Vance, thanks for thinking this trough and commenting. The two trees you show are the same tree, i guess you see it and it is my misinterpretation of what you say. It is correct jbp and sylvestris are different in tactic for backbudding (that is what we want now). JBP seems to respond better when you let them grow strong with enough needle mass from the beginning, after that backbudding will occur automatically and here is the big difference the backbudding will develop ... Sylvestris has to be strong to backbud and will do this on its own but you have to induce a trigger so the tree goes in "survival mode" so backbudding will happen. Normally backbuds will be visible next year in late summer. We will cut back the stronger growth then so the branches keep equal strength. Once all branches start at the same power, we will be able to reduce all of them at the same time, giving it more effect. When playing the JBP trick it would mean we left more needles and a sylvestris would in my experience react with giving the terminal bud an extra boost, and backbudding between last years needles. We want backbudding further back. I hope it makes sense. Also this is a literati (to be) so we do not need backbudding on the old branches we would cut it away anyway. If we wanted that i guess we would have gone to a bigger pot for an extra year to exponentially increase the power before triggering it. This would most likely induce the losing of old bark that is starting to build up. It is always a sort of balancing between adding power and triggering it to respond. Since it is only the second growing season i have this tree it is a bit guessing what the tree will do, some respond better than others. Heavy feeding and watering this year... Needles this year were 2 times the size of the needles with the previous owner, and i would like them to be a bit bigger with more extension. Fingers crossed... Hope to update with positive result next year.
