Scots Pine Nusery stock.

Hi,

I'm a leaner in Bonsai, I've recently purchased a Scot's Pine (Pinus sylvestris 'Watereri') nursery stock. I'm planning to style the tree soon, but before I do, I'd like to clarify a few things, as it's quite hard to obtain Pine nusery stock for me, here in London, UK.

A) When plucking the needles, do you pluck only the old needles and leave this year grow alone? Or both?
B) When styling the tree, would it be advisable to prune most of the undesired branches off in one go? Most sites, suggested that you should not pruned Pine up to 50% when developing from nusery stock.
C) Would it be possible to repot the tree in the Autumn season? Or should I wait till spring??

Please help...

regards

Vincent.

First, post photos, it may help some provide advise. Second, find some on-line or off-line information of the particular tree(s) and determine the best (and worst) times to prune and style.

Have fun!

Jay

hopefully your a learner rather than a bonsai leaner !!

firstly be patient when it comes to repotting - certainly wait until spring, and if you've styled a tree heavily (wire, prune etc) it is better to give a tree a year to recover from that before adding the stress of re potting.

Needle plucking on a nursery tree wants to be all the old needles - so initially everything behind this years new growth - once you've done that you will see strong areas with lots of new growth, weak areas with sparse thin growth and areas in between. Now pluck some of the needles from the strong areas to balance them with the rest of the tree.

if you have bought this tree to practice on then experiment a bit with the styling and prune whatever branches you feel like - leave a longer stub on all summer pruning then the resin wont bleed down the trunk - seal all cuts properly and you can prune more branches, if you dont seal cuts the tree will lose more moisture and areas may die.

you may have worked out now that nursery stock is nice and cheap to play with and is the best way to learn techniques, but not a quick way to get a bonsai - if you do a major prune and wire now - aug / sept 2011 the tree needs a year to recover (09/12) then it would handle the major root reduction to get it in a bonsai pot the following spring (mar/apr 2013).

track down a local club if you can - much better than just the internet and books

marcus

Hi Vincent and welcome to the forum. Re your lean/learn: on here we learn precisely by leaning - mostly on each other's knowledge and experience. Gosh that was slushy!

Talking of knowledge and experience I'd drop Faisal Waheedy a PM (Private Message) as he is in your part of the world. Also, if you haven't already discovered it, have a look at Harry Harrington's website. You can find it by clicking HERE

First of all, thank you Marcus for your info, I've now pruned the unwanted branches off, leaving stumps and sealed it with petroleum jelly. Plan next, is to do some needle pluckings and wire the tree.

As for repotting, I'll wait till the tree recovered. But with majority of nursery stocks, I find that the base of the trunk is never visible from the soil line. It was quite difficult to scrape off the surface soil to examine the roots, while I was in the garden centre. So in order for me to visualised and style this tree, I took it out of the nusery pot, scraped a lil bit off the top soil, leaving the rootball intact and potted it into a slightly larger pond basket.

I intend to leave it in the pond basket and the next step will be developing the root system, when it comes to repotting time. Perhaps tourniquet it and plant it slightly deeper in the same pond basket, as I'm in no rush to pot into a bonsai pot. Should I retain some old soil when I repot it? ( I understand that Pines and most conifers needs it mycohyzzirrol fungi).

Fiona, Bonsai4me is a very helpful site, great info's by Harry, this was one of my main source of info's.

Jay pictures will be posted as soon as i can find my digital camera.

My first attemp to style this tree...any suggestions please??


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hi, really nice wiring for an early tree,

at the moment you have all the branches in pairs and it will look better if you have just one branch emerging from each 'junction'. atm these are called bar branches where two are opposite each other and they can lead to ugly swellings on the trunk while also looking a bit odd.
starting from the bottom i'd keep branch 1 on left, cut off the one above it while keeping the right hand branch of the pair.
2nd branch on the right remove. remove the thick top section of trunk and wire top left branch up as new leader - this will add more taper.

now you have alternate branches and a finer top - try and angle one branch slightly backwards and one slightly forwards so the tree has 3 dimensional depth - at the moment it is quite flat in appearance.

Then give the tree a big rest!!

Thanks again for the advised Marcus, here's the tree after being re-styled.

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I have never liked Juniper bonsai, but while at the garden centre, I've picked up this Juniper (£7.99) to practise some cascade form.
But, when I removed all the dead bits and the top soil to find the base of the trunk, I realised I cant style this tree as cascade. So this is how it looks, first attemp in my life styling a Juniper.

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Will remove some lower branches, when this tree recovered. Hope it adds abit more taper till then.

Limb #1 is growing on the inside of a trunk bend, most books I've found would say to remove it (get more advice than just me before cutting!)

Area #2 is very busy, I would reduce this to 1 or two branches.

Finally on the left hand side I would remove the lower of the two branches. Again, that is just me.

The next photo is without the #1 branch.



Jay

Hi Jay,

Thanks for taking some times in re-designing my Juniper. I do agree with u, that some of the branches or limbs needs to be removed. But having pruned so much off, I thought to be safe and let this tree recover 1st, before I'll take off any more foliage and branches. Some of the lower branches are used as sacrify branches, and will be removed once it adds more tapers...hopefully. More jins and shari work will be carried out. Just practising

regards

Vincent.