By Thomas J.

For those who have Japanese Black Pine as part of their bonsai collection, the fall of the year means needle plucking and branch wiring time. Now depending on what part of the world you live in, and even what part of the U.S. you live in, that's any time from late September to mid November for this task. Here in north Texas late October thru mid November is when we usually do it.

copper wire in various sizes,

and a good pair of bonsai wire cutters that are made specifically for this

Let me give you a brief history of a few of the trees that I'm using for this article. I purchased them about four years ago when my knowledge of Japanese Black Pine was basically nothing. I thought since they were very young trees and didn't cost very much, that I could do some learning and if it didn't turn out, I wouldn't be out too much in the way of money or trees lost. It was my intention from the start to keep these guys small and use them as shohin trees and not the fat little guys that you usually see as shohin.

After a repot into a bonsai container, the tree was on its way.

After one year you can already see the difference in the amount of growth.

At this time I started looking into the proper care for Japanese Black Pine, but was kind of confused because there was two schools of thought out there on decandeling during the summer work on Japanese Black Pine. I tried the first method which was twisting off  2/3s of the new candle. But that did nothing in the way of reducing needle length which these guys greatly needed because of their size.

Tree #2 is shown below right after purchase and placed into a bonsai container to start its training also.

Neither tree really had anything going for it at purchase, but as you read on you'll see that with the proper work done at the proper time, you can have a Japanese Black Pine that you can really enjoy as you watch it grow and become more refined a little each year. Of course as with all young bonsai, you must give it the time it needs to grow out while your training it also.

It wasn't until I took my interest in the Japanese Black Pine a little more serious that I began to learn the proper way to work these trees, and that was done by purchasing some specimen material and working with someone who knew the proper way and handed down their teaching to others such as myself. Hopefully this article will help those of you who are new to Japanese Black Pine and maybe don't have someone close by who can teach you. Remember though that this is the fall work which is only half of what you will need to know. The other half and the most important work is the summer decandeling. Of course there too is the repotting that needs to be done at its proper time, but we'll save that for another article.

On this next image I'm showing a tree that has much more foliage with a combination of both old and new needles. Can you see the difference in color between the old and new?

And here you see me grabbing the old set of needles and pulling them off with the tweezers.

Here is a set of old needles pulled off the topic tree. Japanese Black Pine is also known as two needle pine for obvious reasons.

Now if you'll scroll back up the picture where the tree is ready to be plucked, when you compare, you'll see the almost new and different tree here right after the plucking.

After doing the wiring which the tree needed in order to move a few branches in place,   I now have a tree that I can be happy with as I work with it and watch it's refinement throughout the years.

As for the wiring, make sure you have a good anchor point for your wiring. It not only looks good but is the most important item in this process because it's main function is to hold the branch in place very well, and at the same time have a pleasing and not a distracting look to it.

Now remember tree #2 from above? Well here it is also at four years of training. This one was trained the proper way a year earlier than tree#1 so it is a little more advanced in the foliage. It will be placed in a different pot at next repotting.

And here is one of my specimen Japanese Black Pine with it waiting to be plucked.

And right after with wire applied to place the branches in place to make a beautiful Japanese Black Pine show ready.

So in conclusion after all is said and done, the fall work is actually the easiest with the plucking of the old needles and if necessary some wiring to place the branches in their proper place. The tree will now look its best because it has been cleaned up from the necessary seasonal work of both summer and fall. Repotting season is not too far down the road and hopefully I'll have something for you by then.