AusBonsai

I thought I would start a thread for my five Radiata Pines I’ve been growing from tubestock since 2019. I’ve always found it interesting to see how people go about growing a tree/trees from a very young seedling or tubestock all the way up to a refined bonsai. Radiata became an interest of mine early on as it was the only pine species available to me for years.

So the story is I bought five of these tubestock for $5 around August/September 2019. I was only a year in to bonsai as a hobby at the time. I Potted them into some larger pots and twisted some movement into them, as you can see in the earliest photo I took. Two of them were bent down to train into cascades. Before too long the wire started to bite in pretty hard, so I removed it. I put them to the side and never reapplied wire to the trunks

As you will see in the next photos which were August 2020, the movement I initially put in to the trunks straightened out quite a bit and the two cascades bounced back to upright trees

At this stage I gave them all a repot and tried to tidy up the surface roots and lay them out better. They all had a healthy mycorrhizae growth around the roots. You will see one of the pines that is singled out I tested repotting earlier than the others which it didn’t like and in turn was set back for a while hence the much skinnier trunk.

It has now been almost 3 years and they have started to fatten up, and are growing vigorously. I just need to make some decisions for the direction I want some of them to head in moving forward.
October 2019 Initial movement
Late 2019 on the bench
August 2020 After Repot
August 2020 the one repotted too early that was set back.
September 2022
September 2022
Sept 2022 (the skinnier set back one now bouncing back). Thinking Literati for this one.
Sept 2022
Sept 2022
Sept 2022
Sept 2022. Thinking about cutting the main trunk and using that strong low branch as a new leader.
Sept 2022 Trunk

Love a progression thread, probably love it a little bit more than most when it relates to pines.
These are great, I’ll enjoy watching what you make of them as things develop. Great work to date! I only own one Radiata but have worked on a few… plenty of scope to make these into something interesting.

I dug a few Radiata Pines locally just a few weeks ago for future projects, so I will be watching your thread to see how you get on and to pick up some tips.

With Monterey Pines being so abundant & easily acquired from seed or yamadori (much like Olives, Hawthorn etc in some states), we could argue that these are underutilised & undervalued as bonsai, particularly as larger trees.

I just saw this post now. Nice start. Keep at it and update us.
Cheers,
Symon

Updates on these. I have since sold one of them but still have four.
1
2
3
4

These look to be progressing really well - certainly a species I've considered adding so I plan on eagerly watching along with this.

I've never grown something from seed and am amazed at how quickly and easily they seemed to have shrugged off that early wiring; I'm really glad I saw this as it's certainly not something I'd have been conscious!

I’ve gotten around to working some of these pines again recently. Still very early days so mostly big cuts and primary branch and trunk wiring. Here is 3 and 4.

#3 before working:
I cut off the sideways growing root in the photo above.



#3 after work: Out of the two branches at the top one will be a sacrifice and the other the new trunk line. Haven’t decided which will be which yet. See what happens.




#4 before working:

#4 after work in April: That sacrifice will be turned into a short Jin when I’m done with it.


This is now after some growth

Just finished working on #4. Cleaned out and wired ready for spring.

I'm happy with the way it's progressing. I don't want it to be any taller than it is now so I've started to move things around to begin making a crown. I'm thinking I'll leave the sacrifice for one more year, and then leave a short jin when I remove it.
Before After needle reduction After wire

Nice progression!

#1 has just been wired up. I did the needle reduction and shoot selection back in April with Tony Bebb when he was here. We jinned the top off and pulled the trunk across and down with a guy wire to compact the tree some more. As the first major branch is quite low Tony pointed out the tree needed to be shorter to be in proportion.

It looks pretty formulaic to me right now as a lot of the branches are a bit long creating a standard triangle silhouette. Down the track I envision more variation in the silhouette as it develops. It’s still early days though.
April before work
April after working
June before
June after