Post-flush harden pruning on short needle single flush pines

Horticulture
1

So am I correct in my understanding that with short needle single flush pines, you can in the post flush harden time period (say mid-June in Portland) prune new shoots back to desired length, leaving some of the new needles, and reliably expect to see two buds develop at the cut site? The reason I ask is that I have two lodgepole pines that seem to be erratic in whether that assumption holds or not. Most times buds will develop at the cut site after pruning, sometimes one, sometimes two (which is what I want obviously) but other times … no buds develop at all and eventually that shoot will just die off with time.

Am I missing something? And these are healthy trees. And I’m leaving at least 6-8 pairs of new needles - not pushing any limits …

Thanks for any input

2

Sounds to me like you are pruning maybe early for that tree, in the UK we usually cannot do post harden prune on limber and Scot’s until end of June to mid-late July. We don’t tend to get much heat or sun here so the trees are slower to harden off. Perhaps give it a couple of weeks longer :sign_of_the_horns:

3

Yeah mine in Portland area are a little later, I wait until the needle bundles just start to open good luck!