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This year i finally feel like my pines are thriving after a long period of mediocre growth. This bad growth was due to a number of factors including:

• water pH Issues – Solved by moving to rain water.
• soil mix – I have recently moved to Akadama, Pumice and Scoria and believe this is a good improvement.
• fertiliser regime – This year i am using a two part hydroponic fertiliser and am applying weekly, and;
• strange seasonal variation – We have been in an ‘El-nina’ phase which resulted in cool wet years which even threw my tomato crops off kilter amongst other things

Most of the pines have been grown out last year and skipped de-candling to build their strength and from the below pics you can see they are responding well this year.

The Radiata is a fairly new addition to my garden after not having one for a while. I am treating it more like a Japanese White pine in regards to foliage management and so far am seeing good results. The process is essentially:

1. Grow out the spring flush.
2. once it stops extending, prune back leaving some of the new candle’s growth.
3. New shoots form and grow out
4. Thin needles
5. Prune back new shoots to two and reduce length as per Step 2.
6. Repeat.

I am guessing i will get 2 or 3 flushes per year using this method. So far needles have not come down in size much but as i build more canopy i assume this will slowly reduce the length.

I probably also need to play around with feeding timing but at the moment i am focused on building branching so am feeding heavily. A post for another day.