Portulacaria Afra - Nursery Repotting

[Niubi76]

Hi everybody.

I'm Paolo from Italy.

I'm pretty new to the bonsai world and a couple of months ago a started collecting some small Portulacarias (those already in bonsai pots usually sold for 15 euro in garden shops).

Yesterday I was visiting a Bonsai shop in order to buy materials for my soil mixture (akadama, pumice, red lava and sifted pine bark) and started talking with the owner about ports. I said I'd wanted a bigger tree to play with and since he had time and I was the only customer at the time, he took me to the nursery and showed me all the pre bonsai ports he had there.

To cut it short... in the end I came home with this tree:








Last pic just for size reference.

And now I'd need some help.

Now, the plastic vase is already broken (you can see it in the pics) since the roots are pushing to come out... so... I'd like to repot it in a bigger vase (not a bonsai one...I'd like to keep it growing in a normal vase for the next year).

My questions are:

• do I keep the original soil with a simple slip pot or is it better to free the roots and use the soil I use with the other ports ( 20% akadama, 30% pumice, 30% lava, 20% sifted bark... really well draining)?
• really don't know if it's better to keep both the plants (because they seem two separate trunks) in one vase or separate them - what do yuo think?

Thanks in advance for any kind of advice.

Paolo

 

[TreeJunkie]

I’d say separate them. Twice as many trees.

As far as repot pretty sure you can do it any time of year with these guys and you might want to start laying the roots out radially for nebari development. It should be fine to bare root and your soil composition sounds decent, maybe no bark.

Only my 2nd year practicing bonsai so take my advice with a grain of salt