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from the blog
An Important Distinction: ‘Decandling’ and ‘Breaking’ Pine Shoots
This is an edited post from 2016 on a topic I get asked a lot—deciding whether to break or decandle a pine. For starters, let’s define decandling and breaking— Breaking (or pinching) means taking part of the shoot off, usually with fingers, as the shoot is extending in early to mid-spring, and before the needles […]
A Yellow Cedar Gets Potted And Reset
This collected Yellow Cedar, Callitropsis nootkatensis, came from Vancouver Island, BC. We designed it six years ago, and in the following photo essay we transfer it from a box to a pot, and adjust the branches. Patch and Masaki removed the Yellow Cedar from the box and began exploring the root mass. We hoped it […]
A Brief Tutorial in Pinching Japanese Maples
This 20-year old Japanese Maple has never been pinched. Freely grown, a maple will have a coarse shoot structure, but this early period of no pinching develops the trunk and branches and roots. Pinching a maple when young stunts development. This Japanese Maple might be pinched this year. The branching is past tertiary and has […]