Rosepastry:Pinus Echinata progression

[RosePastry]

My short needle seedlings have survived a few years so I am I am putting them on here to see how this progresses (and hold myself accountable). I also like looking at progressions with pictures so hopefully I will get better at taking them for this thread.

0: I dug a square bricked the edges of my grow space. Then I laid plastic and started working up a soil collection.

 

[RosePastry]

Month 4: I ordered my seedlings, prepped and conditioned my grow bed with a coconut coir, pine needle litter, and vermiculite mix.

6 months later I planted them all in the bed. All the seedlings were root pruned to about half of what they were originally and had an evenish 3 inch spread when I was done. They weren't very tall or happy about it.

 

[RosePastry]

At the end of the next year they did well but didn't grow much I trimmed them in October and waited.

 

[RosePastry]

This January I got some green little shoots that I pruned and then they went back to bed.

 

[RosePastry]

March 23 I got ANOTHER group of shoots.I actually panicked and called a guy from our Bonsai club. Apparently their supposed to be a multiple flush pine and ive been treating them like single flush but I wasn't expecting three! After that I felt a bit silly not thinking about that. But I will keep plucking them I guess. Stubborn things are these pines. They just won't stop growing now!

 

[RosePastry]

Got some weird color on some of the almost two year olds.

 

[Gabler]

March 23 I got ANOTHER group of shoots.I actually panicked and called a guy from our Bonsai club. Apparently their supposed to be a multiple flush pine and ive been treating them like single flush but I wasn't expecting three! After that I felt a bit silly not thinking about that. But I will keep plucking them I guess. Stubborn things are these pines. They just won't stop growing now!

Why would you want to stop them from growing? Keep them growing as fast as possible. Don’t cut any candles for a few years.

 

[RosePastry]

The shonen loblolly pines I have usually do a lot of back budding when there little and then stop to grow tall after 3 years. I guess I just assumed these would be similar since there both natives to georgia.

Are there other ways?

 

[Gabler]

The shonen loblolly pines I have usually do a lot of back budding when there little and then stop to grow tall after 3 years. I guess I just assumed these would be similar since there both natives to georgia.

Are there other ways?

I got the impression you were trying to prevent them from extending at all. You’ll at least want to allow a sacrifice branch to extend to start thickening the trunk. The rest of each plant you’ll want to keep compact, since you can’t chop them back to bare wood like deciduous trees, but growth is your friend. Thicken those trunks.

 

[Gabler]

Got some weird color on some of the almost two year olds. View attachment 489053

I’m no expert in pine diseases, but a yellow or otherwise pale color tends to point to nutrient deficiencies. Sometimes it’s a simple fix, and you just need to fertilize better. Sometimes it points to an issue with the roots. Given that these are actively growing, I’d try fertilizing and see if that helps the new growth to come in any darker.

Overall, I don’t look at that picture with any concern for the long term success of the trees. Some of my own pines in training got a needle blight this spring, and I’m a bit more worried about them. Yours are just slightly more pale than normal.

 

[RosePastry]

I have 5 rows of these as kind of an experiment but I don't 100% remove all the growth. I skip a season so I can see if it does anything.
Row one



half reducing all candles evenly every other time it grows.This row is darker and grows more lignified roots.

Row two
just cutting to 2 candles per node.The growth has been entirely different. The latter is long and lanky at the new growth. The new growth takes a few weeks longer to darken and the roots are growing downwards more than outwards.

But both have grown to almost the same height.

I've just been letting the other 3 rows run but now I will make one bed like what you've suggested and see the difference. This should be fun to watch!

 

[RosePastry]

Thanks for that information. I will try and work out a better fertilizer regimen. Just in case.

I’m no expert in pine diseases, but a yellow or otherwise pale color tends to point to nutrient deficiencies. Sometimes it’s a simple fix, and you just need to fertilize better. Sometimes it points to an issue with the roots. Given that these are actively growing, I’d try fertilizing and see if that helps the new growth to come in any darker.

Overall, I don’t look at that picture with any concern for the long term success of the trees. Some of my own pines in training got a needle blight this spring, and I’m a bit more worried about them. Yours are just slightly more pale than normal.

Any suggestions for creating a sacrifice on these? Echinata has a serious upward growth habit and I have no idea if its supposed to be double flush or something else.

 

[Gabler]

Thanks for that information. I will try and work out a better fertilizer regimen. Just in case.

Any suggestions for creating a sacrifice on these? Echinata has a serious upward growth habit and I have no idea if its supposed to be double flush or something else.

I’m told it’s safe to treat a double flush pine like a single flush pine, but treating a single flush pine like a double flush pine can kill it. Also, decandling is for refinement, not development. Just let the trees grow for now, and prune the non-sacrificial parts of the tree only if they grow vigorously, like the sacrifice branches. Be sure the non-sacrificial parts of the tree get tons of light, or they might get too weak and die off.

 

[AridnaRobs]

Thank for sharing.

 

[RosePastry]

Ive followed the advice ive been getting and am not touching them. I have fertilized with chicken/ hollytone in a seed spreader and a spice shaker once every 2-3 weeks and sprayed a systemic with a 3 liter spray can. (Also talking to them trying to convince them to hurry up and grow).

I also found one growing out of a lost batch out of a bag. I am adding it and will document how it does. It is greener yet smaller than any of my other ones which is weirdly irritating.

Everyone has budded again! But the growth on all the beds is very interesting to watch.

The fully untouched ones of bed 1 are following the growth pamphlet I got with the seeds are the thickest caliper at about a pencil to my finger width. They also have sparse branching and are a lot less active in growth. New growth focuses on the base and mostly the top with a lot of room between seedlings. I've also lost about 25 percent of them.


The ones in bed 2 with just 2 buds selected are yellowish green.2/3 a pencil to a pencil of growth. But they have produced almost sucker like low growth and then growth at the top and middle. They are almost as tall as bed 1. I have lost none of them.

Bed 3 and 4 is where I was heavy in the bud selection with the only difference being that 4 I kept removing them all and 3 I removed mostly just the top ones. I don't have any good pictures of 3 as they are a sea of green in between the other beds. I have lost none of these as well.

These 2 beds have apparently grown hard just to spite me and have random back budding. They are at half a pancil to pencil thickness. With light green new growth on the new shoots and the darker color growth on the rest of the plant.

Bed 3 has multiple shoots and is showing dominance where I cut off the buds but about half as much as bed one. Bed 4 has become short and has more buds on the middle and low growth.
3 & 4

I am beginning to sense that 400 of these are a lot of trees...I'm going to need a lot of pots.