I attended a black pine workshop last spring offered by Northern Va Bonsai and lead by Michael Persiano. After listening to his discussion about superfeeding, I decided to try an experiment by using a control group where I followed my regular feeding pro
gram of alternating between a tea from Plant tone (an organic fertilizer), Bio-gold (left on the tree continuously) and fish emulsion. In the superfed group I fed fertilizer cakes – at a very heavy rate – that I obtained from Marc Torppa of the Growing Gro
unds as well as fish emulsion. I contemplated making the cakes myself using a recipe but opted for Marc’s ready made cakes. All trees were equally healthy.
Although I expected to see somewhat of a difference in the trees’ growth this spring, I was not prepared for the profusion of budding on the superfed trees with little difference to new growth or back budding on old wood. In fact I took one of the trees to
my club meeting to show members the results of last fall’s needle plucking combined with heavy feeding last year. I tried counting the buds on one of the trees and quit after reaching over 450. This particular tree is an informal upright approx 20” high &
20 inches wide with a trunk 6 inches circumstance at the soil line.
I was so concerned at the explosion of budding I contacted Michael, when I could not find any literature on selection of buds for removal when the tree produces an ‘over-abundance’ of buds. I was afraid that the tree would be stressed by supporting a large
number of buds on branches. What I learned was that the profusion of buds is what I should have expected following a superfeeding regime. I am removing buds that were way too close together and those that had popped on the underside of the branches as wel
l as those in the junction of branches,
As I said the budding this spring has been an 'explosion' of growth, far more than I ever expected and I'm a little overwhelmed at what the tree is producing. I never expected to see results of this magnitude. I believe that following established black pin
e care guidelines combines with candle removal on July 4th (easy date to remember for me) and superfeeding this year, I should be able to get a second flush of candles in late summer since I also live in zone 7. I will post pics to the gallery this week
since it’s one of those things you really need to see in order to appreciate.
Randi Sharp
Richmond, VA
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