Sidesummy's JBP & JRP Ground Growing Progression

[Sidesummy]

Sidesummy's JBP & JRP Ground Growing Progression Photo Series:
As of 2022 I'm 7 years into my bonsai from seed journey. I thought it would in nice to provide an ongoing photo series of my progress thus far. Reading the forums for several years I have always found it particularly helpful when other users have shown an ongoing series of before-after photos for their trees.

Purpose:
+Provide a general photo journey of a plot of ground grown Japanese Black and Red Pine trees grown from seeds.
+Show a very high-level overview of what I've done at each stage of development (for better or worse)

Not Purpose:
+I don't suggest this is an instructional on the "Dos" of ground growing techniques. [I'm just showing what I've done and provide an opportunity to answer "why" I thought what I did was a good idea, and potentially reflect upon mistake or things I might have done differently after seeing what happened.]
+A well-organized documentation of each individual tree [some photos will focus on 1 tree, but I often don't singular photos of each tree each year] In general it'll be wider photo of multiple trees that got similar treatments. I strongly suggest Jonas’s blog over at Bonsai Tonight for that kind of well-organized documentation.

General Notes:
-Growing in Midwest region of Ohio
-There are 2 batches of seeds begun in 2016 and 2017 that represent all the trees in the ground growing garden.
-This plot is located at my parent’s property some 2 hours from me and therefore these trees don't get too much over-care or daily/weekly/monthly changes
-Once the pines were 3-4 years old and since then, the trees basically only get 2 treatments each year. Once in late June, early July for De-candling and then later in fall usually in Oct.-Nov. doing shoot selection or reduction to 2 buds as well as cutting off large branches or whorls besides a central leader.
-The soil they are growing in is a mostly clay retired garden plot of my parents which has been amended with a large amount of haydite which I purchased and tilled into the ground.


I hope to capture a bit of how Left (2016) became Right (2022)

 

[Sidesummy]

2016:
The Beginning:
Seeds came from online in Fall of 2015 and I stratified seeds in a damp paper towel and left in the fridge over the winter in order to get seeds to germinate for planting in the Spring of 2016. Seeds were then planted into a raised bed which I had filled with a mix of haydite and compost. This is what those seed beds looked like over that first year.

 

[Sidesummy]

2017:
Basically, everything survived the winter and came out growing well throughout the year. Everything remained in the growing bed. I began preparing my growing grounds purchasing a lot of haydite and then tilling it all into the clay soil I would be growing my trees in. Not a perfect scenario, but you work with what you’ve got and what you can afford I suppose. Perhaps in the future when I go to dig trees, I’ll learn how good or bad things were for the root situation.

April 2017


July 2017


Tilling in the haydite into the ground


Getting the weed barrier and tiles out for next years plantings

 

[Sidesummy]

2018:
The great re-planting begins. Seedlings are transplanted from raised bed into the field. I planted things in a variety of ways. Some were planted through a tile I drilled a hole in. Spoiler alert only a few of these survived to present. I suspect a lot of that was due to the difficulty I had trying to get the soil back in contact with the roots beneath the tiles which were large 12”x12” tiles. Some were planted in colanders above around, just sat on top of the weed barriers I rolled out. Other colanders were buried into the ground. Others, which is most of the trees, were planted directly into the ground with nothing to direct or control the roots. 2018 was the first wave of ground plantings in the garden space, I planted pretty much directly vertical, so there isn’t much movement in the lowest portion of the trunk from the ground. I changed that the following year.


Ground preparation


Young JBP planted

 

[Sidesummy]

2019:
Planted another large group of pines up in the ground growing garden, this time I was better about planting all the trees at an angle. Hopefully providing the future bonsais with more movement in the lower trunk. I didn’t make the effort of wiring and contorting any of the trunks because of the replanting process strain. As well as not knowing if I could get to the trees to take the wire off before biting in super deeps because of my not being able to monitor them regularly.



June 2019. Candles coming out strong.

 

[Sidesummy]

2020:
Blank year, not sure what happened to my phone, but somehow, I lost any documentation for this time.
2021:
A lot of my focus is keeping the lower branches alive stripping needle higher on the tree and decandling on lower branches to keep growth compact lower down. Trying to keep as many low branches I could without causing too much inverse taper at whorls.

 

[Sidesummy]

2022:
Some of these leaders are getting 7'-8' tall on the older trees. with base trunks getting to ~2-3" thick.

May 2022


Before /\
De-candled over 4th of July weekend.
After \/



Example of a JBP lower down decandled, with a sacrifice branch that is probably 8' tall

 

[Sidesummy]

August 2022
These photos are 1 month after de-candling on the 4th of July weekend.

Same tree last picture in previous post^

The outcoming was in general all the new growth is coming from the base of needles "needle buds" around the decandling locations, rather than new buds forming at the decandled spots. I'm wondering if this is related my large reduction of "green" over the majority of the tree. On most trees I only left the singular leading bud/candle of the current year up on top of tree, rather than leaving all this years whorl of buds to extend all year. My hypothesis is that if perhaps more was left on the sacrifice top of the tree the lower of the tree would have been less explosive down below. Perhaps I'll balance it out a little more in the future by leaving more spring growth on sacrifice areas. We'll wait to see if the decandling sites also eventually develop new buds that grow before hardening off this fall. We shall see.

Up close examples

 

[hemmy]

Very cool and certainly a lot of hard work!
Hopefully you have listened the Telperion Farms podcast from Mirai circa 2019. There is a nice summary here:


Thread 'Bonsai Mirai: Asymmetry podcast 10/26/2019 - Telperion Farms'
https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/bonsai-mirai-asymmetry-podcast-10-26-2019-telperion-farms.39282/

My big take away was the use of needle reduction for back-budding, since decandling slows growth (and seems very time consuming in the field). Also the use of root constriction methods and the time period for root work. I have not grown JBP in the ground, but I think that identifying new leaders early (like as buds or needles that might give buds) for taper would be the most difficult part. This is also discussed on the podcast.

Thanks for the pictures and documentation, it is very inspirational!

 

[Sidesummy]

Just finished up this years annual (usually around the 4th of July, 2 weeks late due to vacation this year) decandling. Did most of the regular decandling on all lower buds pushed out this spring, with the exception of leaving some as future sacrifices or branch thickeners. Unlike in previous years I've started defaulting to removing all up the central leader bud at the top of the trees, whereas in the past sometimes I would leave the entire whirl. I find that this gives me and even better vigor in the lower tree that I'm looking for, and not too much, i.e. a balance I'm happy with. I've also done a better job of stripping needles off areas where I don't want buds to show up. This is helped reduce effort later when a get a lot of buds springing out of the crotches of brands or underneath branchss. I feel I've been getting a bit better each year I do this, which is encouraging. I was fighting on and off rain so I didn't get as many pictures as I would usually get to choose from. But here's another macro view of before and after of that work looks like and a few specific of the "better" trees and how they look down below up close.


Before


After


An up-close

 

[pandacular]

How are these trees doing this year? I'm not sure if you mentioned it above, but what are your final plans for these trees?

 

[Sidesummy]

How are these trees doing this year? I'm not sure if you mentioned it above, but what are your final plans for these trees?

The previous post is basically the most recent update on these trees. The wife and I just bought our first house this year and we're pretty busy with the work of getting settled in. I'm hoping that come next spring I will dig up my first couple trees and get them into training pots/boxes. I will probably choose some of the 'less nice' trees for now to convince myself I can do so and keep the trees alive. Over the winter I'll be making sure I have the soil components I need to do all that repotting come spring. If all goes well I will be ready to bring some of the 'nicer' trees home in over the next few years. Some tress I'll just continue to allow grow in the ground and do my annual decandling in summer and bud selection/reduction in fall until I'm happy with trunk size. I don't have a problem letting them keep going in the ground for many more years if I can't move quickly. Based on some of the Japanese bonsai videos I see on YouTube, some growers have pines that have been ground growing for decades... so I don't feel rushed.

 

[pandacular]

WAH i totally missed the most recent post! or at least the date on it. sorry about asking you for a second update in a day ahah.

Sounds like you're keeping all of them for personal use? That's a ton of trees! Sound fun.

 

[Sidesummy]

Another Yearly update. Decandling (and sometimes only thinning) my black and red pines. Done on July 13-14 here in Ohio. I'm again about 2-3 weeks late on when I would have liked to have done this effort. I noticed some of my spring candles had already matured and started to bud and push a second round of new candles. Hopefully I'll get to things mid-June next year *fingers crossed*.

Quick Before:


Quick After:


Example(s) of some of the trees:



This one was only thinned, didn't feel I could decandle because there wasn't a good set of needles to cut back to for some reason and felt branches would die. Instead I opted to just reduce all spots to 2 equally sizes horizontal candles. Before there was just explosions of candles all over the tree (which is odd because I reduced all buds down to 2 last fall).