To re-pot or not? Collected yamadori yesterday, had to shove it in a terrible container..

It's my fault for not starting earlier but I thought I had more than enough time (the crepe myrtle did not come out of the ground nearly as easy as a bougie would've, it was my first crepe myrtle yamadori), anyways I never build boxes before I know what my roots look like, so yesterday by the time I'd rinsed/pruned the roots I put the stump's roots in a bucket of IBA solution while I began building my box...

30min into building the box in my backyard and someone nearby yells to shut it down - was so damn close to finishing it but didn't want to be a jerk so I just yelled sorry and, with no box to put my prepared stump into, I had to choose between leaving the roots in a wet bag (or soaking) overnight, or to just use the largest container I had on-hand - I chose the latter, my logic being that, while the container is barely big enough to fit the specimen, surely it's fine for a short period, just for a couple months' of establishment....right?

So I'm now in a spot where I don't know what's better, to quickly finish up the box and transplant into that, or to just leave it be in its tiny container! I can see logic in both, I'm leaning towards leaving it because I'm more interested in upping my chances that it survives, even if it's set-back a bit in terms of vigor, than to risk losing it by moving it to a box where it'd (potentially) flourish!

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!! I could have the box done and the crepe transplanted in an hour but something tells me it'd be better to just leave it and let it recover - surely it can recover in this container, even if it can't thrive well (I think!)

[and fwiw the container has ~1.5" of lrg lava rocks at the bottom and mostly DE as the substrate, with some small bark nuggets & sml lava rock pieces mixed-in with the DE (<10% for sure, it's mostly DE above the lava rock bottom]

Well, I hope it doesn't die of embarrassment!

For whatever it is worth, I have never grown a tree in a wood box. Further, I see no advantage in over-potting. Leave it be until next year, then root prune when you repot and you're on the road to creating a tree with a nice root pad.

SU2,

in our climate, as long as the soil mix drains freely, it would be left to recover.
A year later, change to what you want.
Good Day
Anthony

Or ------ what Oso said

Oh and in addition to whether or not I should move it to a box the day after taking it from ground to that little container, I was also hoping to ask if it looks like I did this 'right', specifically I'm concerned I may've been too-aggressive with the root cutting (though I cut zero lateral roots, I cut only what would make the root-ball too-deep for any type of bonsai pot, a 'necessary' root-chop although I'm unsure if that's something that should've been done down the road...will put a picture below showing the roots this had after I pruned/cleaned/prepped them for planting)

Am also kind of worried about how much bark I roughed off of 3 of those little nubby shoots, that was while trying to get it out-of-ground (I made the mistake of forgetting to leave the branches longer, for leverage, when excavating - very bad mistake when your extraction relied 100% on hand tools!!) Also, didn't use cut-paste...had elmer's wood glue on-hand but decided against it, have never used it but considering how much bark I damaged on those 3 branches I imagine it's transpiring WAY more than I'd like, hopefully it calluses-over quickly w/o wasting much energy!

The roots after cleaning and removal of non-crepe myrtle roots (this was growing amongst lots of other things in an abandoned lot) This is before any root-pruning:


It got dark so was hard to get a good pic, essentially I removed the bottom ~50% of the root mass, still left with a ton of matted roots (was incredibly impressed with the roots on this specie!) Sorry pic is so dark I hope it gets across the idea of how much roots were cut!



[that ^ bucket was my "IBA solution", I always read about PPM values but no idea how people get there w/o using pre-made solutions, I simply took a bottle of IBA powder and poured like 80% of it into the bucket the stump's in in that ^ pic, I kept rotating it to get all the roots soaked while I was building the box (and was frequently misting the exposed roots - between that and the humidity yesterday I'm not worried about *any* root dry-out!]

0soyoung said:

Well, I hope it doesn't die of embarrassment!

For whatever it is worth, I have never grown a tree in a wood box. Further, I see no advantage in over-potting. Leave it be until next year, then root prune when you repot and you're on the road to creating a tree with a nice root pad.

Click to expand...

ROFL! No, it's I who's bearing the brunt of the embarrassment here I think that tree is wondering who kidnapped & maimed it!

Do you just prefer ceramics? I like the aesthetic of wood, plus DIY appeals to me (and I'm not broke but am pretty cheap, when I see the prices of containers large enough for my avg specimen I cringe!) I like wood, I get to make exactly what I want (and have begun building boxes that have slits where there's no wood but instead screen, to get the air-pruning effect on roots that you get w/ colanders - I also use colanders exclusively for smaller, developing trees)

Am going to be getting a bag of concrete to begin making 'traditional ceramic bonsai pot'-styled concrete containers soon, as well as (even cooler!) making concrete slabs With how I'm expecting my concrete experiments to go I'm very unconcerned about any containers right now so long as I'm not hurting the plants (I mean on this crepe it was such a tight fit that I'm worried about voids/cavities of air in there, there's only so much 'moving it around' you can do w/o damaging roots, am fearing there's golfball-sized voids in there although I guess that's not detrimental in and of itself!) Didn't even occur to me to flood the hell out of it to try and get some settling, would you do that? I always rinse the hell out of my substrate to get rid of any finer particles so I never need to water something after boxing..

Anthony said:

SU2,

in our climate, as long as the soil mix drains freely, it would be left to recover.
A year later, change to what you want.
Good Day
Anthony

Or ------ what Oso said

Click to expand...

Thanks a ton that is very reassuring, if the box was the better idea I'd be really worried the 2nd transplant in 2 days would be a large stressor!

I'm kind of worried I could have some cavities of air in that substrate, I made a mound of substrate in the center (and put some around the walls) before placing the crepe in there, and did my best to work it in, but with how tight that container is on the root-ball it was very difficult and I could only manipulate it so much w/o being sure I'd be ripping roots....how big a problem could that be? Am going to flood the heck out of it to hopefully 'settle' the substrate into any cavities/voids!

Anthony said:

SU2,

in our climate, as long as the soil mix drains freely, it would be left to recover.
A year later, change to what you want.
Good Day
Anthony

Or ------ what Oso said

Click to expand...

What level of sunlight should I give it? Being that that container is, in addition to too-small, it's incredibly thin/flimsy, so simply moving it is likely to be dangerous to the roots....want to determine the best spot to move it to for the time it takes to get 'stabilized', the time it's safe to remove and up-pot it

SU2

are there no clubs in your area ?

I am in the tropics, Florida, is not even in the Sub-Tropics, what works here may not work on your side OUTDOORS
when the COLD arrives.

This shrub, normally grows like a weed.

Okay that said, you place the plant somewhere where the light is bright, morning sun until say 8.30 a.m and in the
afternoon more sun after 4,30 p,m usually for a week.

You really have cuttings [ say 10 ] to work on and observe, not the mother plant which should be left alone to just grow.

Doing the yama yama bit is fine, but get some cuttings and work on them - please, I beg.
Cuttings are expendable, but the yama yama, when you lose it, it is a big loss.

I would really suggest growing cuttings of the yama yama before digging the yama yama.
Good Luck.
Good Day
Anthony

* Always happy to help you if I can.

SU2 said:

(I mean on this crepe it was such a tight fit that I'm worried about voids/cavities of air in there, there's only so much 'moving it around' you can do w/o damaging roots, am fearing there's golfball-sized voids in there although I guess that's not detrimental in and of itself!) Didn't even occur to me to flood the hell out of it to try and get some settling, would you do that? I always rinse the hell out of my substrate to get rid of any finer particles so I never need to water something after boxing..

Click to expand...

You can set the thing on a big board or a piece of flagstone and then lift and move the whole thing so you don't have to ever touch the pot. Also anytime you pot up or put in a box a newly collected tree you should water the crap out of it to settle material and to rinse fines out and to help settle the soil overall - ALWAYS.

Anthony said:

SU2

are there no clubs in your area ?

I am in the tropics, Florida, is not even in the Sub-Tropics, what works here may not work on your side OUTDOORS
when the COLD arrives.

This shrub, normally grows like a weed.

Okay that said, you place the plant somewhere where the light is bright, morning sun until say 8.30 a.m and in the
afternoon more sun after 4,30 p,m usually for a week.

You really have cuttings [ say 10 ] to work on and observe, not the mother plant which should be left alone to just grow.

Doing the yama yama bit is fine, but get some cuttings and work on them - please, I beg.
Cuttings are expendable, but the yama yama, when you lose it, it is a big loss.

I would really suggest growing cuttings of the yama yama before digging the yama yama.
Good Luck.
Good Day
Anthony

* Always happy to help you if I can.

Click to expand...

We are sub-tropical here In fact we're real 'tropical' in some of the lowest parts (key west, marathon), anyways in my zip code the coldest month (january) has a historical avg of 61deg - is there a threshold that I should take the crepe inside? I know that's not going to come up for a while am just curious

And to be clear on sun, 430 onward is 4hrs of good sun, that's not too much? Am just curious because of how it's phrased, if it's gotta be out of sun by 830 then it didn't make sense to me that it'd be ok with 4hrs of strong light later (maybe the light just feels stronger since the local atmosphere is hotter from the afternoon sun!)

And re cuttings I don't have 10 yet but I do have cuttings, two of them have actually been putting out little shoots but my favorite still hasn't (I've got 3, the other two are sticks one being ~1" and one being ~1/2", only this chubby one hasn't put out any shoot-starts yet:

choppychoppy said:

You can set the thing on a big board or a piece of flagstone and then lift and move the whole thing so you don't have to ever touch the pot. Also anytime you pot up or put in a box a newly collected tree you should water the crap out of it to settle material and to rinse fines out and to help settle the soil overall - ALWAYS.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I actually came up with that last night (god was it obvious! Was too caught-up worrying about the container's appropriateness for the roots' size to realize I just needed to make it a 'carrying table' to eliminate disturbing it when its moved!)

And re watering-in I usually do that (although I'm thinking less about closing voids and more about saturating the media with a light level of fert!), anyways yesterday I made a ~1/5 strength dose of balanced fertilizer and poured ~2.5-3gallons of it through there in a manner that would likely have filled the voids, at least as much as watering-in was capable of, then I added more media to the top just for more media mass in the container and 'sun block' since there were roots so close to the surface!

choppychoppy said:

You can set the thing on a big board or a piece of flagstone and then lift and move the whole thing so you don't have to ever touch the pot. Also anytime you pot up or put in a box a newly collected tree you should water the crap out of it to settle material and to rinse fines out and to help settle the soil overall - ALWAYS.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I actually came up with that last night myself (am serious! And god was it obvious! Was too caught-up worrying about the container's appropriateness for the roots' size that I didn't put much thought into anything else!)

And re watering-in I usually do that (although I'm thinking less about closing voids and more about saturating the media with a light level of fert!), anyways yesterday I made a ~1/5 strength dose of balanced fertilizer and poured ~2.5-3gallons of it through there in a manner that would likely have filled the voids, at least as much as watering-in was capable of, then I added more media to the top just for more media mass in the container and 'sun block' since there were roots so close to the surface! (edit- when doing that flood watering I'm 99% sure I could tell I'd lowered the substrate surface a little, either I filled some voids or merely compacted the media....thankfully the media is thoroughly sifted/rinsed so some pressure shouldn't ruin the air channels that are one of the main benefits of inorganics in the first place!)

Remember SU2

I am in the Tropics [ no temperature lower than 55 deg.F ] so you have to also factor in sun goes down around 5.30 p.m for
winter and 6.30 p.m in Summer. The rays are not strong in heat, just illumination.

Our lowest recorded lows are 69 to 66 deg.F, for 10 to 12 hrs.
Our highs are max 93 deg.F for April / May for 30 to 10 minutes.
The island is cloudy and breezy, so humidity goes from 80 % with rain to 50% in the dry season.
With the rains June to November temperatures are 80's and then down for Christmas until
March going up slowly.

You guys can still get frost.

You have to find out when the roots get to x temperatures or if the shrub shuts down by shorter days.

On this side they rest from Christmas until February, by shorter daylight.

As I suggested; please join a club or look for an experienced grower.
Good Day
Anthony

Who the hell was telling you to shut it down?

M. Frary said:

Who the hell was telling you to shut it down?

Click to expand...

He was sawing at 2 AM and listening to gangsta rap music... with club lights. And maybe fireworks.

Bonsai Nut said:

He was sawing at 2 AM and listening to gangsta rap music... with club lights. And maybe fireworks.

Click to expand...

Oh. Well.
That explains it.
Gangsta rap us horrible.

Anthony said:

Remember SU2

I am in the Tropics [ no temperature lower than 55 deg.F ] so you have to also factor in sun goes down around 5.30 p.m for
winter and 6.30 p.m in Summer. The rays are not strong in heat, just illumination.

Our lowest recorded lows are 69 to 66 deg.F, for 10 to 12 hrs.
Our highs are max 93 deg.F for April / May for 30 to 10 minutes.
The island is cloudy and breezy, so humidity goes from 80 % with rain to 50% in the dry season.
With the rains June to November temperatures are 80's and then down for Christmas until
March going up slowly.

You guys can still get frost.

You have to find out when the roots get to x temperatures or if the shrub shuts down by shorter days.

On this side they rest from Christmas until February, by shorter daylight.

As I suggested; please join a club or look for an experienced grower.
Good Day
Anthony

Click to expand...

I've had no luck finding another bonsai enthusiast in my area (anyone in Pinellas county feel free to message me, I'm actually a real likable guy[edit: my mother tells me so at least!] - feel I should mention that as I've found I come across differently online lol), I just found a club very recently but had *just* missed their monthly meeting, in a few weeks though I'm planning to go!! I spent a while just reading everything I could but in the past months have been focusing on people from my area (adamaskwhy, wigerts, and assorted other bougie enthusiasts who are in similar zones! Mirai stuff is the only non-specific material I'm still consuming a good deal of), unfortunately crepes are something I just started reading about, I know my weather isn't as warm as yours but would you suspect I'll need to bring-in the crepe in january? Or insulate it at least? Here's a graph of averages and historical highs/lows for my zip code:

M. Frary said:

Who the hell was telling you to shut it down?

Click to expand...

Bonsai Nut said:

He was sawing at 2 AM and listening to gangsta rap music... with club lights. And maybe fireworks.

Click to expand...

LOL! Hate ganstser rap (am early 30's though so spent a lot of time loving eminem and doubt I'll ever dislike him - unsure if he's 'gangsta rap' though!)

No, it was ~10p maybe and my backyard is setup in a way where one side of it is the edge of the back-yard of a triplex unit, someone from one of those units just yelled out at me 'I have to be up at 5a' so I just apologized and stopped, sucked because I'd already done ~85%+ of the build at that point... contemplated leaving it in a bucket of water overnight, or a sealed bag/tent with max humidity, but feared it'd 'leech-out' in such an enviro so I found the single pot I had that could accomodate it (had to squish it in lol, the pic doesn't show the incredible nebari this thing has due to my substrate-surface height right now but it flares nicely and some of those were touching the edges of the container, distorting it!)

Simple, have your agro centre or a plant nursery identify your myrtle type
and then ask for it's cold tolerance, and response to what you have done to
it.
Good Day
Anthony

^Wow your record highs are frightening.

I hope you guys get nice breezes.

Haha yeah it can get brutally hot, and yeah lots of times it's w/o much breeze - I can handle 10deg+ higher temps in Tuscon AZ easier than here, our humidity is so bad that the air feels like it's about to phase into a liquid sometimes!

The type is 99.9% 'crepe myrtle' as that's by-and-large the only type anyone plants around here (unless you mean which cultivar of crepe myrtle, tough I doubt that as the flower colors don't, AFAIK, have much impact on the plant's general physiology)

What's an agro center? Sorry, am guessing it's supposed to be obvious based on how you wrote it but I'm not getting what you mean

Thanks for all the help btw, would never be able to do half the stuff I do w/o the help of more knowledgeable, charitable people like yourself!!

Crepe myrtle roots easy. You should be fine. This one had less roots and i shoved into a bonsai pot last year. It actually got healthier