Candle pruning

From BonsaiWIKI

Candle pruning is a technique used to prune pines by removing or trimming the candles of needled species of trees.

There are several methods of performing candle pruning. Timing is critical in this work. Candle pruning is typically done sometime in summer, but exact timing will depend on your climate.

The simplest, conceptually, is to snap the turgid candles of Japanese Black Pine roughly in half on stronger branches (or pinch back those of a Japanese White Pine

Other methods involve complete removal of the candles of Japanese Black Pine over a period of a couple weeks. The first week, the strongest candles are removed. Ten days later, the weaker candles, and after a final ten days, the weakest are cut away.

Another method involves removal of the candles simultaneously after they have matured. In this method, a short stub is left after removing the candle. The length of the stub should be directly proportional to the length of the branch. The length of the stub should be roughly proportional to the width of the candle. So stubs might vary in length from 7mm on the strong branches to 3mm on the weakest. It works by enabling the auxins in the stub to continue their work of inhibiting the growth of new candles until the stub dies back. The length of time it takes the stub to die is proportional to its length, so this method achieves the same result, as time-staggered pruning, but allows the convenience of a single work session.