Plucking Pine Needles by Martha Gerthe This (September or October) is the right time of year to pluck pine needles. We remove older needles to give the interior and lower branches of the tree more sunlight and air. This keeps the tree healthy and helps to trigger backbudding. It can also be used to subdue parts of a tree that are more vigorous than the rest, balancing the appearance of the tree. How much to thin is dictated by the health of the tree and by the strength of the lower branches and the interior shoots. The first thing to do is to remove most of the old needles from previous years' growth. These may be turning brown and are usually easy to remove. To remove them, pull gently in the direction of growth, that is towards the tip the branch. If you want a bud for a branch in a particular spot, it may help to leave that one set of needles intact. If a branch is particularly weak, leave some of the old green needles to provide more nourishment to the branch. To tell which needles have grown in previous years, look for a small bare space between the sets of needles. Drawing of Needle Spacing Next we want to consider balancing the growth of the tree. Most trees tend to be apically dominant, meaning that the top branches grow faster and are bushier. For example, if the lowest branches are strong and have an average of 15-20 needles pairs per shoot, the upper branches may have 30 or even 40 needle pairs on a shoot. More needles lead to the development of larger, longer candles and longer internodes. Fewer needles give smaller candles and shorter internodes. We want to encourage shorter internodes so that branching is increased. This will give us better ramification and an older looking tree. You may want to leave the all the new needle pairs on the shoots of the lower branches or reduce them slightly. Then you will need to thin to reduce the number of needle pairs on the mid-level shoots to less than that number. Further, the number of needle pairs on the upper shoots will need to be reduced to even less than the mid-level shoots. This will help to counteract the natural apical dominance of the tree and make all the branches grow more evenly.Interior and exterior shoots also need to be balanced so that the tree will not become bare on the inside.İYou will need to reduce the number of needles on the exterior shoots to less than those on the interior shoots on each level, if possible. If some interior shoots have very few needles, you may not want to reduce the outside shoots to have even fewer needles. Just balance things the best you can. After the needle plucking is done, we will want to consider the styling of the tree. Some pruning may be needed to improve the overall shape of the tree. Branchlets that cross, go in the wrong direction, or issue excessively from one spot will need to be trimmed. Then the tree should be carefully wired. Below is a picture of a mugo pine branch at the middle level of the tree. The first picture is before plucking, and the second picture is after plucking. Before Plucking After last year's needles have been plucked, and this year's needles have been partially plucked to balance the tree, the banch looks like this. The picture does not show the pruning and wiring yet to be done. After Plucking This year's needles: Look for differences in color and length between these and older needles