Sacrifice Roots?

[ibakey]

Hello folks.

I was listening on a podcast not too long ago between Jonas Dupuich and Andrew regarding growing out nursery/ garden centre or field grown material and Jonas mentioned something very interesting that I was thinking about all week.
He mentioned that he had a friend Tom who wondered if you can have a sacrifice branch, surely you can also have a sacrifice root.

So with materials that have deep roots either from the nursery pot or from the ground, instead of cutting off the bottom part of the roots which are usually strong, keep the bottom half of the root ball untouched with the soil for the moment and remove the first top half of soil. You can proceed to then arrange or prune the top half of the roots, before filling it with bonsai soil and potting it back into the original pot. Using this method allows the tree to not lose momentum (applies greatly to conifers) and helps to propel the growth of the tree, saving a few years of development. I think this is to develop the nebari while still allowing the tree to keep their strength from the field.

He did not elaborate further but I would think, you would slowly remove the bottom soil and replace it with bonsai soil too but keep the bottom roots and perhaps have a porous disk between the top and bottom half to prevent too much tangling between the roots.
I also just took a photo off the web to illustrate the example of removing soil from the yellow portion and keep the red intact, then root pruning the top part.



I am just getting a couple of trees in from the nursery in larger pots, so I am excited to try it.
But when would be the time to cut the sacrifice root off then? When you finally want to put it in a bonsai pot years later?

 

[bonsaichile]

You have a sacrifice branch to thicken the trunk. What would be the purpose of a sacrifice root? If it is only to spare undue stress to the tree, then hbr is less complicated imo

 

[Gabler]

Isn’t that similar to what Ryan Neil was talking about with preserving the “shin” (heart) of the tree? Preserve the roots right under the trunk and replace the soil from the outside in.

 

[ChefB]

Is this what you’re talking about?

 

[Potawatomi13]

Video of Tom Fincel is member of local club who seems is originator or propagator of technique. Takes some work but is great idea.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I've had some roots escape a couple times. And yes, they did contribute a lot to growth. But they seem harder to manage because you can't see them and.. The tree seems to give up on weaker roots in favor of the larger one.
That's an issue I think.

 

[R0b]

At first I thought it was crazy but now I am tempted to try it with my Pinus muggo. I assume you will have to water it like a bonsai and the roots will prefer the bonsai soil over the nursery mix or field soil.

 

[Maiden69]

Nothing new...

Sacrifice roots = escape roots. Same thing you accomplish by using root pouches, anderson flats, placing a nursery container on the soil, placing a colander grown tree on top of another colander.

Letting a small portion of roots escape and thicken while maintaining a great amount of feeder roots near the trunk. Eventually every few years you have to cut them off, refresh the soil in the container and do it again if you want more growth.

If you look at Peter Chan videos of his trees in the field of the nursery, he does this very often, there is a video of him cutting some 2-3" thick roots out of a trident in a 5 gal nursery container that he was growing on top of the ground. Also, this is how Onuma create his mini trees in Japan.

Chojubai


Junipers


Japanese maple


trident

 

[R0b]

Nothing new...

Sacrifice roots = escape roots. Same thing you accomplish by using root pouches, anderson flats, placing a nursery container on the soil, placing a colander grown tree on top of another colander.

Letting a small portion of roots escape and thicken while maintaining a great amount of feeder roots near the trunk. Eventually every few years you have to cut them off, refresh the soil in the container and do it again if you want more growth.

That is not my interpretation, the purpose would be to transition from field nursery soil in one go. The term sacrifice roots did throw me of at first as well. The escape roots to build trees are different.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I assume you will have to water it like a bonsai and the roots will prefer the bonsai soil over the nursery mix or field soil.

I think that this is a wrong assumption.
Mugos over here are sown and raised in nursery soil and they perform outstanding. Better growth than bonsai soil.

Bonsai soil is good for dosing growth, and evening it out. But for rapid growth, nursery soil takes the cake and has a piece too. We bonsai people just tend to forget how to water those kind of soils whenever we're in the hobby. We then go on by calling nursery soil bad, terrible, despicable stuff. But that's like complaining the pool is getting wetter than usual when it rains.. Of course it does! It's designed to hold water. Now if we'd dump a truckload of water on it every day, it might not be a bad pool after all, but maybe the person doing the rain dance should go do something else for a week.

 

[Maiden69]

That is not my interpretation, the purpose would be to transition from field nursery soil in one go. The term sacrifice roots did throw me of at first as well. The escape roots to build trees are different.

Ok, I guess I was also thrown away by the title...

I guess what is proposed could be doable given that you have a deep enough of a root ball to do that kind of work. But depending on the species why go through all that trouble especially on trees that can be bare-rooted. Remember that the biggest issue with trees from the field is that the feeder roots grow away from the tree, this is why Telperion had such a success with the root pouches, because they allow quite a few roots to escape through the lower seam of the pouch, while retaining a lot of feeder roots near the trunk. Which are kept when removing the tree from the soil. After this either Ryan's method of cleaning as much of the sides and bottom, and later after a year or two cleaning the center (shin), or doing a HBR or pie sections like Boon does would do the trick.

The main purpose of removing the tree from the ground is to slow down its growth and get it ready for a bonsai pot, why attempt to keep all the strength the tree has and prolong the time to move it into a bonsai container?

 

[R0b]

I think that this is a wrong assumption.
Mugos over here are sown and raised in nursery soil and they perform outstanding. Better growth than bonsai soil.

Bonsai soil is good for dosing growth, and evening it out. But for rapid growth, nursery soil takes the cake and has a piece too. We bonsai people just tend to forget how to water those kind of soils whenever we're in the hobby. We then go on by calling nursery soil bad, terrible, despicable stuff. But that's like complaining the pool is getting wetter than usual when it rains.. Of course it does! It's designed to hold water. Now if we'd dump a truckload of water on it every day, it might not be a bad pool after all, but maybe the person doing the rain dance should go do something else for a week.

That was exactly my point, overwatering the nursery mix wil reduce the performance of the roots in the bottom half of the pot, but will create better conditions in the bonsai mix above. In that way you could obtain a faster transition to the bonsai soil than by a few partial repots where you will always have to worry about some part of field soil left behind.

at least that is how I interpret the above

 

[R0b]

Ok, I guess I was also thrown away by the title...

I guess what is proposed could be doable given that you have a deep enough of a root ball to do that kind of work. But depending on the species why go through all that trouble especially on trees that can be bare-rooted. Remember that the biggest issue with trees from the field is that the feeder roots grow away from the tree, this is why Telperion had such a success with the root pouches, because they allow quite a few roots to escape through the lower seam of the pouch, while retaining a lot of feeder roots near the trunk. Which are kept when removing the tree from the soil. After this either Ryan's method of cleaning as much of the sides and bottom, and later after a year or two cleaning the center (shin), or doing a HBR or pie sections like Boon does would do the trick.

The main purpose of removing the tree from the ground is to slow down its growth and get it ready for a bonsai pot, why attempt to keep all the strength the tree has and prolong the time to move it into a bonsai container?

Indeed absolutely not relevant for most (all?) deciduous. I could see it being useful for coniferous nursery stock that is more challenging to transition to a bonsai container where this would an alternative to the other methods.

 

[JeffS73]

I've started with some form of this method, but don't yet have any results to share. I'm growing some trees in pond baskets on top of a grow bed.

My thinking was to develop a refined nebari in the basket, and let escape roots fuel growth. Roots often look disproportionately thick relative to the trunk. My concern would be that some species will ditch the refined nebari and just use the escape root. Larch seem to do this.

 

[dbonsaiw]

Indeed absolutely not relevant for most (all?) deciduous.

This was my thought after watching the video. The concerns just don't seem to apply. The deciduous trees don't really miss a beat when the roots are pruned and I have a full box of roots by the end of the season and lots of top growth. I generally bareroot my trees upon purchase (provided right season) and so don't have to guess on what the nebari looks like for long.