why do they need bud pinching????

how big are they ... if they are babes.. more green.. means more food production.. means faster growth ...

what do you expect to accomplish by removing part of the candle ... and i am questioning whether 'filling in' is a good reason ...

i would leave them be ... for what it is worth ... they will eventually fill in .. as they are prone to do.. all by themselves ... at some point a parent must let go of their babes ... lol ..

more facts please ...

oh .. and you pinch.. before new buds are set.. or else.. you will remove all of next years buds ... pines do not have dormant buds so what is there .. must be protected .. and new buds will be set, as the new growth ages in early summer ...

good luck

ken

Hi Ken,

We've planted tons of white pine over the years, but when we bought them, they had been pruned and were very full. We usually like to buy 3-4' white pines. But there's not many of them around here much anymore to buy, and they're very expensive now. We've never had to prune those. They are now huge and full and beautiful.

But lately, I've been buying really small ones.....maybe in a 1 gallon pot and only about a foot tall. These are very scraggly, with only a couple branches. The ones that have been growing a few years aren't thickening up at all.
I've seen people with taller white pines in their yards (about 8' tall) and they have barely any branches. I didn't want these little guys to grow up to be like that.

I agree with everything Ken said. The question here is what kind of tree you want these little pines to grow up to be. If you want "naturally growing" large white pine trees, any pruning you do will simply slow the growth process and postpone the time when they will be large mature trees.

But if what you want are a cute little trees that look much like the white pine Christmas trees that are sold, then prune as Ken says, which put into my own words, would be to cut back the leader and side shoots by a third or a half just as they are becoming fully extended. If you wait too long, they will not set new buds at the point where you made the cuts.

But, you will not be able to keep these as cute little trees for very long. They will get larger and taller, and pruning will become a major job, and in the end, the trees will be a "mess."

Even if you prune them back for just a few years to make them "look better" for a time, you will be causing the tree to produce more branches low down on the trunk, and these will later have to be pruned off, unless you want them to keep their branches down to the ground. And if that is what you want, the very dense branching very low down on the tree will not be balanced with the branching higher up after you stop pruning.

The only excuse I can see for pruning back the growth of white pine trees is for Christmas tree production.

By the way, eastern white pines are one of my very favorite trees. They look different (maybe a little thin foliaged?) in their juvenile stages, but I enjoy watching them develop naturally.

--Spruce

The last thing I want is a "cute little" white pine. We must have about 60 huge white pine and I want these new ones to look like that and not the scraggly thin ones I'm seeing in some peoples' yards. I was trying to help it be healthier and fuller, not meet some weird notion of cute. I've never bought such thin small white pines before, so I want to be sure to give them what they need.
We are very rural out here on our 30+ acres and the last thing we are out here is "cute". LOL!
Would it help if I posted a pic of the ones I'm talking about?
So are you 2 saying that if we just let it go, it will fill in and eventually be very full, without any intervention?

any chance at a pic???

i think i got it ...

the only problem with these trees.. are your expectations ... when you said: I've never bought such thin small white pines before, so I want to be sure to give them what they need.

how about.. you ignore them for at least two more years ...

and then decide if you need to do anything ...

when these trees get to 10 feet.... and they will ... the branches that are one them now ... at one foot tall ... will be long shed ...

or the ones 4 feet up.. will have sagged down in 10 years ...

let them hang onto as many food making needles to grow the root system they need ... and they will reward you ...

and i often call your expectations as TRYING TO KILL THEM WITH TOO MUCH LOVE ..

they are pines.. they grow like weeds ... i got some from wallyworld one footers in one gallon of sand.. and in the third year.. they were growing 5 feet per year ... just let them go for it ...

pic???

ken

thanks Ken,
I'll get a pic tonight. 2 of them have been growing for a couple years and they still look sad. But like I said, we usually buy really thick 3-4' trees and they've always been full. So maybe I just don't know how spindly they are when they are young and unpruned. I was assuming it was the grower's pruning that made them so thick.
Just in my defense......I've never killed anything with reasonable care. Usually when something dies out here, its from beavers, rabbits, deer, or hubby's lawmowing. ;)

another problem.. is that by the time you buy the big one ... all the retards have been culled out ...

not every tree will turn out perfect ...

so when you are buying smaller... i suppose you should expect a few.. to just not pan out ... to look like all the others ... but that is not to say.. in 20 years it wont end up being the same ....

ken

What these two gentlemen have said. Aside from Spruceman's one exception-Christmas tree growing-I would never prune a white pine.

+oM

Well dang. I've just spent 30 minutes trying to post my pics from Photobucket, and its not working. For some reason, they just won't transfer to here.
but.....while I have you here.....I noticed that one of the smaller pines looks like its dying. The needles are dull and drooping. We've protected it from animals. Would this be how it looked if it transpired too much this past winter?
I'll keep working on those pics. Darnit. I don't know why they won't transfer.

Just copy the HTML code of the pic to your post. You'll see the pic when you preview your post.

tj

Thanks tj,
I figured out what I was doing wrong. I think it will work now.
The smaller tree is the $10 one and the larger one is the $50 one. The smaller tree was planted 3 years ago and the larger one 1 and 1/2 years. I just had concerns that the smaller one would look like some of the one's I've seen in peoples' yards that are about 10' tall with only 3 thin branches.
{{gwi:667688}}
{{gwi:667690}}

Scraggely looking little white pines in your neighborhood? Your own seem to look fine to me. The little guy is having nice new branches.
I have 3 scraggely looking huge white pines, which self prune anytime there is a wet-snow or ice storm. They also have multiple leaders at multiple heights. But they have character and provide shade, so we keep them.

oh my.. a picture is worth a million words of speculation ...

i will yell: LEAVE IT ALONE ...

now ... who are you paying $10 for a tree 2 years younger than the last pic .... check out musserforests.com next time you need to order more .. check out the special at the link ... also copy/paste this page for more general info :

http://www.musserforests.com/prod.asp?p=EWP

25 3 year old plants for $31??? zowee ...

now.. first pic.. is that a double leader.. or an optical delusion??? you know to get rid of any extra leaders ... yes??

now ... go look at the first one ... it is finally established ...

note last years leader growth .... what is it.. 12 to 18 inches??? .... then trace down between the top 2 whorls .. i will bet its 8 to 12 inches ... then trace down further.. note the bark changes with each years growth.. as the trunk /bark matures ... and i will bet that the leader grew 6 to 8 inches ... now you are done with that tree ... so each previous year.. it grew more than the year before [BTW if length of leader growth regresses in any given year.. you will probably recall a drought the previous summer ...]

now go do the same on some of the others ... learn to see what your trees are doing ...

on pine.. it is not all that hard.. to see the annual growth because of the whorls ... which are the ring of lateral branches ...

i will guess on the top pic.. that leader will go at least 2 feet this year.. and probably 3 feet next year ...

then .. take your knowledge.. and then you can compare the younger ... after this years spring growth.. to figure out where it is.. in the 'established' range ...

the babe is gorgeous.. please.. put the shears away.. and step away ... the bigger does look like it was sheared in its early life .. the bottom looks like it is supposed to ..

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: special deal $5.50 each for 4 year old plants

Thanks Ken! Its great to get info like this! I wasn't going to prune anything until I educated myself.

Yes, that is a double leader. As I was posting this, I thought to myself "I'll bet Ken will wonder why I haven't already cut that second leader!" haha
Are there any rules I should follow in cutting that back?
I will check out Musser. I am aware of them, but back in the early 80's and 90's when I was considering them, there was some sort of infestation problem the east was having with them, and I didn't want to bring it here.
I haven't checked your link out yet, but I'm assuming the 4 year old plants aren't tiny. Isn't the shipping really high for all that weight?
Gosh, we'd love to get a bunch of them! Even though white pines don't do well at all with ice storms, they sure know how to recover from them. They're not perfect in form after that, but I don't care. I just love them.

Like I said earlier, one of the small ones is drooping and has dusky needles. I'm assuming its dying. Any ideas why? It was treated the same as all of them were. Maybe from transpiration after a rough winter? We just hate losing them.
Thanks so much for your help!

when you are dealing in bulk ... why any one tree dies is speculative ... this cant be the only one that has died.. in all the ones you planted is it???

i would call it dullness.. rather than dusky.. its leaf damage.. from what.. who knows until you dig it up and figure out why it does not have enough roots ... i have gone as far as blaming indian burial ground soil ...

but .. if the buds are still viable.. nice tan color [like on the other pines].. and hard.. it might still releaf.. and move on with its life ... black mushy buds are goners ...

i have had variegated pines lose every needle after winter for 3 years running .. until the rootmass could keep them on the tree ... and they survived .... so there is still hope ...

where are you.. call the county extension or soil conservation dist office today .. and find out if they have a spring tree sale ...

small trees would be sent bare root ... so shipping might be under 5 bucks .. and that would still not come very close to your $10 per plant ...

but again.. when you order 25.. do NOT expect every single one to live ...

and finally.. WHY THE MONOCULTURE .... why not find other conifers to add to your plantation???? what about picea abies.. they do well in ice???

ken

Thanks Ken,
Have had very few of anything I've ever planted die. And its usually been from deer or beavers or horrible ice storms. Then once, we had a neighbor's cows stampede over our young pines one year and lost one. :)

We have other kinds. I had about 10 Austrian pines but they're all dying from something, so I'm not buying any more of them. We have 1 concolor fir and a bunch of spruce. Just planted about 5 Norway spruce last fall, and before that we planted about 6 black hills spruce.

We're planting them all in the open area around our house, but these recent ones were out in a field behind the barn. We just wanted to create another big stand of the white pine.

I'm a tree junkie. :)
Oh....about that double leader, should I cut it flush with the remaining leader, or should I cut it out far enough that it can make side branches? Is now a good time?

I wouldn't expect all the trees from Musser to survive.
The hard part for us is digging a great hole and then putting fencing around it, and then trying to beat down the weeds every year. We grow weeds here big enough for firewood. :)

DH put some landscape fabric around the bottoms of them, but that seems to only be a nice hiding place for mice, and the weeds seem to still grow.

I like having all different sorts of trees, since they all seem to attract different birds......which I like as much as evergreens.

double leader should be completely removed .... as close to the trunk as you can.. without damaging the other ...

where are you .. what state??

even if a babe dies in an improved planting space.. you can always replace it next planting season ... its not like the space will no longer be there ...

ken

I'm in Indiana.
Okay to cut the double leader now?
I appreciate all your guidance!

Hey again Ken,
I took another pic of one of the other white pines with a side branch that is taller than the leader. Should I cut that one completely off too?
Thanks.
{{gwi:667692}}

Hey Ken.....I wasn't sure you saw my last 2 questions and this post was fading into the sunset, so I'm bringing it back to page 1, in hopes that you'll see it.
Thanks!

hi catherine, my indiana friend!! i love that tree...it looks like it's waving!

HEY KEN, ARE YOU OUT THERE? SHE'S TALKING TO YOU. lol

its hard on that pic...

i think i get rid of the waiver .. and i think i see 2 regular leaders in there.. remove one

yes???

ken

Hi Ademink! Haven't seen you in awhile!

I think you're right Ken. I'm the queen of double leaders. haha (Actually, I think there might be 3 leaders on that one).
Sometimes I wait a little bit to see if one will take off and leave the rest behind.