I have no advice, but nice conifer!

Nice! I was hoping for a shot of the newly renovated mini bed. looks like you kept the 'St. Mary's Broom' and the 'Daub's Frosted'.

I have been curious if dead heading the profuse coners is beneficial and what happens to the leader when it produces a terminal cone. Will it produce a new terminal leader bud next to the base of the cone?

why would you want to , or need to ?

ron

well.. they are now brown ... and there is something about the timing and bud set for next year.. etc ...

i have a call into conifer kingdom ... but i was hoping for a faster answer

ken

Let us know if you learn anything from conifer kingdom if no one else chimes in here.

I've always done a simple pinch and a twist to unwanted brown cones but I have no clue about timing.

Ken,

What a beautiful plant you got there!

Thanks for sharing the pics.

John N.

I have a similar cultivar--'Putsch'-- and it produced no new cones this year. Is that because I didn't know about how and when to pinch off the old cones? I was so disappointed not to see the new cones. Doesn't seem practical to be doing this every year to a much larger plant.

@laceyvail, I have had my 'Pusch' for several years now and it has coned every year without pruning. I have never heard of anyone ever cone pruning until Ken mentioned it here. I am pretty sure that it is not necessary as I have seen a few large 'Pusch' coning like crazy and I know that they were never cone pruned, but perhaps there is some benefit to it. I did it on a few of my other trees because the cones where brown and spent. They didn't look great anymore so I was just helping them to fall off early.

Sorry I'm not much help. Perhaps your 'Pusch' is just trying to put out some normal growth this year rather than putting all of it's resources with little growth into cone production. I'm sure you will get cones next year. Are you using fertilizer? If so, I would not.

Hopefully someone else more knowledgeable will have a better explanation.

this has nothing to do with pusch .. as far as i know

Ken, what has nothing to do with Pusch? I thought, when I saw your 'ruby Teardrops' that the Pusch would be similar in the need to prune. In any case,I posted this as a separate thread, and I see now that I didn't need to.

Are you referring to when you pinch to control back budding to increase branch ramification, as they do in Bonsai?

Higher branch ramification would produce more (shorter) branches and subsequently more purple cones, ie, more color!

From what I recall, if you pinch early you will get a lot of back budding, and it will produce multiple shoots next year, or wait till mid summer you will get only one or two... but that was from a YouTube video (Neil Ryan - lecture on Pines parts 1 & 2) referring to Japanese Black Pine, and other pines that produce 2 bud-sets per year.

I don't know if/how that works on Picea Pungens though. They are probably only capable of producing a single bud-set per year, like White Pines.

A good Bonsai Forum (not the Houzz one!) might be able to better answer this query.

If not, sorry.

Those are still a fascinating videos to watch regardless!

Often when a terminal cone is formed instead of a shoot, there are no terminal buds set and the shoot will not grow in future years.

Is this your purpose Ken? To "candle prune" the shoot early enough to stimulate terminal bud development so that the shoots will continue to extend in future years?

i swear.. brent told me.. something along the lines that if i twist off the cones ... leaving just a little sheath of the cone.. it will bud there.. for next year ...

but i cant confirm it ...

i have been calling them out there.. but not leaving messages ..

i will get an answer within a few days ...

ken