Candle cutting: controlling a pine's spring push

A pine's spring growth arrives as a single soft "candle" at each tip before the needles separate and harden. Cutting some or all of a candle back — by half, or fully to force a later, smaller second push — is how a pine's naturally long internodes are kept in scale with a small tree, and how a grower balances vigour between a strong and a weak branch by cutting the strong one harder. The timing matters more than almost any other technique here: cut too early and the candle simply regrows at full length; the window is narrow and species-specific, so check the plan before reaching for the scissors.