Black Pine Bonsai Needle Plucking

Older needles tend to separate easier than younger needles so care must be taken when removing healthy vigorous needles.

Black pine bonsai needle plucking. Grip the needle bundle near the base and pull off in the direction of growth outward from the branch. The best time of the year to pull needles on black or red pines is when the needles are mature fall through early spring. This technique is used in conjunction. The majority of needle thinning should normally be done from autumn to early spring or before any repotting takes place.

Needle plucking is an essential tool for pine bonsai maintenance. We pull pine needles by grabbing the base of a needle pair with tweezers and pulling. It allows air and light to penetrate the outer foliage to increase the health and vigour of inner shoots and branches. The japanese black pine is a strong tree with long dark green hard needles in clusters of two.

It grows a bit more uphill from the shore. This is typically done by pulling needles forward in the direction the needles grow to avoid tearing the skin of the branch. We recommend a good pair of pine tweezers. It also helps to spread energy throughout the tree in the same way that bud selection and candle pinching do.

For trees that have been decandled needles can also be removed at decandling time. Healthy pine bonsai in the refinement stage are decandled. For black pine growers late spring and early summer offer a lot of opportunity for improving trees. To balance the tree s energy producing more evenly distributed growth.

The japanese red pine is more delicate and slender has softer thinner paired needles and looks similar to the scots pine. It is ok to leave the needle sheath on the branch. Japanese black pine bonsai work in autumn fall on bonsai that are in refinement stage is all about bud selection and needle plucking to balance the energy. This is a technique which if you have done any prior reading regarding the development of pine as bonsai you will have read a lot about.

Needle plucking during the more advanced refinement stages of development of a pine is mainly used. A fellow club member asked me to look at his japanese black pine pinus thunbergii at a recent show as he was concerned about this. Needles may also be cut back to the sheath as well. After decandling this exposed root pine i began removing needles from strongest shoots.