0soyoung
Imperial Masterpiece
But, if oneOne VERY important technique that Scott mentioned, but did not illustrate with a photo is "tapping" the pot. After the chopsticking, and backfilling is done, hold the pot securely, and lightly tap the pot with the meat part of your fist. On all four sides. The soil will settle in. You may have to add more soil! Again, the idea is to fill all the voids.
there should not be any voids under the tree and root pad - that is the point of this step, is it not?Leave(S) a little mound of soil in the middle of the pot and position the tree in there. Settle it in by pressing downward on the nebari and firmly rotating it back and forth a bit while applying downward pressure on the rootball.
I suppose that rapping on the pot may be sensible, but it seems to me that thorough watering will settle a non-compacting, inorganic substrate anyway.
When one is repotting a thick root pad (such as on a pine) chop sticking makes some sense to me but not with a maple (or any other species with which we want a shallow, flat root pad).