Japanese Red Pine from seed – Adding trunk movement

3 Years ago I started a batch of Japanese Red Pines or Pinus Densiflora from seed. Unfortunately I didn’t have pics of them until now.

I started out with 40 but sold most of them and kept the 5 most promising ones.
Since Japanese Red Pines (JRP) are very suited for making literati bonsai I decided to go that way.

Here’s how they looked after growing freely for the first 3 years.

For easy wiring I removed the 2 and 3 year old needles first. After that I wired the trunk all the way up to this years new shoots and put some interesting bends in the trunks.

It’s important to do this while they are young because it’s much easier and safer to make these kind of bends now.

Here’s how they look now.

Now they can grow until the beginning of next year and hopefuly they get their second flush this year. Next spring I’ll repot them into pond baskets so they have a bit more space for the roots to develop.