I always give my pines exposure to a period of frost. This way the tree knows it is time to prepare for winter. I keep them as long as possible in the open air but when the temperatures drop below freezing, I will put them in a plastic greenhouse where the temperature never drops below 0 degrees Celsius (32F). During the daytime, if the weather allows it, you must ventilate as much as possible, and be careful that the temperature does not rise too much when the sun hits your winter shelter.

Compared to two-needle Pines the Japanese White Pine is weaker and less vigorous, and overall more difficult to maintain healthy in our wet northern European climate. But again: with the right techniques performed at the right time, good results are within anybody’s reach! As with the Japanese Black Pine, management is all about redistributing the energy from the stronger zones to the weaker zones! If these annual tasks are not performed, then the strong zones will get stronger and the weak, inner growth will eventually disappear. Losing the inner growth on a Japanese White Pine can be disastrous to your tree and its future design, because even with the right techniques there will be almost no back budding! So if you lose the inner shoots they are probably gone forever!

NO NEVER! Because they are not that vigorous, if you do remove the whole candles on a White Pine, chances are you never get any buds back, resulting in the loss of that shoot and even the whole branch!

Instead of removing entire candles, we will only pinch a part off, accordingly to the strength of the candle.

• First you pinch off 2/3 of the strong candles
• 7 to 10 days later (depending on the pine growth rate where you live), we pinch off 1/2 off the candles in the medium zone.
• Do not touch the weak candles so they can gain strength!

When the tree is more balanced next year you will notice there is much less strength difference between the zones, so in following years you can pinch 2/3 up to 1/2 of every candle. When you work on an immature White Pine and you need growth and length, you only pinch back a little of the strongest candles. Never pinch weak candles, not even in the strong zones!