Some small Mugos

I just bought a couple of mugo pines this weekend to try and get my feet wet with pines. They are very small and will likely be styled into mame trees over the next few years. I have been reading through several of the mugo threads and looking at @Vance Wood's care sheet. I will plan to repot them into little colander's this summer and do some initial pruning for design, but I am wondering if it would be a terrible idea to clean them up a little this winter (remove the small, week interior branches) to get a sense for the tree's shape?

The first 2 pictures are of one tree and the second 2 are the other tree.

Nice. You are in MA, winter, you need to keep these mugos cool to cold as you have months of below freezing ahead of you. Don't bring them into the warm indoors for more than a few hours at a time, or they will quickly loose their winter cold tolerance. If you do a lot of work now, you will need to keep them under 40 F and above freezing until spring when they can go outside.

Cleaning out now is good. Dead needles, etc. Don't keep them inside too long.

Thanks for the advice. The nursery where I got them had them stored in a 40°F greenhouse, so I am keeping them in a cold (37 - 42°) room when outside temps are below 26° until they get acclimated to the cold. I will probably be able to move them into a shed in a week or two. Unfortunately, we keep getting periods of 2 days between 16° and 30°, and I don't want them to experience a sudden, hard freeze. Especially since they are so small, the rootball could easily freeze through overnight.

I repotted and trimmed one of the mugos last night. I was quite disappointed with the roots, since they are completely one-sided and befan much further down than I expected. I made a small cut into the bark on the side with no roots and added some rooting hormone, but I don't know if that will help. I guess I will find out in a couple years if it worked (if the tree lives, anyway).

I do see a nice trunk line with some movement and branches in the right places. I just need to keep removing unnecessary branches and cleaning it up.

Before:


The roots:


After:

Just repotted the other mugo. This one has a better root spread, but still not great. I wasn't sure how to style it, but digging down to the roots showed a gentle curve to the trunk which leads to a nice leaning/semi-cascade shape with initial branches in the right places.

I still need to remove one of the large branches at the knuckle, but this tree isn't very strong at the moment (there were some burned needles when I bought it this winter and it has been slow to push candles). I only removed one small branch and lightly trimmed the roots. Hopefully it will be happier in its new soil and home-made colander.

Before:


Roots/trunk:


After:

Rjoyce said:

I repotted and trimmed one of the mugos last night. I was quite disappointed with the roots, since they are completely one-sided and befan much further down than I expected. I made a small cut into the bark on the side with no roots and added some rooting hormone, but I don't know if that will help. I guess I will find out in a couple years if it worked (if the tree lives, anyway).

I do see a nice trunk line with some movement and branches in the right places. I just need to keep removing unnecessary branches and cleaning it up.

Before:
View attachment 199064View attachment 199065

The roots:
View attachment 199066View attachment 199067

After:
View attachment 199068View attachment 199069

Click to expand...

Post #4-That's gorgeous! I love it Best of luck on the recovery.
The home made basket is nice too. Good job.

Thanks! These trees were way too small for any pond baskets I could find, so I used some leftover 1/2 inch hardware cloth and lined it with window screen.