All You Need To Know To Have The Most Beautiful Japanese White Pine Bonsai Tree
The Japanese white pine (or the Pinus parviflora as it is named in Latin) bonsai tree is one of the most strikingly beautiful bonsai trees ever. This tree when growing naturally can reach astounding heights of more than 50 feet and yet it can be dwarfed to become a few inches in height as bonsai. The reason why everybody loves the Japanese white pine bonsai tree is because it has this excellent canopy and gnarled shape which is so stunning. Amazingly, this tree is at its best behavior at the hands of both beginners and veterans.
Learning To Care For Your Japanese White Pine Bonsai Tree
This tree loves cool climate and direct sunrays hence, the best place to keep it would be outdoors. You would need to remember that this tree always needs to have a good drainage or its roots will rot. Since the Japanese white pine bonsai tree grows rapidly in the spring time, you need to add the fertilizer in large dozes throughout the spring season in the combination of 20:20:20. For the rest of time (summer, fall and winter) when the metabolism of the tree slows down a lot you would need to give it a slow acting fertilizer. Check the soil for acidity and if you find it less, ensure that you bring to the normal levels.
Your Japanese white pine bonsai tree needs to be pruned only during late fall when you could also wire it. Once shaped and wired in whichever way you want, you need to leave the wire untouched for a minimum of six and maximum of eight months. Keep the new shoots short and well pruned by clipping those (using only fingers) to one third of their length late on the spring. If and only if your Japanese white pine bonsai tree is healthy and strong you could remove all the new shoots, otherwise you leave it alone as such pruning would disfigure or totally kill it.
Depending whether you want to keep your bonsai indoors or outdoors you need to train its roots to grow deep or stay on the top. If you keep it as an outdoor plant, the roots needs to be deep as a little wind could topple it over; for indoor shallow roots would be fine.
An important tip is that the Japanese white pine bonsai tree is dependent for its life on a fungus known as rootball. This fungus has great (read beneficial) impact on the roots and normally when this fungus dies, the bonsai tree would also die. Hence, it is important that the white pine should never be bare rooted.
