Square pots for deciduous trees

[small trees]

In general, are there any rules to follow for using a square pot? I have a masculine trident maple whose current front is about 45 degrees from what I see as the best front. However, there is no way to rotate the tree in a rectangular pot without overpotting a lot, because the nebari runs to the edge of the root mass and I'd have to remove a lot of surface roots. So my options are a round pot (tree doesn't look good all around so don't really think this is the way to go) or a square pot. Image for reference.

Current front vs what I would like to use going forward.


Current




New

 

[Adair M]

I wouldn’t go with square, especially at the angle of the second picture.

Have you considered an oval?

Since it’s a trident, you could cut the roots back and still keep a nice nebari.

Also, I’m not too sure about your new proposed front. Where’s the apex going to be? Is that large branch at the apex going to be removed? Or kept?

 

[small trees]

Oval would probably fit the bill. I rotated it just to see the clearance before I repotted and there is 2-3" of heavy roots that would need to be cut back to fit, some of it on the surface and it would be hard to disguise.

The large branch will be going, one of the small branches at the base of it will be used to grow a better apex.

 

[Adair M]

Oval would probably fit the bill. I rotated it just to see the clearance before I repotted and there is 2-3" of heavy roots that would need to be cut back to fit, some of it on the surface and it would be hard to disguise.

The large branch will be going, one of the small branches at the base of it will be used to grow a better apex.

If you’re going to growing a new apex, you’re going to growing out a series of sacrifice-chop-sacrifice-chop-sac... over the next 5 to 6 years. My advice is to forget trying to put it in a bonsai pot while you do that, and build a grow box, or use an Anderson flat to also work the roots and nebari. These field grown tridents always have heavy roots that need to be reduced. There’s several ways to do it, you can saw them off flat under the soil level and they’ll sprout roots like a cutting or you can graft on roots from seedlings.

There’s a couple of threads on this site you should review;

MarkyScott’s most excellent thread “Ebihara Maples”, and Mach5’s thread about “Piglett”.

Also review Peter Tea’s blog from when he was in Japan and learned how to work tridents. He had a big’un before he went to Japan that was pretty good. When he returned, he virtually cut all the branches off and started it over! Learn his new methods!

 

[small trees]

@Adair M

While it could stand some faster growth for the apex and for the wound in the back, the roots are actually in pretty good shape. These are stills from a video so they aren't perfect but the root ball is already flat. The issue that I see with getting this one on a board, at least right now, is that the bottom of the root ball is solid wood about 2.5" thick (see pics below) and I'm not sure how I'd shave it down expediently and without disturbing the rest of the root mass. Will definitely be grafting some. I've read both the threads on here several times and they are full of good information. I'll have to check out Peter tea's blog.



you can see the solid wood here. I could get some sort of grinder I guess but I'm not really sure how I'd go about making it so that it would fit on a board

 

[Adair M]

Sawsall.

 

[Dav4]

Sawsall.

I vote die grinder. Strap that puppy down to a bench with some padding and burr away the excess wood below the root base with a coarse wheel bit. I've used both and the die grinder is much less traumatic on the tree... and me!

 

[sorce]

I would make sure you can remove enough wood around the edges to actually do more than just concave out a scoop to hold more soil, and not actually get it lowered.

I don't think you need it lowered.

That pot is way to small as is.

Why not just turn it and use a pot big enough? It shouldn't be too big once this thing actually has a top.

Sorce