Bonsaify | Is the BIGGEST Black Pine Pre-Bonsai also the BEST Tree?

[@TheBonsaiZone]

It's nice to see the differences in the the three trees, amazing the effect of escape roots!

[@haroldcurrier7633]

This is totally amazing, what a huge difference the pots make. Thanks for sharing your findings. by the way I am a customer of yours and your service and knowledge are outstanding.

[@mediccohealth8141]

Hi Eric, David from Australia. would love to see if you can do a similar experiment with other popular species used for bonsai such as Japanese maples!

[@laughlife6787]

Your videos are great, informative and enjoy watching them. Thanks for sharing.

[@arnoldmmbb]

Incredible growth! Can you make a video repoting the big one? Thanks

[@mokdog666]

Great video Eric! A good follow up video would be to start the process of cutting back the giant two year old and documenting that plants journey over the next few years to see if it manages to maintain its lead !

[@cbrusharmy]

That's pretty cool. You could bend those with a trunk splitter. I'm doing that with some larger nursery stock at the moment. Also, the pines I recently bought from you survived shipping and came out healthy: recommending to friend who lives further east than I do.

[@paulmoult1916]

Great video, very informative, I am also doing some test with various pots and soils but I will only really have feedback in about a year .

[@robertobreglia9224]

Thank you for sharing this interesting video!👏👏👏

[@ricklandaubonsai5506]

Very informative video. I love JBPs

[@tangledtanuki]

Very informative. I reckon this shows the effect of field grown tree's. You might get bigger growth but it's much rougher. You've found the goldilocks area there

[@murray821]

Its hard to believe they are all the same age. Amazing! I also think the quality of the seed is important. I germinated a couple of citrus seeds, 2 of them sprouted, and one really took off, while the other lagged behind. They both grew in the same size container. I had to slippot the bigger one because it wanted to fall over. It grew even larger now.

[@WanderingBobAK]

Couldn't you have achieved max results by addressing the largest tree sooner? You did wire the bottom, by couldn't you have trimmed then rewired for bonsai application sooner?

[@Bonsaify]

Yes. Although then I might not have been able to get the biggest one quite so big. Interestingly, after I repotted it (next video about Niwaki) and set it out to grow it started budding low on the trunk, so it may yet end up a small tree.

[@bonsai_life_style]

you can make Kaede with that tall tree it is 5cm. fat tree you can use bottom branches to make new ones small ones.

[@awchanel8726]

That's because the smallest is wired while the largest is not wired and the difference in the quantity of growing media causes differences in growth. that's in my opinion. sorry if I am wrong.☺️

[@jerzinho92]

Wow!!! Amazing growth!!! Congratulations!

[@virolfestrellado9425]

Wow... great bonsai teacher as always.. thank you Sir!

[@matshagstrom9839]

Eric, Am truly amazing demonstration of the variation JBP can have. I agree that all my trees in 2” pots are too small and are lacking growth. Some do have a nice compact form with tight spacing between branches that came the second year. This may serve as a good way to start a tree meant to be small but with lots of branches. When collecting we often look for the most stressed and confined trees but when we grow trees the temptation of growth seems to win and we do every thing to maximize growing conditions. Well done.

[@Bonsaify]

Yes! I have a lot of the 2" trees and they are quite delicate on average, but that does not mean that they are worthless - the slow road is sometimes more interesting...albeit frustratingly slow!

[@MrNixtt]

Love your channel. Greetings from EU

[@stefanraffle8487]

This is as I know it as the out the bottom method I normally use wood frames or half burry it in a pond basket

[@BrockMauriello]

There’s nitrogen in the perlite, 1-0-0 that’s why it’s the largest

[@raynorris135]

Very interesting, I agree pot # 2 seems to be the best. Fine roots and decent stalk growth👍😎

[@chrisjewel1071]

Love watching your videos! Great info!

[@dermo1981]

Brilliant as always Eric. Thanks 👍

[@vojtechmalina5698]

The last extension on the biggest one is the only second year growth or second flush of the second year?

[@Bonsaify]

It is a second push of growth - not to be confused with the "second flush" that you get after a cutback. On very vigorous trees the side branching will extend in mid-summer and the central bud becomes very large.

[@wreagin1]

Where do you source course perlite?

[@Bonsaify]

Usually Hydro shops are a good bet. You can get it online if you're not able to find it locally but it's more expensive generally. This Mother Earth brand #3 is what the largest one was growing in: amzn.to/3gSoAk8

[@jerzinho92]

Hard to find such caliber in France! I try with large pumice, and it works fine, as the "standard" pine presented, but not the huge one! :)

[@davidmorgan3508]

Aussie Dave here Eric, wow what a huge difference in growth 😃. Are pine trees easy to grow from air laying 🤫🤫. I have on 1 "She Oak " or " Casuarina Pine " which I believe is native to Australia 🤔🤔. Can I treat my pine tree 🌲 the same way as a " black pine 🤔. Mine has only needles on the top and no branches 😒😏. It's trunk is about 3/8 at the bottom and stands 12 inches tall. I nicked from my local forestry 🤥😉😉

[@Bonsaify]

I do know that air layers are used in Japan by some growers for propagating from larger starting points. I'm not sure it's worth the extra labor to do it in large quantities, but in small quantities it might be. I'm not familiar with Casuarina pine - and just be advised that black pine is not the same as many other pines because it is so much more vigorous under the right conditions - e.g. it's a two-flush pine in bonsai parlance.

[@davidmorgan3508]

@@Bonsaify thank you 🤗👍

[@snager80]

I tried shopping for tree bands, but they don't seem to be available to the public and they require you to have a business license or something to buy them in wholesale or something? So I guess I will just cut up some soda bottles!

[@Bonsaify]

TBH - they are a nursery item - there is some advantage to them when you have them stacked in 6x6 grids in a flat, but individually they are annoying because they fall over and don't have proper bottoms either. But for individual trees, a gallon can - or a soda bottle on top of a gallon can works just as well. Keep in mind that the depth of the container is one factor here - but the other was that the tree escape-rooted into the ground.

[@jeffreyhutchings561]

Nice video, great demo of what might happen with different growing conditions. My JBP that came in your 3x9” Anderson band has been doing well. Wrapped up with raffia on a 9” moss rock in a 10” pond basket with traditional bonsai soil mix.

[@lolpwndk]

Have you done similar experiments with deciduous trees?

[@Bonsaify]

Not really - I am growing a lot of deciduous trees, but not in the same ways. This year I'll be trying more types of trees in the Anderson bands (all 3x9). But, most of the deciduous I'm growing are in either 3" nursery containers or 1 gallon containers. The gallons take up a lot more room and are expensive to ship.

[@blueridgebonsai9155]

Eric-based on the trees I got from you these are an exceptionally vigorous genetic strain of JBP. I am already seeing back budding on these and it is still May! I put my Anderson bands in 8” bulb pans filled with pumice, pine bark mix and then sunk that into the soil up to the pot rim. I am now afraid that assuming the roots escape like your big one I may end up with problem trees. So was all that growth from just a single growing season or was it two? I may decide to dig the trees up again before the roots escape the bottoms of the bulb pans and lay down a layer of landscape fabric under them before replanting. Any thoughts? Thanks-Larry

[@Bonsaify]

In the case of this tree it started strong and got stronger. And now it's about 8' tall in year 5. When escape rooting I always like to leave an option for cutting roots mid-season. So I'd recommend you do the same...just use a technique that allows access to the escaping roots without a lot of digging.

[@blueridgebonsai9155]

@@Bonsaify They seem to be liking the Asheville weather. I checked the pots for movement today but no wiggles, so their roots apparently have already escaped. I also had to remove the wire today as it was starting to bite in. They are sending out new buds from where I cut back the candles as well as on the trunks and branches. I have never seen such vigorous pines.

[@acheronexile]

I love the idea of an experiment with several variables at work at the same time. I had a few ideas about growing some tropicals in a heavy charcoal mix, but it might be too early for me to be positive about half my predictions.

[@DarthMasiah]

👍

[@T1374]

Is it possible to split the trunk to create movement on the larger tree?

[@Bonsaify]

Yes, although sometimes black pines don't react well to that treatment. Wedge cuts work also. But they can also cause problems. The simplest thing is actually to just bend it, using more force. This tree being only about 1" would be bendable to a larger extent but you'd need some different tools than what I used here.

[@T1374]

@@Bonsaify Great information. Thank you.

[@jessestrong7269]

Man! I feel like I’ve wasted the last 6 years! From now on I’m not even going to bother starting new batches of pines if I don’t have those Anderson products.

[@Bonsaify]

The Anderson bands are great - but don't forget that all the other factors have to be right - I have trees in the same Anderson bands that are small and sickly. That's because of bad soil components in those cases. It's the bands+coarse perlite + FULL sun + escape rooting into the ground that made these trees so large.

[@jyudy7dytcjux]

This was fascinating Eric. I have to ask if there was only one huge pine or were there others too? Is it because of variation in the seeds or using huge perlite or escaping that ultimately made it huge? I’ve planted the seedlings I purchased from you in the tree bands, so they will grow to be “just right” not too big, and not to small 😌

[@Bonsaify]

I had about 15 flats of the Anderson bands with 36 each. Of those, two flats were much larger than the rest - these were the ones with the large perlite rather than smaller perlite or APL. And, the largest 20% were all the ones that had escape rooted out the bottom into the ground. I would say there were about 40 that were effectively this large, with a spectrum of sizes down to the average one I showed. But, even in the Anderson bands there were some that did not do well - but I believe it was due to a bad batch of pumice. (not sure why it was bad but everything that I used it in grew terribly in comparison.) I think the Anderson bands provide more consistent root temperatures because they are such a large mass of soil.

[@Litotryptor]

Cut that biggest one just above the lowest branches. Maybe? Wouldnt it regrow with the same rate?

[@Bonsaify]

Not at the same rate - but it'll bud out nicely. However you'd want to leave some of the real needles (the lower ones got shaded out in the flat) to keep it healthy.

[@TonysBonsai]

Another superb video. thanks for sharing your results with us. Could you tell me please how old were the plants when you put them into the tall Anderson planters? I have some scots pines which are grown from seed this year (they're now around 7-8) months old and are doing ok but are in small individual pots. I'm thinking I should transplant them in much larger tall pots like yours next spring? Or should I do it now in late Autumn (beginning of October)

[@Bonsaify]

They were about 6 months old. I would say the transplant timing depends on your climate - you can do fall transplanting if you have about 4 weeks left of mild warm weather - if you're already getting freezes in your area then you should wait for spring. This assumes you have no greenhouse. But basically, freshly transplanted trees need some time to be able to prepare for winter.

[@TonysBonsai]

Fantastic thank you. We don't generally get it frosty here in northern England until December, so that gives us a couple of months. I'm going to get on it this week!. Thanks again. I'm loving your videos!

[@estherlovesveges]

Could you splay the roots & develope those larger roots into killer nebari & develop feeder roots at the same time?

[@Bonsaify]

Developing good nebari is always an ongoing process. Each time you work on a plant you need to make steps to ensure the nebari is improving. The feeder roots will come back quickly so I'm not concerned about that. Spreading the roots as I did here was just an initial step. In a few years more cutback would be needed to make the nebari really good. But, don't forget that the increase in trunk size will do some of the work for us.

[@jazinzlaty4823]

Hi lovely video What structure does the coco coir have? Is it hairy or more powdery? I have ordered my but seems to be more powdery than I expected Thank you

[@Bonsaify]

It's variable to a certain degree between brands etc. But it's generally a stringy-powdery consistency. It's not much different in appearance and texture from peat moss, we just like the growing properties more than peat moss.

[@jazinzlaty4823]

@@Bonsaify cool Thank you