My goal is to create good material with a stunning trunk line. I like trees with extremely curvy trunk line and thick base.
So for this trees my thought was to first get them to backbud to the lowest part of the trunk to increase the width of the base.
Now i need a good strategy to get what i want.
I listened to the podcast about Telperion farm
a few times and would like to try their method.
But after watching and reading many things about scots pines here and on YouTube i can’t get the informations togeter to create the right strategy for my trees.
I hope some of you could help me.
What you need to do is reduce the whorls. From 5 to 3 etc, this will prevent a large swelling, then next year down to 1 or two. It’s time to select a new leader when you do this which will aid back budding further back.
You can wire the trunk at this stage and put some serious bends in it now as it’s at the right age. In spring plant in the ground. Leave the wire on, it will help the trunk to swell and eventually disappear into the tree. Let the new leader grow for about three years before choosing a new one from a branch further back. Don’t let the branches elongate too much otherwise they’ll become too large and useless for the design. When you choose the new leader, I would undercut the roots and if necessary rotate 180 deg to ensure all round development. keep on top of the whorls each year to ensure you get down to one branch in each place. keep doing this until you reach your desired tree size. Hope this helps…
But i never heard of letting the wire on a young tree till the tree grows around it. I have seen trees were the wire was way too long on the tree and it looked quite ugly.
It’s the same method as used by the Japanese to develop their black pines in the field. They will actually wire the trees more during their stay in the field. It all depends how large a trunk you want.
The trunks do swell because of the wire. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos. It’s just what I’ve gleaned over the time I’ve done bonsai. One was a particularly useful article in the Bonsai Focus where the writer visited a bonsai nursery in Japan.
Here’s a link to help better understand the technique.
It works best when trees are in the ground otherwise with pots it will take forever and there’s no guarantee that the tree will swallow the whole thing
Thank you, after watching, think the technique looks quite interresting. Maybe i will try on one tree, but i don’t think that my trees will stay as long as his in the ground.
There is a great podcast Ryan did on field growing trees with the Telperion Farms guys. listen to that.
Basically you should put some movement in now if you can but thickness comes from letting the leader grow tall. Not really sacrificial side branching. They cultivate the buds down low and only allow a couple of whorls max to develop on the leader. timing of needle plucking is important and helps develop budding lower down, this is detailed on the podcast. Here is an example of what the telperion trees in the field looked like…
Donguri is there more than 1 podcast with Telperion about field growing?
I found a group of posts describing techniques for creating quality pre-bonsai which was also quite helpful: BDS Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Bonsai Tonight
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