I Ruined My Kiyohime Maple

[Bonsai Nut]

After almost 25 years in, I still kill some. It happens. I had a handful I lost to wintering just this season. Nothing that important, but a loss is a loss ...

Last year I killed a Japanese maple. I bought two maples from CostCo when they were having a crazy sale on some landscape trees. 10-12' Japanese maples in 25 gallon pots for $45 each. I bought two and they were so massive I had to chop them in half just to get them in my SUV. When I got home I went to repot both, and was horrified to find that under the surface of the soil was a burlap-wrapped rootball in the hardest clay imaginable. One tree had decent fine roots, but the second had so few roots I was amazed it was even alive. It slowly dwindled and died over the course of several months - no matter what babying I provided it. The second maple is growing like a fiend. Sometimes you just get a bad pick of the straw.

I killed another hinoki cypress this year. No matter what I do, I cannot keep them alive in Southern California. It isn't through lack of trying.

 

[Gsquared]

When I’ve done that to my maples I called it accidental defoliation. Everything always came back though and a couple of times got great tiny little foliage!

 

[Omar]

Just want to throw in my 2 cents on slip potting. Slip potting, when done correctly, should absolutely not be as traumatic as regular re-potting. In fact, I've saved numerous trees over the years that were root bound and in need of a little more room to grow. If the root ball collapses when you take the tree out of the pot, it probably didn't need to be slip potted in the first place.

But if the roots are extremely dense, and water isn't percolating properly, a slip pot can definitely be the answer. When I do it, I very lightly rough up the perimeter of the root ball a bit to encourage the the roots to grow into the new soil. Even when done wildly out of season, I've had very good luck with the procedure. But again, I'm only doing this on trees with a very dense root ball.

That's exactly the issue I had with this one. The root ball was so dense and root bound that I'd water it, pull it out of the pot to see that only a fraction of the root ball was actually wet. I slip potted early summer but didn't touch the roots.

Would dunking the plant in a case like this be advisable? From what I've gathered in my very brief time in the bonsai world is that the immersion method of watering is sub-optimal.

 

[music~maker]

From what I've heard and put together myself, the roughing it up part would be key to a successful slip potting. Otherwise the water could possible pass by the root ball in the new soil with a plain ol' slip pot and dry out the rootball.

However I've heard others claim that doing that defeats the purpose of a "gentle" slip potting...
I'm not sure you will get a very good consensus on this topic if I'm right about these two points of views...

Well, by gentle I do mean gentle. You get a feel for it after a while, but if you're careful, a light pass around the root ball does seem to help things. Is there some risk still involved? Sure, and that's why I don't do it unless I think it's riskier to not do it.

 

[music~maker]

Last year I killed a Japanese maple. I bought two maples from CostCo when they were having a crazy sale on some landscape trees. 10-12' Japanese maples in 25 gallon pots for $45 each. I bought two and they were so massive I had to chop them in half just to get them in my SUV. When I got home I went to repot both, and was horrified to find that under the surface of the soil was a burlap-wrapped rootball in the hardest clay imaginable. One tree had decent fine roots, but the second had so few roots I was amazed it was even alive. It slowly dwindled and died over the course of several months - no matter what babying I provided it. The second maple is growing like a fiend. Sometimes you just get a bad pick of the straw.

I killed another hinoki cypress this year. No matter what I do, I cannot keep them alive in Southern California. It isn't through lack of trying.

Yeah, sounds like that second one might have failed no matter what you did to it. Sometimes you just get a dud I guess.