they are all like that..

and it is imperative that they be cleaned out..

and we in the great white north.. do it with leather gloves.. and a winter coat.. for the reason you mentioned.. lol ...

both are the nature of the beast ...

ken

I wish I had known. It was really hard to get up in near the top of it. There are still some needles left. Any grooming instructions or tips webpage out there.

I doubt you have one but you could point a leaf blower (not too high of a speed) toward the sky to get some of them out.

This cultivar has a very tight dense growth habit. The needles will not fall to the ground because of this. A yearly event, usually spring, that you better get use to. With long sleeves on and tight fitting stretch cloves go fishing and get them out. Start at the top and work down. Good air circulation is a must to keep this cultivar happy.

When it gets big like this one it becomes time consuming job. I have often thought do I really want this conifer? Where is the saw.

Dave

{{gwi:643423}}

Dave

i doubt there will be a utube instructions for:

protect hands/arm.. insert hand.. pull out needles ... repeat ad nauseum.. until complete ...

just do it ...

ken

Not humans, but gnomes will do this job in the forests...
Didn't you learned that at nursery school?

Hmmm...that must mean that, when searching for gnomes, a good place to start would be in a forest of Pinus thunbergii 'Thunderhead' trees.

As soon as I got it began to make candle cones, and those cones turned to other type of cones, some are green or red large or small. Why does the cycle last so long? Do the cones ever fall off? I tried to cut one damaged part off once, but it weep sap and looked terrible. It hates to be trimmed. It never looks like a plain tree. It's not so bad, not complaining, but the other photo someone posted looks like a tree. It never get cold here, so there is no winter here, never get below 40 degrees, almost never does.

Here is a link that might be useful: Never stops making cones

Alex, In Japan, were the Pinus thunbergii is growing in the forests, are living plenty of such gnomes and there's not a single brown needle in the trees.

"Why does this cycle last so long":
This is because we have a watch and Mother Nature does have the time...

The best solution for you is to buy a plastic one which is always proper, will not have dead needles and will only cone once :0)

LOL!! I guess it all depends on where you find your gardening pleasure, but grooming dead needles out of all the pines we have at the nursery - and many are pretty good size - rates rather high on my list (cleaning out the interiors of the chamaes is pretty good, too). Not only does it make the plants look better, but you can almost feel them heaving a sigh of relief to get rid of that excess dead baggage.

How can the tree survive in nature? Since 'Thunderhead' is a cultivated variety, it does not exist "in nature". Nor do many of the other very compact or dwarf forms of conifers where this build-up exists. Just like pruning or grooming (or deadheading or dividing) is required on a whole host of other cultivated plants we have in our gardens that don't occur naturally in the wild, this periodic grooming is one of the many maintenance activities we gardeners must participate in to keep our plants happy and healthy.

So, if you have a full size one, mine is a dwarf, it would be like you had to clean it out by getting a big ladder? A leaf blower would be great if I had one. I don't get many leaves to blow. Maybe a leaf sucking machine? It would vacuum up all the needles into a catchment tank, so I could put them into my cold compost bin. Mantis sold a leaf vacuum once, but it was really huge as I remember. I need a hand held leaf vacuum.

yours is an aberration to what is the norm ... a dwarf ..

see link

in the forest.. they are 80 foot telephone poles.. not some dwarf freak of nature propagated for a suburban garden ... eh??

below is a pic of my freak dwarf gnome.. taking care of my tricolor beech ...

ken
{{gwi:242702}}

Here is a link that might be useful: link

This is my Thunderhead of about 15 yrs. It's never been cleaned and doesn't seem to need it. I can't really understand the fuss. I do appreciate Edwins comment about the plastic plants though.lol
john

I see three trees, but this is not the same kind as mine is.
The candles on mine are white not green. That kind above apparently does not cleaning.

In order to get all the rest of mine cleaned out, I had to prune some small twigs to make a space for my hand to get it and clean it. I tried the dust buster, but that would not suck up the pine needles. But, it looks a lot better now.

It's a beautiful tree, tropical! Get it a big back-scratcher or something and help it exfoliate! It's only a few minutes once a year!

Ken, your garden gnome is a cutie!