This timing is very important; if you wait too long the candle has grown too much and you will damage the already opened needles. The best time to pinch is just before the needles are opening up from the candles. So, although with slightly different techniques than on two-needle Pines, the things we are after are just the same! We want to control and rebalance the growing force of the whole tree. By helping the weaker candles grow stronger and slowing down the stronger candles, they whole tree becomes more balanced!

Do this with the nails of your thumb and index finger as straight as possible, if you don’t do it straight, there will be a difference in strength in the new buds that will cluster around the spot where you have pinched the candle!

Shoot pruning is done on candles that have opened up and became shoots because they were left untouched earlier in the season, or on shoots that have grown out of the desired silhouette. Cut them back with a sharp shear, leaving 4 or 5 clusters of needles on every shoot. Don’t cut them back without leaving any needles on them, because you might not get any buds back and you will loose that shoot! Pruning shoots is only performed when shoots were left growing, in order to thicken a branch, or when they were overlooked during candle pinching. Sometimes it is good to let candles grow into shoots during the early years of developing a young White Pine; young trees react very well to shoot pruning, and will make more new buds this way because there is a lot of energy going through those freely growing branches.