JBP in trouble? Need help with aftercare.

[keegan]

Hi there!

I'm fairly new to JBP. I've read a lot and heard a lot so I have a lot of JBP knowledge, but not much experience. If anyone can help me nurse this pine through my harsh novice treatment, I'd like to do my best not to lose it.

Background:

I live in Los Angeles where it doesn't freeze at night and people say these pines don't really go dormant, they just sort of slow down for the winter. I did the repot on Christmas Day. I took about half the foliage off (perhaps in my novice ignorance and haste), and probably about half the roots as well (perhaps even a little more--certainly too much in retrospect). Although with the roots I felt I had little choice--most of the roots were coiled in the bottom (of course), and there were not a lot of fine roots up in the dense nursery soil, so once I removed the bottom layer I feel the damage had been done. I left an intact rootball a little smaller than the colander you see pictured and surrounded it with corse 1/8-1/4" soil mix of lava, pumice and diatomaceous earth. I left the large branch that is not part of the final design in hopes that it would help recover the roots.

Now a month later, the tips of most of the needles are yellowing and some are exuding little balls of sap. I read on these forums that these can be signs of dehydration.

How best to proceed?

I've been watering when the corse bonsai soil just becomes dry. If it is dehydrated, should I water more frequently? I don't want to keep the nursery soil rootball too wet, as it already has poor air flow. We had a week straight of rain and I brought it inside every other day to let it dry out a bit, and that was followed by a high pressure spell: 70s during the day and very low humidity, which is forecast to continue at least another week.

Other ideas: misting the foliage? I work from home and so could do this many times a day. I have it in full sun, maybe move it to the shade? I don't have a greenhouse but could probably make a plastic tent for it if the increased humidity would help it recover.

Note: All the pictures are from Dec 25, 2018 (when I did the work) except the needle closeup that I took today and is labeled as such.

Any tips are greatly appreciated!

Learning from my mistakes,
Keegan

 

[keegan]

The sun is pretty low this time of year so when I say "full sun," it really only gets a couple hours of direct sunlight where I have it on the bench.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

If you have read a lot about pines, you must have come across the '1 insult per season' somewhere.
That's a safe way to not kill a pine.

You did two insults, and quite major ones too!
Is it spring or fall in LA during december and January? Spring or fall is the advised repot time for JBP. I didn't read the books, but I heard that it's in every book on JBP. People can get away with doing major repots in other seasons, but that's a gamble.

When getting plants out of nursery soil, I rake or wash half of the soil out and leave the other half intact. I do not cut roots at all. The tree (especially pines) needs whatever it can keep to stay alive and improve chances of recovery (all trees treated like that lived in 2017 and 2018). Cutting roots is something I postpone to the 3rd repot; when all of the nursery soil is gone and when the tree is established in bonsai soil.

How best to proceed? In my humble opinion, I'd say do nothing for a few years and let it recover. There's no special trick to speed up that process. You drove hard and aggressively, the tree has pulled the handbrake on you. That could mean it has crashed, or that it wants to slow down for a while. It's going to take some months before it tells you what happened, by either dying or recovering.

There are more experienced pine owners, they will most likely have a better sense of what's going on and they outrank me in helpfulness and experience when giving advice. If they correct me, go with their advice.
I wish you all the best!

 

[Dav4]

My biggest concern is the vast difference between the original soil of the root ball (which looked terrible), and the new soil, which appears to be coarse aggregate. This can make it very hard to adequately water the tree... water will pretty much flow through the new soil and never moisten the original soil remaining. Conversely, during periods of heavy, frequent rain, the old soil will never dry out. The best way to manage something like this is using a half bare root approach to the re-pot, where essentially half of the root ball is bare rooted and new, good soil is worked into the roots while the other half of the root ball isn't touched. In a few years, the other side of the root ball is bare rooted and the procedure repeated, getting the entire root ball into the appropriate soil. I'm not sure you should do this now, though... perhaps @Adair M might have an opinion.

 

[Adair M]

I saw the awful soil, and immediately thought it needed a HBR. The tips yellowing appears to having soil being too wet.

 

[keegan]

Thanks for the thoughts everyone, and for not being too hard on me for my mistakes!

@Adair M, do you think I should go back in and perform this now? Gently comb out some of the old soil from the rootball and work in the new soil? That would be a pretty simple task.

Thanks!
keegan

 

[0soyoung]

As much sun for as many hours per day as you can give it. Active photosynthesis is required to grow roots. It is warm enough in LA for a fair amount of photosynthesis to occur during the daylight hours.


I suggest that you adopt a habit of only one or the other - foliage reduction = no simultaneous repotting / repotting = no simultaneous foliage reduction. Your pines will stay much stronger this way.

Pines can be repotted in the summer (i.e, between the time of the summer solstice and the fall equinox) as well as during the relatively brief period of spring (in colder locations) as the buds/candles are just beginning to push. So you can do things like repot in Aug/Sep and have all the foliage power root recovery before winter, then with recovered roots, you could style, including reductions in foliage in that following winter if you want, for example, instead of what you did. Also with a healthy tree, one can HBR in spring and do the remaining HBR the following summer (or first HBR in summer and second HBR the following spring) if one keeps the foliage intact.

 

[Adair M]

As much sun for as many hours per day as you can give it. Active photosynthesis is required to grow roots. It is warm enough in LA for a fair amount of photosynthesis to occur during the daylight hours.


I suggest that you adopt a habit of only one or the other - foliage reduction = no simultaneous repotting / repotting = no simultaneous foliage reduction. Your pines will stay much stronger this way.

Pines can be repotted in the summer (i.e, between the time of the summer solstice and the fall equinox) as well as during the relatively brief period of spring (in colder locations) as the buds/candles are just beginning to push. So you can do things like repot in Aug/Sep and have all the foliage power root recovery before winter, then with recovered roots, you could style, including reductions in foliage in that following winter if you want, for example, instead of what you did. Also with a healthy tree, one can HBR in spring and do the remaining HBR the following summer (or first HBR in summer and second HBR the following spring) if one keeps the foliage intact.

No, wait at least a year between HBRs. Even better, wait 2 years.

 

[Adair M]

Your yellow tips? Fungus.

Treat with daconil, copper, and Cleary’s,

Stop misting after sunset.

 

[Potawatomi13]

In huge metropolis is no club member to help?