April 14th 2023
Repotting day
Started 9:15pm
Prepped two pots but wasn't sure what the roots would look like. You can see I gave the tree more of an apex and changed the placement of a few branches.
The roots still need a lot of work. I was able to remove 1/2 of the hard native soil and a lot of large rocks.
Finished at 11:50pm
Not 100% happy with the planting angle I ended up with but I needed to go to bed. It was an incremental improvement.
The left branch still drives me crazy.
August 27th 2023
I let it grow out to recover from repotting and keep up the health. I had adjusted the branches further. This is my first limber pine so I wanted to confirm it was healthy enough to remove the left branch.
Worked with Bjorn Bjornholm on the refinement. He said the tree looked healthy enough to remove the large left branch. We did some needle clean-up and branch adjustments too. I am now much happier with where this tree is. 2-3 more years in this pot and hopefully it will fit in the Sara Rayner pot next when I remove the last of the native soil.
I have some concerns about these two shari that appeared out of nowhere last year. They don't seem to be getting any bigger though. I'm going to be a bit more thorough with my dormancy spray going forward since there is so much old flaky bark for little jerks to hide in.
The size of this pot is a bit large and the native soil still in some of the rootball is breaking down making consistent watering tricky. I might have to stick a skewer in it to monitor over winter. Foliage could be healthier and I need to be more mindful to avoid overwatering.
