Thoughts on Acer palmatum styling?

[Haines' Trees]

So as per instructions from everyone, I pumped the breaks of getting this thing repotted. I picked out a round pot with outward flaring edges since I learned the hard way that not every pot handles freeze and thaw cycles the best.

Here we are at the start, new pot already prepped.
Got it out of the pot no problem, started combing the roots out but that soil is crap, sandy and lumpy. Definitely glad to get the tree out of it. Cut the roots back. A lot of straight down action from the big ones, but some decent fibrous ones.

Put it into the new pot, had to cut the roots back a little bit more to keep those top roots buried unlike in the original pot. Put some better substrate in and we’re good to go!

Definitely will need to cut it back hard next year. Way too tall for what I want to go with. But I’ve got the feet taken care of for now.

Thanks for the tips and advice on this thread! @0soyoung @sorce @Maloghurst all a big help!

 

[sorce]

Excellent!

I forgot you were here!lol..
Even after I read that post from last time right now! Lolol.

My maple is just about at "repot time" too.

Should pop pop shortly!

Sorce

 

[Haines' Trees]

Let me know how you fare with yours! I’ll throw some pictures up of mine later in the year if I didn’t just kill the thing.

 

[Haines' Trees]

So here we are, a few weeks after the fact. And I have no new growth. No buds, no sign of buds. Nothing. We’ve had nice-ish weather. I have a forest of a. palmatum that is leafing out. Am I expecting it to leaf out too soon or do I have a dead tree on my hands?

 

[ajm55555]

Scratch the trunk a little and you should see some green if it's alive.
Not sure about the variety but as soon as I saw the leaves from February they didn't seem to have died the natural way in the Fall but rather abruptly.
The bottom is if there is no green on the trunk and you see no swelling buds, it's dead. Sorry about that.