Bjorn’s Single Flush Pine technique explained!

[River's Edge]

This is absolutely the thing that could make American bonsai stand out. Instead of "copying" the work of other nations (nothing wrong with that mind you), use our own species which seem to have great potential. East coast to West, we have a huge country with a lot of native species that those at the top of the apex are experimenting with.

If we expand that thought to Native North American trees, I would like to vote for four of my favourite candidates.
Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Sub Alpine Fir, Mountain Hemlock and Shore Pine! Some day they will rule the Bonsai show benches.
All adapt readily to container growth, all can be readily reduced in foliage size, all are suited to a wide range of North American climatic zones. My apologies to the southern part of North America. Particularly those in zones 10 and 11. Of course native junipers are already well accepted and help to appease the southern hot areas in North America.

 

[Lazylightningny]

If we expand that thought to Native North American trees, I would like to vote for four of my favourite candidates.
Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Sub Alpine Fir, Mountain Hemlock and Shore Pine! Some day they will rule the Bonsai show benches.
All adapt readily to container growth, all can be readily reduced in foliage size, all are suited to a wide range of North American climatic zones. My apologies to the southern part of North America. Particularly those in zones 10 and 11. Of course native junipers are already well accepted and help to appease the southern hot areas in North America.

And on the east coast we have pitch pine, among others. I have 4 seedlings I'm growing out; this is their 3rd year.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

If we expand that thought to Native North American trees, I would like to vote for four of my favourite candidates.
Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Sub Alpine Fir, Mountain Hemlock and Shore Pine! Some day they will rule the Bonsai show benches.
All adapt readily to container growth, all can be readily reduced in foliage size, all are suited to a wide range of North American climatic zones. My apologies to the southern part of North America. Particularly those in zones 10 and 11. Of course native junipers are already well accepted and help to appease the southern hot areas in North America.

In the Midwest
Thuja occidentalis, White Cedar
Pinus banksiana - Jack Pine - collection is difficult, low success rate, but once in a pot a few years, seems easy.
Pinus rigida - Pitch Pine
Picea glauca densata - Black Hills Spruce or Picea glauca - white spruce (exclude the dwarf Alberta spruce varieties).

 

[BonsaiDawg]

If we expand that thought to Native North American trees, I would like to vote for four of my favourite candidates.
Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Sub Alpine Fir, Mountain Hemlock and Shore Pine! Some day they will rule the Bonsai show benches.
All adapt readily to container growth, all can be readily reduced in foliage size, all are suited to a wide range of North American climatic zones. My apologies to the southern part of North America. Particularly those in zones 10 and 11. Of course native junipers are already well accepted and help to appease the southern hot areas in North America.

What characteristics do Alaska Yellow possess that Western Red do not?

 

[Cascading-Echinocactus]

No experience with GA's on pines. The goal of most tissue cultures is to get fast growing trees multiplied for timber planting or as commercial stock, so I think the literature on almost the opposite will be hard to find. But judging from the dwarfs I've chemically induced, I'd say you would need to start with seedlings. Everything sizes down to relative scale, so you'll end up with whimsy and thin branches and tiny needles on fat trunks if you try it with an established plant. Imagine spruce branches on a pine, something like that.
My own dwarfs have produced some escaping/running branches that turned back to regular growth. Since pines are so slow to respond, there can be a huge timeframe between application and effect. Something I'm trying to zone down on this year. A couple of mine are receiving relatively large amounts of cytokinins with their waterings. 6-12mg/L for instance.
The first and biggest issue I'm running in to is that literature is mostly about tissue culture, where there's direct contact with the medium and usually no roots until the final stage. This greatly reduces that time frame. In potted culture there are a lot more variables. From what I've read, pines stop sticking to seasonal growth in most TC settings, whereas in potted cultures, they either flush once or twice. This makes the ideal time of application a wild guess, especially for hormones with a limited shelf life. Apply them too soon and they might degrade before anything happens, apply them too late and.. Well, more or less the same.
I hope to be able to produce some data this year, but it would be faster if someone would be doing some TC experiments at home. I used to have a DIY setup that worked pretty well, so if you need hints, tips or tricks on how to do it relatively cheap, I can always share my techniques. Might be better to do that in another thread though.

Well I have a lot of young material and 5 grams of 99% and 5 grams of 90%. Ill experiment on a few and if it has the positive effect I'm looking for , I'll report back. It it doesn't do anything or else revert back to typical growth I will probably hide my shame.

 

[Hartinez]

If we expand that thought to Native North American trees, I would like to vote for four of my favourite candidates.
Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Sub Alpine Fir, Mountain Hemlock and Shore Pine! Some day they will rule the Bonsai show benches.
All adapt readily to container growth, all can be readily reduced in foliage size, all are suited to a wide range of North American climatic zones. My apologies to the southern part of North America. Particularly those in zones 10 and 11. Of course native junipers are already well accepted and help to appease the southern hot areas in North America.

Might I add englemann spruce! Very well suited from high to low ranges, hot and cold etc. vigorous growers, with tight foliage and great bark. A sub alpine fir similar to many of yours would be one of my favorites to acquire.

 

[Nicotine]

My Japanese White Pines get pinched as soon as I can differentiate between the needles and pollen cones at the base of the candle. This occurs once the actual needles can be seen growing out of the base of the sheath at the base of each cluster of needles. I have short needles and short internodes on my JWP (P. parviflora). So, what you are saying about pinching JWP, a “long needled” single flush pine, doesn’t match my experience.

I heard in a number of places that you should rub the pollen cones off as they use up energy, do you do that as soon as you know they will turn into cones i.e in the earliest stage just as they start to turn a purple hue, or do you let them develop further on before rubbing them off, or do you just leave them on?

 

[JudyB]

I heard in a number of places that you should rub the pollen cones off as they use up energy, do you do that as soon as you know they will turn into cones i.e in the earliest stage just as they start to turn a purple hue, or do you let them develop further on before rubbing them off, or do you just leave them on?

I do take mine off very very carefully. If you gently hold the candle, and take a tweezer tip and carefully push the individual pollen cone to the side and slightly down, they pop right off. Start at the bottom of the pollen cones and work your way up. I do them as early as I can, when they just barely start to color. I find if I leave them on, as they swell, the bare neck behind the new needles gets elongated from the swelling leaving a longer bare space. I don't think that most people do this, but it is what I've done, to no ill effect, and I think it's helpful.

 

[Lazylightningny]

I do take mine off very very carefully. If you gently hold the candle, and take a tweezer tip and carefully push the individual pollen cone to the side and slightly down, they pop right off. Start at the bottom of the pollen cones and work your way up. I do them as early as I can, when they just barely start to color. I find if I leave them on, as they swell, the bare neck behind the new needles gets elongated from the swelling leaving a longer bare space. I don't think that most people do this, but it is what I've done, to no ill effect, and I think it's helpful.

Judy, on my pines, pollen cones seem to come after I've stressed the tree- ie, pruning roots or foliage. Do you find that to be so for your trees or is it more random?

 

[JudyB]

Judy, on my pines, pollen cones seem to come after I've stressed the tree- ie, pruning roots or foliage. Do you find that to be so for your trees or is it more random?

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to pollen cones. I used to try to figure it out, but even trees with the same care in the same year are different.

 

[Nicotine]

I do take mine off very very carefully. If you gently hold the candle, and take a tweezer tip and carefully push the individual pollen cone to the side and slightly down, they pop right off. Start at the bottom of the pollen cones and work your way up. I do them as early as I can, when they just barely start to color. I find if I leave them on, as they swell, the bare neck behind the new needles gets elongated from the swelling leaving a longer bare space. I don't think that most people do this, but it is what I've done, to no ill effect, and I think it's helpful.

Thanks, this was my thought process as well, to do it as soon as possible to minimise the elongation, but i was a bit worried that if i did it too early maybe the tree will try to turn the needle buds above into cones instead

 

[clem]

now I have a white pine where I do not do this and I will tell you why. It has a tendency to produce very long needles which is great for fast growing as it produces more energy for the tree, for bonsai however not very wanted. If I cut the candles this way, the remaining needles grow longer the if I do not cut the candles in half. So what I dI’d last year on this tree let everything grow out, where there are 3 I leave 3. In beginning of july I cut the long candles which have now just fully grown with needles in half. Where there was 3 I now remove the strongest one. This way I also got new buds on the candles I cut in half however not on all of them and some died off. Maybe this way isn’t great, maybe I should have cut earlier. I might do that this year,

Ryan Neil advises the same with JBP after mekiri (candles removal) : He advises to let all the new candles grow until the end of autumn : this way, the sapp is divided into more than 2 candles, -> the candles and the needles are smaller. In the end of autumn, he removes the strongest candles on the strongest parts of the tree (keeping only 2)

 

[bwaynef]

Judy, on my pines, pollen cones seem to come after I've stressed the tree- ie, pruning roots or foliage. Do you find that to be so for your trees or is it more random?

I've been told that the year after letting a multiflush (JRP in my case) push w/o decandling, you're more likely to get pollen cones the following spring. My experience bears that out. It being multiflush, there isn't a ton of management necessary to deal with the pollen cones. The "neck" comes off at decandling time. (I know this thread's about single flush pines. I don't know if the rampant-growth-leads-to-pollen-cones bit applies to single flush pines.)

I've also been told pollen cones aren't energy stressers on multi-flush pines. That being the case, it seems odd that they'd be energy-stressers on single-flush pines. That said, it might make more sense to remove them on SFPs than MFPs due to the mitigation of issues on MFPs is simply part of their normal management. I guess understanding the why is less important than understanding the what-to-do.

 

[JudyB]

Thanks, this was my thought process as well, to do it as soon as possible to minimise the elongation, but i was a bit worried that if i did it too early maybe the tree will try to turn the needle buds above into cones instead

The only thing you have to be more careful of when doing it just as they start to color, is that the "candle" is weaker at that time, and more likely that it might snap if you try too hard. If there is a weaker candle with only a couple on it, I either leave it, or only try to knock it off once, and if it doesn't pop I don't keep trying.

 

[clem]

With a single flush Pine (the two needle variety) the important factor is to encourage back budding and the best way to do that is to allow the new growth to develop a head of steam and then interupt it, forcing that energy with nothing to do but go somewhere else; aka back bud somewhere down the branch. Both Mugos and Scotts Pines will back bud profusely doing it this way.

hello, i don't get, on Bjorn scots pine (very dense & ramified) the use of encouraging back budding ? The pine was so dense that he removed branches

 

[0soyoung]

I've been told that the year after letting a multiflush (JRP in my case) push w/o decandling, you're more likely to get pollen cones the following spring. My experience bears that out.

Strange.
My experience indicates this is BS.

 

[Adair M]

I heard in a number of places that you should rub the pollen cones off as they use up energy, do you do that as soon as you know they will turn into cones i.e in the earliest stage just as they start to turn a purple hue, or do you let them develop further on before rubbing them off, or do you just leave them on?

I leave the pollen cones alone until after they mature. Then they fall off with the slightest touch. Real female cones on the terminals are a different story. I do remove them as soon as I see them.

 

[BonsaiDawg]

I don't understand the need to remove so much energy production.

Seems quite counterproductive.

Of course, maybe being close to dead is what helps em sleep down south!

Sorce

Yea well Adair is correct on highly refined trees that are very healthy and show vigorous candle growth. Otherwise you are right. .. Most trees are not as close to as perfect as MR Adair's the bonsai-master-all-knowing-of-every-fact-limited-to-jbp&jwp.

Trees in development or trees in a combination of both refined and dev should be treated on a branch by branch basis to either pinch or not pinch. It's never 100% one or the other...UNLESS of course you abide to Mr. Adair's utmost obedience and commitment to the very strictest traditional Japanese rules including but not limited to (a) massive green helmet/dome apices (b) rigid design uniformity and (c) use of non-native 5 needle pines limited to field grown Japanese white pines.

 

[BonsaiDawg]

In “your opinion”, and “your experience”? Right? I don’t want to be accused of misinterpreting your post.

Well, Bjorn’s method is exactly what I do, and have done with my JWP.

Here are a few of my JWP:

View attachment 298136

View attachment 298137

View attachment 298138

View attachment 298140

View attachment 298141


Now, you show me your trees that you do your way since you have so much experience.

The real truth is that no one in this country that is pushing the aesthetic limits of what bonsai can and should be in this country gives 2 sh!ts about about non-native, field grown 5 needle Japanese pines. They are not cool nor unique nor hip whatsoever and these traditional designs you present are extremely archaic in nature. So don't go about flaunting this stuff... Unless you want to be known only as Mr Craft. Because that's what it is-craft--not art.

 

[BonsaiDawg]

Jo ij

It's not about the burden of proof.

It's about showing trees that look nice to debate the length of time it took to get there.

It doesn't matter.

I shouldn't have said, don't have anything to say, I should have said, doesn't say anything.

@Dav4 cuticle cutters will be even less invasive, I was thinking about it looking at the video.

It's about the "poodled" aesthetic.
As well as less energy.

I get more energy and no poodling.View attachment 298149

Compact, and with buds to cut back to for restarts.View attachment 298150

And much more even candles from the get go.View attachment 298151

Because of what happens BEFORE spring.

It's about not being behind the 8ball.
Which is the position this (Bjorn's)technique works in.

There is more health and beauty to be had before the 8ball.

Sorce

Hit the nail on the head Sorce--There is more health and beauty to be had before the 8ball.

The reality is that this Bjorn video demonstrates laziness if nothing else. Presenting the entire picture of handling these species of trees in both refinement AND development and/or a combo of the two is just too much detail and would take too much time to explain / or produce.

Of course Ryan has taken the time to explain every detail and nuance needed for these trees in every stage of development... but that'd be expecting FAR TOO MUCH of Adair to have recognized or comprehended. LOL