Hartinez
Masterpiece
Last spring I collected 3 engleman spruce and 1 doug fir from the mountains of northern New Mexico. The one in this thread had the smallest collected root ball of the bunch and I was worried I did not collect enough of the original root system to keep alive. I potted it up in a 90% pumice and 10% composted bark mix, left all of the foliage on the tree and placed it in partial sun. From there I basically watered and fed all season. As I was going through my trees after a rough winter here in Albuquerque (where I lost several trees) I noticed quite a few roots growing out of the bottom of the nursery container this tree was placed in. I decided to cut open the container to slip pot into a slightly more shallow container and investigators a bit the roots I was seeing. To my delight the root ball had more than doubled and a large amount of large white feeder roots were covering the root ball. I felt comfortable enough at that point to Pot the tree into a suitably sized chinese container with a vision of the finished size and styling. I left most of the very fine roots and clipped only massive barked up roots from directly under the tree. This was 4 weeks ago, and the tree has began to explode with the opening of last falls buds. Again, I plan on not cutting any foliage, watering and feeding the tree heavy and leaving be till fall of 2020 where I will be pruning and beginning initial styling. Quite a few @Walter Pall Pall trees from his blog, directly inspired the digging and excitement for this tree. Ideas and feedback always welcome. Looking forward to this trees progression.