What do the candles look like now?
About where do you live, and where is it from?
That pot is kinda small. Too deep. Bad shape. What it's doing is encouraging roots to grow down deep, rather than out wide.
Which makes me suspect that whoever potted it didn't do a very good job. I've seen this kind of thing done where they take a nursery tree in a big black plastic can, saw the bottom off, scrape enough soil around the sides to fit into one of those "dragon pots", pour some good bonsai soil around the sides, and over the top, and say, "It's been repotted into good bonsai soil".
No it hasn't!
Hopefully, I'm wrong. But that's what it LOOKS like to me.
If I'm right (and you can tell by brushing away the loose granular soil and seeing for yourself how wide the dense dark old root ball is), what happens is: when you water, the old root ball is very dense. Water might soak down, but it takes s long time. Meanwhile, most of the water runs off the dense rootball to the edges. There it finds the open "good bonsai soil". It drains like crazy! It runs down, to the bottom, and out the drain hole. It LOOKS like the tree has been watered. But, inside the core of the old root ball, where all the feeder roots were, it's slowly drying out. As it dries out, it becomes harder and harder to wet it. Have you ever seen water puddle up on a completely dry sponge? Only once it gets damp that it really absorbs water? That's what happens to these old peat based nursery stock rootballs.
So the tree doesn't do well, and maybe even dies, and then when the postmortem is done, it's found there are no roots in the "good bonsai soil"! WTF? It must be crap!
No. It's an incompetent job of potting! I see it often.
You see, when transitioning a tree out of the old soil and into "good bonsai soil", the old soil has to be REPLACED. Which means it must be removed. And new good soil put into where the old soil was.
But... But... But... "You can't bare root a pine! Everyone knows that!!!"
Yes, it has to be done in stages. The "Half Bare Root" repot. Do 1/2 the tree. Left or right, or back or front, makes no difference. Just pick a half. I choose the half with the worst roots. Clean out all the old soil using bent tip tweezers and root hook. Last stage is gently washing the roots with water, being careful to leave the other half intact. Get all the way in under the trunk. Then, pot. Try to remove the heavy downward roots, and keep the roots growing out laterally. Force new soil down under the trunk. Using chopsticks.
Next year if it's growing strong, do the other half. Maybe wait two years if it's not as strong as you'd like.
That's what should have been done to you tree. I doubt it was. Next spring, you should do it.
