It has been a while since I posted anything, for which I’m sorry but I have busy as always.
A while ago we were cleaning up the white pines on the nursery. This entailed removing old needles from 2 years ago on weaker/not so dense tree’s. These could be easily pulled gently with your hands, as they were turning yellow and going to fall in a while. The reason for doing this was to take them off before they turn brown, just to keep them looking nice.
On stronger/very dense tree’s we were cutting needles from two years ago and cutting the previous years needles. The reasoning behind this is to let some light in into the inner branches/thin them out. By cutting the previous years needles instead of pulling, it means that any cluster of needles with a bud in it that will potentially grow, will hold, the others will fall off, thus preserving any potential buds.
The two tree’s here, were just case of pulling the old needles from two years ago.

It is a simple process but, just to clarify here’s some examples of what I did.


A shoot untouched.


The same shoot after needle removal.
Some of the shoots had old needles and hadn’t grown. The shoots of these that the needles came off easily, I cut off as they were going to die anyway.




This was the tree after it’s clean up.

This is the second pine, with the same process.

Whilst I was working on it Oyakata took a look at and chopped off about three branches, which saved me some work and he explained how he wanted to change the angle of the tree making it an informal upright instead of cascade. The branches were too long as it was.
I made some jin’s were they were cut off.




The tree after.

A little while later Oyakata re-potted the tree and used the existing wiring to re-style the tree.

The tree was then exhibited at the recent Nagoya castle show and was sold their to collector Kito-San.
Thanks for reading.