Azalea Japonica

[Clorgan]

Hello all!

Thread for my new azalea japonica, picked up cheap from a nursery near my work. This will be the last in my collection...for now I wanted to try to develop a flowering bonsai, because who doesn't love flowers?! I read about choosing one that is a single plant rather than a grouping, so here it is!

Leaving in the pot until next year, I did a hard prune. Next job is to think about which branches to keep

Hoping to have this as a progression thread. Any tips/suggestions warmly welcome!

 

[Harunobu]

I would repot it next early spring. When garden centers sell these, the roots have kind of exhausted the potting mix already, and become round bound. They assume you will plant it in your garden immediately. If they were planning to grow it for one more year, they would repot it as well. In fact, with the weather becoming cloudy and rainy here, probably similar in England, I would still repot it now, since this is nursery stock. Even though you kind of missed the repotting window for a bonsai azalea. Because you need to fix the roots because these roots are bound and there is no fresh soil left in this pot. You might even get root rot, before you repot next spring. It's just when you see the roots as they are now, they need to be freed. They don't want to be in there after a summer during the entire rainy autumn.

Then it is up to you what your goal with this is. Do you want to put it in a bonsai pot and style/refine it, as it is right now? Do you want to cut it back hard and see what happens? Do you want to prune away the sidebranches and fatten up the main trunk for a few years?

 

[Clorgan]

I would repot it next early spring. When garden centers sell these, the roots have kind of exhausted the potting mix already, and become round bound. They assume you will plant it in your garden immediately. If they were planning to grow it for one more year, they would repot it as well. In fact, with the weather becoming cloudy and rainy here, probably similar in England, I would still repot it now, since this is nursery stock. Even though you kind of missed the repotting window for a bonsai azalea. Because you need to fix the roots because these roots are bound and there is no fresh soil left in this pot. You might even get root rot, before you repot next spring. It's just when you see the roots as they are now, they need to be freed. They don't want to be in there after a summer during the entire rainy autumn.

Then it is up to you what your goal with this is. Do you want to put it in a bonsai pot and style/refine it, as it is right now? Do you want to cut it back hard and see what happens? Do you want to prune away the sidebranches and fatten up the main trunk for a few years?

Thanks very much for your help, I'll definitely consider repotting then, will have a bit more of a look into it

 

[Clorgan]

I would repot it next early spring. When garden centers sell these, the roots have kind of exhausted the potting mix already, and become round bound. They assume you will plant it in your garden immediately. If they were planning to grow it for one more year, they would repot it as well. In fact, with the weather becoming cloudy and rainy here, probably similar in England, I would still repot it now, since this is nursery stock. Even though you kind of missed the repotting window for a bonsai azalea. Because you need to fix the roots because these roots are bound and there is no fresh soil left in this pot. You might even get root rot, before you repot next spring. It's just when you see the roots as they are now, they need to be freed. They don't want to be in there after a summer during the entire rainy autumn.

Had a good think about this and decided to repot - you were right the soil/roots situation was not good! Saved as many roots as I could, but was very difficult as the soil was so bad!

Potted in akadama... I really must make it my next task to research soil mix, not got round to it yet.

We'll see what happens - if it lives then great, if not it's another good learning opportunity!

 

[Harunobu]

You potted it in 100% akadama? Since this is nursery stock and it was in 100% peat, I would try 50% fresh peat, the more coarse the better, and 50% a non-lime substrate. Best would be kanuma. Akadama is maybe not acidic enough? Not sure how well an azalea grows in 100% akadama. People usually don't try. And another issue is that you still have the peat-filled root ball surrounded by a whole bunch of pure akadama. Maybe you were able to really do a good job in opening up the root ball, and it is less hard of a transition. But this can cause issues with the water not spreading as uniformly throughout the pot.

It takes some time until you can go to 100% kanuma with a root system as you would see for proper satsuki bonsai in shallower pots.
This channel has a whole bunch of satsuki bonsai repots:

Bonsai & 盆栽 from Japan

Thank you for watching. 1 I am not good at speaking English, not good at writing English. please kindly understand. 2 Our video is to enjoy the bonsai life. ...

www.youtube.com

Sorry, didn't want to post a whole lecture on azalea roots and repotting without you asking for it, as it appears here in recent posts by me and others. Including a lot in the azalea competition board where many people bought a nursery plant like you and did a chop/repot of some sort.

 

[Clorgan]

You potted it in 100% akadama? Since this is nursery stock and it was in 100% peat, I would try 50% fresh peat, the more coarse the better, and 50% a non-lime substrate. Best would be kanuma. Akadama is maybe not acidic enough? Not sure how well an azalea grows in 100% akadama. People usually don't try. And another issue is that you still have the peat-filled root ball surrounded by a whole bunch of pure akadama. Maybe you were able to really do a good job in opening up the root ball, and it is less hard of a transition. But this can cause issues with the water not spreading as uniformly throughout the pot.

It takes some time until you can go to 100% kanuma with a root system as you would see for proper satsuki bonsai in shallower pots.
This channel has a whole bunch of satsuki bonsai repots:

Bonsai & 盆栽 from Japan

Thank you for watching. 1 I am not good at speaking English, not good at writing English. please kindly understand. 2 Our video is to enjoy the bonsai life. ...

www.youtube.com

Sorry, didn't want to post a whole lecture on azalea roots and repotting without you asking for it, as it appears here in recent posts by me and others. Including a lot in the azalea competition board where many people bought a nursery plant like you and did a chop/repot of some sort.

Thanks for this - all good stuff to know, don't apologise at all, definitely need to be told about the mistakes I'm making! I'll get there, there's just so much to know and learn, even in the basics of just keeping them alive! There's so much variety in soil mixes for different plants - hard to get my head around it all but the more mistakes I make the more I'll learn!

Won't get any hopes up on this plant being successful - this is the reason I'm only buying cheap plants

Thanks again - appreciate the honesty and will definitely watch the video!

Edit - opened the root ball and got out as much old soil as I could as I did read about issues with leaving old in there. Probably didn't get out as much as needed, but we'll soon find out

 

[Harunobu]

Likely, you can't get the soil out because the roots of azalea are so fine and in a nursery pot they will become extremely interwoven as well. The best you can do is get rid of the layer of roots on the outside of the pot. And usually the bottom part is the most water-logged and the roots/peat feel really soft and mushy there. So you just get rid of the bottom 1/3rd or so. So you can't get the peat out. It is just that bonsai people often know to try to get out the old soil as a basic principle or repotting. It is true for azalea as well, but you can only do it by also getting rid of some of the roots.

If you want to try to find out what happens in 100% akadama, you could just keep it in there. It is not going to outright kill it. It is just kind of a waste of the akadama and far from (the theoretical) ideal.

 

[Clorgan]

Likely, you can't get the soil out because the roots of azalea are so fine and in a nursery pot they will become extremely interwoven as well. The best you can do is get rid of the layer of roots on the outside of the pot. And usually the bottom part is the most water-logged and the roots/peat feel really soft and mushy there. So you just get rid of the bottom 1/3rd or so. So you can't get the peat out. It is just that bonsai people often know to try to get out the old soil as a basic principle or repotting. It is true for azalea as well, but you can only do it by also getting rid of some of the roots.

If you want to try to find out what happens in 100% akadama, you could just keep it in there. It is not going to outright kill it. It is just kind of a waste of the akadama and far from (the theoretical) ideal.

Thanks very much for the info, a bit reluctant to mess with it again, so will likely leave it and hope for the best. May be an interesting experiment haha

 

[Harunobu]

Likely it will be perfectly fine. It is a nursery plant, so it should be strong. It had way more roots than it really needs for the foliage it had. New roots can grow out fine into the akadama. The entire thing will drain properly now. The akadama will be only slightly acidic, but that shouldn't immediately lead to the plant being unable to take up iron. The hardest thing will be to judge how much to water because the akadama will be very dry when the peat and the current roots could still be soaked. Or, water could drain through the akadama so quickly, the roots won't become soaked during a watering.

 

[Clorgan]

Likely it will be perfectly fine. It is a nursery plant, so it should be strong. It had way more roots than it really needs for the foliage it had. New roots can grow out fine into the akadama. The entire thing will drain properly now. The akadama will be only slightly acidic, but that shouldn't immediately lead to the plant being unable to take up iron. The hardest thing will be to judge how much to water because the akadama will be very dry when the peat and the current roots could still be soaked. Or, water could drain through the akadama so quickly, the roots won't become soaked during a watering.

This is really useful stuff - thanks! I definitely see the issue... Could a wooden chipstick/skewer stuck in around the rootball help with this? To see if the peat is still wet?

 

[bunjin]

You did the right thing by removing the old soil regardless of the time of the year. I think inorganic components would be very important in your climate because of the need for drainage. I would remove the bottom two branches for starters. Nursery grown azaleas are really very difficult to style in a short time frame because of the number of branches that usually need to be removed. Best of luck.

 

[Clorgan]

You did the right thing by removing the old soil regardless of the time of the year. I think inorganic components would be very important in your climate because of the need for drainage. I would remove the bottom two branches for starters. Nursery grown azaleas are really very difficult to style in a short time frame because of the number of branches that usually need to be removed. Best of luck.

Thanks for your comment and advice! I actually gave this one to my mother in law to plant in the ground in her garden. Really wanted to plant it in mine to thicken it up a bit but since they're poisonous to dogs I didn't think it'd be a good idea with having a puppy.

I ended up getting another azalea though for the contest, thread for it here. Keeping it well out of the way of the pup!

Clorgan's 2020-2025 azalea entry

Thought I'd give this a go - looks fun! Azalea santa maria from local garden centre, very cheap (loving all the garden centre reductions right now) and the flowers look lovely 😊 Hard cut done - been wanting to try a mame/shohin so thought this would be a good opportunity! Seen a few people on...

www.bonsainut.com