Bought a A. hornbeam @ Kannapolis- I have a repotting question.

ETN_bonsai

Yamadori
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North East Tennessee
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6a
I picked this one up from a vendor at the winter show this past weekend.


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The nice fellow said it had been under development for about 15 years in his care and was due a repot in the spring. It’s situated in a 12” round nursery pot at the moment. My thoughts were to move it a ~10” round training pot for 2-3 years for the tree to ramify. My reasoning is to start to reduce the root mass in preparation for relocation to a more appropriate ‘final’ pot without reducing it to the point it would need a year to work on its roots before having much energy to start it’s branching. Am I close to the mark with this thinking, or am I totally off base?

Thanks in advance.
 
Looks like a great buy, hope you go the naturalistic route with it! The bones are there. At the next repotting, i'd be tempted to put it into a training pot half the depth of this one. To further power top growth without compromising the root mass too much.

Might find this inspiring, the three sub trunks in one of the rotations have some similarities. From Maros bonsai

 
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Looks like a great buy, hope you go the naturalistic route with it! The bones are there. At the next repotting, i'd be tempted to put it into a training pot half the depth of this one. To further power top growth without compromising the root mass too much.

Might find this inspiring, the three sub trunks in one of the rotations have some similarities. From Maros bonsai

Thanks for the tip and the video. I’m leaning towards a 10” round by 4-5” deep pot. I’d eventually like to get the tree in a drum pot.

Is the Whisky really that good down there in Tennessee?😍
I’m not much of a whiskey man, myself. Probably not the best person to give an opinion 😆

Wow, looks like an amazing buy. If I were the seller, I wouldn't have sold it at this stage after putting 15 years into it. 😐

It is a great tree considering what I paid for it. He had another hornbeam that I wish, in retrospect, I’d bought in addition to the one in this thread. He mentioned he was cutting down his collection. I got the feeling he had an abundance of better trees. I was very happy to end up with the tree.
 
I picked this one up from a vendor at the winter show this past weekend.


View attachment 576721View attachment 576720

The nice fellow said it had been under development for about 15 years in his care and was due a repot in the spring. It’s situated in a 12” round nursery pot at the moment. My thoughts were to move it a ~10” round training pot for 2-3 years for the tree to ramify. My reasoning is to start to reduce the root mass in preparation for relocation to a more appropriate ‘final’ pot without reducing it to the point it would need a year to work on its roots before having much energy to start it’s branching. Am I close to the mark with this thinking, or am I totally off base?

Thanks in advance.

Awesome purchase! Great bones there. I personally like to use wooden boxes as a development container. For this one, I’d make a box for it about 12”x12” and half as deep as the current container as Bobby mentioned. Leave it in there for 2 years. Then you can re-evaluate in a couple years where to go from there.
 
Is the Whisky really that good down there in Tennessee?

Tennessee is next to Kentucky, where they distill bourbon. Bourbon is to Kentucky what champagne is to France.


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Great tree. I really need to get myself to one of these shows.
 
So I’m making plans to repot this tree as per the seller’s suggestion and as previously discussed. I’ve done a little reading about soil selection, and it seems that a mix of akadama, pumice, and lava rock is a good option. If that’s the case and a good option, would the mixed bag that Wigert’s offers a good choice? I’d likely be using it for the maple I bought as well, but might add pine bark fines in a 3:1 Wigert’s/PBF mix.
Here is a link to the mix I’m pondering.
 
My thoughts were to move it a ~10” round training pot for 2-3 years for the tree to ramify. My reasoning is to start to reduce the root mass in preparation for relocation to a more appropriate ‘final’ pot without reducing it to the point it would need a year to work on its roots before having much energy to start it’s branching. Am I close to the mark with this thinking, or am I totally off base?
The few American hornbeams I've grown here do not seem fussy about root work. I've cut some pretty hard without ill effect. How much you can cut will depend on what root work the previous grower has done and what you find when you unpot. If the grower has done good work there may be few thick down roots so you can reduce to final depth without any problem. If they have been reluctant to cut roots you may have more work to do. In most cases I try to go right to final root cut back. The reason being that well over 90% of new roots develop from the cut ends of roots. Very few emerge back along the length of the roots so making intermediate root cuts achieves very, very little. You'll just end up having to cut off all new roots in a few years and be at the same stage you could be this repot but with a more extensive canopy to support.
As far as energy, from my experience, cutting roots hard or less does not seem to affect how vigorously trees grow back. Leaves provide energy. Roots provide nutrients and water. As soon as the new roots start growing they start collecting those nutrients and water. Short roots are just as efficient as long roots in that respect, given similar soil conditions and equal access to moisture and nutrients.
The training pot is more about developing ramification than developing roots IMHO.
 
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