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I'm really digging the crape. I have despised them as landscape plantings for so long I refused to even look at them in bonsai. Trees like yours are bringing me back around. Perhaps I will try one in a year or so. A somewhat bonsai nursery I frequent just picked up a dozen older abused crapes in 1 gallon cans, all root-bound with great nebari starts. We chopped them back to stumps and put them on the bench for winter. I'm interested to see what happens next. If I get one to work on I will need to hide it so my neighbor does not come over and "top" it like he does the crapes growing in his yard...

I am a huge pine lover, in fact I am out of control (too many and not enough bench). I think you are headed in a good direction with yours, however in my opinion the trunk looks a little anorexic or on the thin side based on the height and branch placement. I don't know where you are headed with this one but you may never see a big and bulky trunk. I went back and looked at the first post you did with the pine and you have made great progress based on those photos. It's filling in very nice. It just will never fatten up. Once the pads develop and you continue down the path of ramification I think the foliage mass will dwarf the trunk size.

Pond basket, good fast draining soil and organics will help but that will accelerate growth. That growth push is a contradiction of what you are doing when you begin the ramification process and start decandling to push dormant buds for finer growth. Once I set the branches I move the tree to a final bonsai pot for the ramification stages.

It's taken me a while to wrap my head around the fat trunk concept on pines, allowing multiple branches to grow out of control while others are pinched or pruned back to keep them in check. Part of that problem is I started working on pines before I really understood how they grow. I have several on my benches like yours that I set final branches too soon. This spring I am going to try something on one - I will allow a terminal bud at the very end of each branch to grow and pinch the others. In the fall I will not cut this candle as it will become a sacrifice branch extension. My hopes are that is I can do this on each branch as well as on an extra branch near the apex I may be able to put on some girth in a few years. If it works I will cut all of them off when I reach a desired size. I am sure I will need to rework the foliage pads to hide the cuts on the ends of the branches.

Does any of this dribble make sense? I'm not saying it's not a nice tree, it is and has a great form and good branch placement. It's just in a few years you will not have the chance to go back and fatten it up.

I attached a photo that Steve Pilacik sent me of some little pines he is working on. Notice that most of them have a great big sacrifice branch out of the top but they are in small pots. Chop the sacrifice this spring and begin the ramification.