Reading your blog has inspired me to go out and get a Spruce to style. It’s rather large at the moment and I want to increase back budding and styling options lower down the tree. It’s growing vigourously at the moment with 6 inch candle extensions. Can I cut back now to let in light / air and induce back budding / branch formation further down the tree ready for styling (maybe in Jan 2015) or is it best to wait til after growth has finished?

For young Scots decandling is sometimes a good option. And for some older trees, too. But many older Scots should not be decandled, which is not much different from many Black pines. Very old established Black pines also skip years, and, unfortunately, we need a fair amount of experience to know when you can/should skip a year decandling. We can’t simply look at a list—like I’ve got there—and decide we can decandle. For instance, we can really weaken a Black pine—or any of these pines—when we decandle it in a year we should leave it alone. And they too will just leave buds that don’t form a shoot when they’re simply old and have been decandled for many years. Which is what you’re seeing with your Scots. Red pine and Scots may certainly be treated as White pines, with the shoot shortened by pinching during elongation.

For your Scots consider: Decandling earlier, fertilizing much more in the spring, give more sun, do only fall decandling, or, simply treat as a white pine and pinch shoots as opposed to decandling. Many Scots are treated this way.

Decandling is a pain in the butt! If we can avoid it, we should. If we’ve trees that are old, or not responding to decandling, then resort to gentler techniques.