Small Japanese Larch Repot

I decided the other day that I needed to repot one of my small Japanese larch as it was showing signs of the buds beginning to wake up. As larch hate having their roots messed around with once the needles have opened, I thought I’d better act before it was too late. I had a nice handmade rectangle pot made for it last year from Walsall Studio Ceramics and so began by getting the pot ready.

Drainage mesh and some tie wire was placed into the pot ready for when the tree was bare rooted.

 

The tree before hand, and then straight out of the pot, you can see the tree had put on decent root growth and had filled the pot. This was one of my earlier soil mixes and contained some additional all purpose compost as well as the Sophisticat Pink cat litter. This was because I was unsure about placing trees in pure cat litter, now nearly all of my trees go into a pure mix.

The soil was teased out of the root ball, and the root ball was then reduced by around 30%, some larger roots were removed that had grown too thick and in the wrong area. A small layer of cat litter was then added to the bottom of the pot ready for the tree.

The tree was positioned in the pot and then wired in securely to prevent movement until the tree has established itself. Cat litter was then filled back into the back, ensuring I used a chopstick to push medium down in between all of the roots so there were no air pockets.

Here is a 360 clip of the newly repotted tree -

The tree is not very good and possibly never will be, I envisage growing the majority of the branches again from scratch this year. This is for better positioning and also to produce correct taper heading up the tree, the thickness of the branches vary at present, which doesn’t produce a very convincing image.

There will be more updates of this one later this year.

Bonsai Video of the Week #12

This week we have episode 4 from series 2 of Lindsay Farr’s World of Bonsai. In this episode he visits a bonsai village in Japan, and looks at some really astonishing specimen pines with considerable age. He is also talked through the pruning of old needles on pine, where one of the bonsai artists gets his inspiration, and the differences between some varieties of shimpaku and other types of juniper.

Enjoy :)

WorldOfBonsai series 2 episode 4 from lindsay farr on Vimeo.

Shelter

Due to the high winds we are experiencing at the moment, some of my trees have been allowed refuge in my greenhouse until the winds die down, to avoid any damage/breaks. As we are approaching repotting time, it also allows me to monitor the water that the trees earmarked for a repot get, keeping them slightly on the dry side, just to make repotting a little easier. Being in the greenhouse might in fact bring them on a little quicker though, so this may also bring repotting forward.