Azalea-judge

[Giga]

On your root work, you have it backwards- Kathy Shaner advised us on an azalea Of mine she was working on the other day that you want to dig down and find your nebari FIRST. This is important for any repot, especially of a nursery tree like this one. They tend to just up- pot the trees from a 1 gallon to a 3.5 gallon to a 5 gallon... Each time heaping more soil around and ON TOP of the existing root mass... This can lead to a very deeply buried nebari, so if you go sawing the root mass in half THEN you look for the nebari, you could wind up with a cut above where all the roots are connected to the tree- IOW, a dead tree and a bunch of disconnected roots!... Or at the very least, you could wind up cutting off a LOT more of the viable root mass than you intended! This was demonstrated on the tree I had and the nebari was buried pretty deep... She also told a story about a beautiful old juniper she saw a guy repot once- he had recently purchased the tree I think and it was the first time he repotted... But he just grabbed a saw and dug into the root mass, sawing off the bottom portion... Only to realize the trunk went a lot deeper than he thought and he wound up with the tree trunk in one hand and ALL the roots on the floor! Oops!

Just be careful, and take your time, you should be fine...

Ha! Just saw the updated post- you have already repotted it! Well, hopefully that bit of info will be helpful for others, I found it to be a valuable lesson as she told the story.

No one told me this but it was kinda common sense to me. On anything from box stores I dig from the top first then cut the root ball by 1/3 rather then 1/2 and slowly rake it out. A little more time comsuming but you can find the nebari that's burried under there.

 

[Giga]

Sure has been a while since I updated this one, not perfect but this one has grown on me.

 

[just.wing.it]

Man, that's a nice box store find, great trunk and nebari.

 

[Giga]

Been awhile since I updated, I'll need to post the originals since photobucket is so awesome

 

[GrimLore]

Sweet! Thank you for the update! Always nice to see good progress and healthy growth

Grimmy

 

[pweifan]

Giga, this is beautiful! What's the tree on the right hand side of the first picture?

 

[Giga]

Giga, this is beautiful! What's the tree on the right hand side of the first picture?

That is a hollow, large blood-good Japanese maple - I have a thread just haven't updated it in a while

Here's when I first got this tree at homedepot and when it was first potted up a couple years back:

 

[BeebsBonsai]

Even a fine saw leaves rough edges.

I have a pair of Masakuni "root pruners" for azalea. They make a flat cut. There's even a special "reverse concave pruner" especially made for azalea. I don't own one, but ive used someone else's. Weird tool!

The main thing is to have that edge where the bark and csmbium is exposed to be very cleanly cut. And immediately sealed.

@Adair M Question, By reverse concave cutter do you mean it cuts the root while the majority of the tool is on the same side of the tool as the trunk? My brain is trying to wrap around the idea of a convex cutter just being a concave cutter with the tool turned the other way around from you. Just trying to understand what you mean by that tool.

 

[Giga]

You can really see what wire, timely pruning, and good fertilisers get. This tree on the right is getting somewhere, left tree left alone.

 

[Giga]

This is for sale in case anyone wants a crack at it on fb