My friends...
This was actually my very first project in the garden. And in hind sight I should have posted it sooner in case anyone would want to try it. But better late than never....
This was an 11 hour project. For a few different reasons. The largest of which was the fact that I had to unwire the beast. And while it may well look large in the photo, it's larger than this photo shows. This tree was covered in wire on just about every inch... with multiple sizes. When Dan asked me to unwire it as well as doing the defoliation, I was terribly intimidated. Because the first thing he informed me of was the fact that I was not allowed to cut off the wire. I was to unwind it all.
There's a lot of fragile deadwood elements on this tree... some of them are so fine it's hard to work around them without putting anything at risk. As it stood it took pliers to get the largest wire undone. It is all aluminum, which helped (can't unwind copper
), but being the first project... it was a little overwhelming to unwind, trace, and work around about 6 different sizes of wire. I have to admit... I learned more about good wiring by unwinding it, than I can possibly express. It was a very good experience! (unnerving... but good. lol)
So... the point of even messing with this tree, was to defoliate it in a manner which Dan was told would cause it to back bud. I believe he said the name of the gentleman who told him about the process is David Roe... I'll have to double check. In any case... this individual has a good deal of experience with Lodge Pole Pine apparently.
As it was explained to Dan.... If all the two year old needles are removed, then all the previous year's needles are cut in half, that will cause the tree to create a lot of buds further back in the branch. It is apparently triggered by the stress the tree will experience with all needles being removed or reduced. The stress being the sudden reduction of food production due to the missing and reduced needles.
There are a few caveats to this.... This is apparently only for Lodge Pole Pines... the procedure should be done before the buds have extended very much... and only be done on trees which had a very vigorous previous year. In fact, on this pine, the previous year's growth was a good deal longer than the two year old growth. (Sorry didn't think to take a photo when I started, was too busy biting my nails.
)
The method that I used, since the last years growth was longer, was to gather all those needles with one hand... this made all the smaller needles (two year old growth) stand out, I plucked them all by hand, and then used my shears to cut the needles in my hand in half. Once I got sections unwired, and got a rhythm, this went along at a good pace. But it still took a lot of time due to the shear size of the tree.
The tree is about 150 yo. It's a beautiful example of the undulating motion Dan puts into his trees.
Here are a couple photos of the tree... and a shot of some finished bundles are included.
Kind regards,
Victrinia
