this is yet another acquisition from my mother in law. It was given to her by her late husband and sat in their living room picture window for about 45 years doing not much of anything. She just kept it for the heck of it but never really liked it barring the occasional fruit it would bear in the autumn and early winter. It was the epitome of “stick in a pot” when she gave it to me. I thought it was pretty cool for the simple fact that it had good age to it and while it was definitely not vigorous, it was quite durable. This is the plant when I took it in 2020.
Not much to look at but I figured a little change in its yearly routine might result in a little vigor.
My first instinct and often the choice that bites me in the butt with new trees was to repot. I was pretty sure it was root bound but I wanted to try to boost the vigor before putting through a repot. So… the first real change in its yearly routine was spending late spring, summer and early autumn outside and getting a good regimen of fertilizer. The results were quite good and immediate!
Now the tree was cruising right along and in good shape for a repot.
The angle was changed and I started a new branch on what is the right side in the above photo.
You can see in the above photo that there are some ugly roots wrapping around the nebari that were the result of being pot bound for so many years. I chose a large pot and reduced the root ball by half to try to encourage more fine roots. This seemed to work pretty well and over the next couple seasons I started hacking away chunks of the big girdling roots a bit at a time while replacing the compacted potting soil with proper free draining soil. Several times per season I would perform partial outer canopy defoliation (POCD as Bjorn likes to call it
).
The tree was reduced quite heavily but always came back with vigor!
The new branch, now on the left, was coming in nicely and that ugly root (or what was left of it) made a nice anchor point for a guy wire to pull the new branch down. This was a fairly short lived tactic as that root had been reduced enough below the surface that I could now remove it (and will then anchor the new branch to the trunk)
The tree was getting some good shape and the rootball was also much more healthy and compact with tones of fine roots. At this point I was ready for a proper bonsai pot. This isn’t to be a permanent container but should encourage the rootball to flatten out some as it was still quite round.
The new branch has set and no longer requires any guy wires but the roots are spread out and don’t really have a hold of the soil or pot yet. The caused the tree to slump over if it got buffeted by wind so I ended up propping the tree with a chopstick until the roots grow out some more.
This brings us to the present time. A full 5 years of development on this little orange tree. I’ll get into my winter care in the next post as Maine is not generally the best climate for oranges.
Not much to look at but I figured a little change in its yearly routine might result in a little vigor.
My first instinct and often the choice that bites me in the butt with new trees was to repot. I was pretty sure it was root bound but I wanted to try to boost the vigor before putting through a repot. So… the first real change in its yearly routine was spending late spring, summer and early autumn outside and getting a good regimen of fertilizer. The results were quite good and immediate!
Now the tree was cruising right along and in good shape for a repot.
The angle was changed and I started a new branch on what is the right side in the above photo.
You can see in the above photo that there are some ugly roots wrapping around the nebari that were the result of being pot bound for so many years. I chose a large pot and reduced the root ball by half to try to encourage more fine roots. This seemed to work pretty well and over the next couple seasons I started hacking away chunks of the big girdling roots a bit at a time while replacing the compacted potting soil with proper free draining soil. Several times per season I would perform partial outer canopy defoliation (POCD as Bjorn likes to call it
).The tree was reduced quite heavily but always came back with vigor!
The new branch, now on the left, was coming in nicely and that ugly root (or what was left of it) made a nice anchor point for a guy wire to pull the new branch down. This was a fairly short lived tactic as that root had been reduced enough below the surface that I could now remove it (and will then anchor the new branch to the trunk)
The tree was getting some good shape and the rootball was also much more healthy and compact with tones of fine roots. At this point I was ready for a proper bonsai pot. This isn’t to be a permanent container but should encourage the rootball to flatten out some as it was still quite round.
The new branch has set and no longer requires any guy wires but the roots are spread out and don’t really have a hold of the soil or pot yet. The caused the tree to slump over if it got buffeted by wind so I ended up propping the tree with a chopstick until the roots grow out some more.
This brings us to the present time. A full 5 years of development on this little orange tree. I’ll get into my winter care in the next post as Maine is not generally the best climate for oranges.
