Trident Repot

[Hawke84]

What would you say is the 'safe' amount of root removal for tridents? I've got one that was in a cascade pot so downward roots but a lot of them.
Am i pushing my luck with this in 1 repotting? will be taking maybe ~70% root mass.

 

[woodkraftbonsai]

I think you should be just fine fitting it in that pot.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

I don’t think you’ll know until you comb them out. If you have a few strong roots running straight down, to which all the feeders are attached, it’s going to be dicey. If it’s all feeder roots, and you can set the bottom of the trunk on the bottom of the pot, it will be killer.

 

[sorce]

I wouldn't be in a hurry.

#TridentTopsMatter

Sorce

 

[LanceMac10]

 

[misfit11]

What does the foliar part of the tree look like? You don't want to go into a shallow pot until the branching is like ~80% "there". A shallow pot really slows down the development. They're great for fine ramification and twigging but super slow for development.

 

[Shibui]

In my experience 90% root removed is tolerable for tridents in most cases, especially if the top is also pruned at the same time. Tridents are very good at growing new roots from stubs of pruned roots so I routinely prune tridents so they just have stubs of roots and little or no feeder roots. They soon grow new roots.

 

[sorce]

foliar part

Aye! I'd see trouble if we were needing to wait for buds to pop too.

One year in a basket and you'll be good!

One year in a basket and you have a block of feeders you can cut square and tie in.

Rake it out, basket up!

Sorce

 

[JudyB]

I have just done this with a trident that was over a board in a fabric pot, so all the root mass had gone around the board and down into the soil below the board. Cut them all clean off. I am not concerned, as I have done this before on trident, and had no problems. They are not finicky about root work, so I would say that you'd be fine to do it in one go, as long as there is some root left near the top of the current soil.

 

[Hawke84]

Thanks for the advice guys. So I got a few pots ready and untangled the roots, basically the centre core was large pieces of brick! So most of the feeder roots were on the outside. I've sorted out a lot of the root ball but it wod have been too much for that pot so I've gone to one bigger with a small particle substrate to try and encourage loads of fine roots this growing season.
I'm fairly happy with the branching, could always use more but I'll do some work on it this season. Ideally I would have used a pond basket but didn't have one the right size.

 

[LanceMac10]

update?

 

[SeanS]

update?

Yes show us the tree!

 

[Hawke84]

I played with a few angles but this worked the best

 

[BobbyLane]

ah so youre not gonna show us the root mound that went in the pot

should be fine bet it wont even notice. no risk without reward eh

 

[LanceMac10]

You went with a larger container, I see.

 

[Hawke84]

I forgot to take pics of the roots unusually for me this time round. Pot isn't bad for now, hopefully get a good bit of root ramification in the fine soil this year and be able to drop it down a size next year maybe if it's got the vigor.