New Japanese Black Pine!

Hey friends,

I dropped by the nursery to “look around” and came home with this Japanese Black Pine. I’m really excited about it because I’ve never had a pine or a tree this size before. It’s got a fantastic nabari. I have some idea for the design and initial styling, but I’m open to suggestions.


P.S. You know you’re in San Diego when there’s a volunteer palm in your pine tree.

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Now you get to debate: to repot or to style :thinking:

Ive come to be intolerant of nursery containers in my garden so I tend to repot ASAP assuming the tree can handle it; there’s good arguments to go either way.

At this time of year you may be able to get away with both … set structure and branch selection and then let it build strength leading into spring … I defer to the experts though so hopefully a nice conversation gets going

Will be fun though! Post lots of pictures of what you decide!

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Yeah, that’s what I was wondering myself. I’m leaning towards styling first and repotting in early spring.

Thanks! I will do.

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I tend to repot nursery trees first since the roots tend to be poorly structured for bonsai. I do this even with early fall close out trees. I take the bottom 25% off the rootball and loosen the outside to work in some coarse bonsai mix along with some of the original soil. This goes into a slightly wider and appropriate depth nursery container. It is a fairly minor repot and the tree normally reacts with strong growth which allows basic styling the next year. Further root work can be done in another year or two depending upon how the tree reacts to the initial root work and styling.

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First: tree must be outdoors with good sun exposure. Suggestions to repot are good. Tree likely too young/undeveloped to style yet unless wanting small or skinny trunk forever which affirms idea to repot. This should be done into grow box or ground until trunk has some size. Hurrying now into premature “styling” will yield very second rate results and disappointment later on. Patience grasshopper:wink:.

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Sadly, living in an apt, I’m limited in the amount of sun I can expose it to. But I’m giving it as much as is possible.