What the H*** got into Ryan in this video? Too many coffees?
He sounded really amped up for some reason. Especially at the end. It was like he was being aggressively defensive about his strategy for pinching. I’m surprised he put this out on YouTube instead of in the library. A lot of his terms won’t mean much to most YouTube bonsai video fans unless they are members of Mirai. Only Ryan uses terms like single flush short needle, single flush long needle, elongating species, etc.
There was a new pinching video posted, different from the older pinching video. Similar title.
On the topic of pinching, I think the answer is that we really don’t know for sure.
Ryan’s basic stance: physiologically, the cells in the first node have already been formed when you pinch the second node, so there is no shortening of that first node happening in a pinch.
Explanation for the opposing stance: perhaps, the pinch, which we know redirects energy, could also be stunting the cells of that first node. Number of cells in a stem/node doesn’t necessarily dictate total size.
The analogy I can think of is how human fat cells work. To some extent, when a person loses weight their fat cells shrink, but the total number of fat cells does not go down (to any significant degree).
So…perhaps through functions we don’t fully understand, the pinch could be diverting sugar/starch, hormone activity, etc. away from that developing node, back to other buds further back on the branch, resulting in a “stunted” node - same number of cells in the node, just smaller and less developed or less elongated in form.
Evolutionarily, I can see an advantage to this “strategy,” in that if an end was damaged in some way, the plant would react by slowing the growth in that “unsafe” direction, and put resources to a “safer” area of the plant. (Obviously evolution does not have strategy, but it helps to phrase it like this for explanation purposes.)
Interesting it was done on Monday? I think he got a lot of questions from the Multi-flush pine pinching stream and he is frustrated that people are confused. That stream was labeled advanced on 4/19/2022. It was directed at multi-flush pines only. https://live.bonsaimirai.com/library/video/multi-flush-pine-spring-work So not sure why yesterday’s went out on youtube…maybe to get people to subscribe because “bonsai is hard”??
Hey Bob, this is in fact an older video from last year that is currently in the Mirai library (https://live.bonsaimirai.com/library/video/pinching-technique-and-timing). We will continue to share older Mirai content that feels relevant to the season on our Youtube channel for our followers there to enjoy!
P.S. I like how Ryan and Peter Warren discussed it in the podcast. You have to do all the techniques together, with care, patience, and observation to get the results you want. And each tree (that’s the genetics, the soil, the pot, the watering, the fertilizer, and environment) is different and so will behave differently.
