Techniques for Pine Bonsai in Summer | Mekiri, Needle Plucking and Fertilizer

It is bright and early here at A.S.A.N. and we're getting ready to jump into pine season here at the nursery. So there are a lot of double flush pines like our black pines and some of our native species that we're going to be decandling in the upcoming week. So I thought it'd be cool to show you in this episode one of the trees or a couple of the trees actually that I'm going to be working on this week. This is a great time to do decandling and also wire these guys especially detail wiring for exhibition. So I've got a couple of really good examples here that I want to show you guys. But before we dive into that today I've got to fertilize the nursery and we're going to be doing this with liquid fertilizer using our EZ Flow system. So I'll show you what that's all about. We're going to do that and then jump into the workshop and work on these pines. All right so these are the ingredients that I put into our EZ Flow system which is just this little canister right here. You can pick this up online. There are a few outlets where you can buy this. And then I will put in this pre-mixed fish and kelp here. This stuff is relatively liquidy so it's unlike just fish by itself where it'll clog up your hose. This has a little bit more of a liquid consistency to it. So if we fill this thing up with this stuff here and a little bit of humic acid and whatever else you want to mix in there. Fill it all the way to the top. Plug it into the hose. We're going to crank it all the way up and water everything in the nursery. Both the root systems and foliar drenching. Because it's early in the morning stomata should be open and the trees are going to take up some of those nutrients through the foliage. So the whole point of this is to add micronutrients to the fertilization of your trees which is going to help with the overall biome in the soil and the overall health of the plants. So I typically apply this fertilizer through the EZ Flow system about once every 10 days or so. So about three times a month. And typically it's set at full blast which ends up being I think about five to seven tablespoons per gallon of whatever's in there. So relatively high amounts. But this is something that like I said before really adds to the micronutrients in the soil and really increases the overall health of the trees and it's absolutely necessary. So I recommend if you guys aren't doing this with your collections at home that you start and I think within a few weeks to a couple of months you're going to see a massive difference in the amount of growth and the quality of that growth as well. All right so next up here we're going to be working on our Japanese black pine projects. I've got two that I want to get done in the next couple of days here. One that we actually decandled a couple of days ago in one of our intensive classes and another one that is owned by a private client that we're working on for that individual. So before we do that though I've got to head over and get a haircut real quick. It's getting a little too hot out here for this so let's head over to the barber and get that done. All right let's get started on the pine. So when it comes to decandling double flush pines like this Japanese black pine right here we typically here start at the very beginning of June. So this is perfect timing for us and I always start with the largest trees first and then work my way down to the smaller trees later in the same month. So with a tree like this it's pretty well balanced so I'm not actually going to do the typical two-step decandling process with this. I'm actually going to cut off pretty much all of the candles all at the same time. There are some nuances and a little bit of difference in how I cut those candles in terms of leaving a stub on the stronger ones and cutting back the medium strength ones completely flush. But aside from that it's pretty simple. We're going to take off probably close to 90% almost 100% of the candles on this tree only leaving the absolute weakest ones completely alone. And I am going to be needle plucking at the same time too to balance energy. Once we're done with that I'll be able to put some wire on here and detail this guy up. But I'm super excited to work on this project. It's a very unique looking black pine kind of an exposed root look to the base but not what you would typically see. So very excited to see how this guy turns out. So now that I have decandled and needle plucked this tree we can see the structure a bit better. You can tell based on the planting angle of the tree that this was designed as the front by the owner of the plant. And I actually quite like this front the branch structure is really nice but the base looks a little bit off to me. And actually in person you can tell that it's been leaned really far forward in order to bring the apex to this side. And that's because I think the original front was actually somewhere back in this area here. But the only problem with this side is this really ridiculous looking root right here comes right out towards the front. So I have a feeling that's why the owner flipped it around and you know tilted the tree the other direction to make that the new front. So I'm going to design the tree to look good from that side but I also want to design the tree in a way where we can view it from a couple of different angles including this one over here and see if we can't come up with like a dual front to this tree. I think that'd be more interesting in the long run. So my goal here is to make this wire as invisible as possible. Basically styling this tree as if it could go into an exhibition. So I'm trying to hide the wire on the primary branches if at all possible and just stick with our secondary branches. So it's relatively easy to do on a tree like this because it's been wired and styled so many times in the past. The majority of the structure is already really well set up. But I still want to follow that general idea so that if the owner does decide to put this in a show at some point it will look nice and clean. By the way guys this video is sponsored by our online bonsai learning platform Bonsai U. Are you captivated by the artistry and tranquility of bonsai trees? Do you dream of creating your very own miniature masterpiece but lack the knowledge and skills to get started? Well look no further. Introducing Bonsai U, the ultimate online learning platform for bonsai enthusiasts like you. 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I think this is probably going to be the best front for the tree going forward even though like I said before I think it was probably designed with something around this area in mind as the front. But with that odd root in the front it's going to be better to put that towards the back and make this the new front of the tree. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode here at the nursery. It's always fun to show you what's going on behind the scenes. I wasn't able to get into the second black pine so we're gonna have to save that for tomorrow. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this one and just kind of seeing some of the behind the scenes stuff here this week at the garden. So look forward to seeing all of you guys next time around and until then take care.