way for three seasons, year after year I saw that there was increasingly less backbudding, and only one bud at the end of each tip come fall. Last year especially, the needles looked skinny, light in color, and frail. I decided to give my pitch pines a year off after seeing this. You can kind of see what I’m talking about here.
This past season, I changed my strategy because one tree was getting re-potted and the other was getting a massive overhaulI. I treated them similar to Japanese white pine where they cut extending candles to a similar size, cut out overly strong buds in whorls of 3+, and withheld fertilizer until the late summer/fall. I noticed a longer needle size, but a vastly increased vigor, darker green needle color, more back budding and multiple buds as the tips.
You can see the difference from the pictures below.
The first tree was before It was restyled, pictures will be posted after the apex develops more this season. It is a vast improvement, but it needs one more season before a closeup
I kind of ate my words on previous posts, but this is where I am at currently. I am probably going to experiment with decandling the way that some local hobbyists, and I believe Jonas D. follows where you lightly apply fertilizer after decandling since I feel like that will give me the results I am after. My continued learning will be posted in my pitch pine threads, this is an amazing native that I really like working with!
www.bonsainut.com
