Pine tree saga

I thought I'd spend today's post talking about the amazing saga of a little pine tree.  First a little history.  If you've read my blog along the way you know I tried growing some little pines from seeds.  I had nine pine seeds which I attempted to start and two of them came up.  It was a bonsai gift, so I babied the seedlings and planted them in the bonsai box they came with.  The first picture in this post is when they were at their most healthy, and maybe 7-8 inches tall.  That was last March, a year ago.

At that point they stopped putting on any height and I thought maybe their growth was restricted by the bonsai box they were in.  I decided to transplant them and let them grow instead of leaving them alone and stunting their growth into bonsai trees.  Or that was my thought process anyway.  So I transplanted them into a bigger, deeper pot.  As you can see they did fairly well at first.  But shortly after this second picture they began to decline.  The moss growing with them all died and so I thought maybe they were too dry, then I thought maybe they were too wet.  I even tried transplanting them again, but despite everything I tried the pine needles turned yellow and then brown, in a pattern moving up the trunks of both trees and outward on the limbs.  I tried fungicides and meters to determine how wet or dry the soil was.  Nothing worked.  By late last November, the smaller tree was dead and the larger tree seemed to be fast approaching that state. 

So I put them outside.  I figured they are pine trees and probably they stand a much better chance of surviving out in Nature, without my tender loving care, then they did with me trying different remedies on them.  Unfortunately, about a week after I put them outside, we had our first ice storm.   The third picture is of the poor little things encased in ice the morning of the ice storm.  I figured they were goners, and that seemed to be the case.  The picture after that is how they've looked all winter . . . like dead twigs that might once have been a plant.

And it's been a fairly long, cold winter this year, even here in the South.  The first decently warm weekend we had after our last ice storm (the first weekend in March), I was out looking at the little peach trees and quince and roses and I happened to glance at the dead pine trees in passing.  Wait a moment!  Is that buds I see on the end of those dead branches?  It is!  It's buds!  Is this thing alive?!?  

Yes, non-believer.  Check out the last picture.  The larger pine tree is definitely putting on new growth all along the trunk and along the remaining branches.  It's an amazing thing what plant-life is capable of . . . despite my inability to grow things.  I don't think the smaller pine will bud out and come back from the dead, but I'm pleasantly shocked to discover that the larger one is indeed growing again.

In retrospect, I wonder how much of the little pine's problems was that pines need to go dormant.  Even though they generally don't lose their pine needles, they still go dormant in the winter.  Those two little pines had been growing for well over a year without any stopping.   Maybe they needed the rest.  Anyway, I suppose now I'll see how well the surviving pine stands up to the Texas heat this summer.  While it's this small I suppose I can always bring it into the house if it starts struggling, but I would hate to set it back again.  I'm hoping it can fend for itself now.