Was repotting a mistake?

[Anturaju93]

Hi.
I have bought my first proper bonsai from a nursery online, from Germany, a Japanese white pine. It took 5 days to receive it in Romania, where I live (both countries are in Europe with similar weather). When I got the pine it was in good condition:

I noticed that the soil was very compacted and water was flowing very slowly thru the soil, I actually had to make some holes in the soil so that the water can flow out the pot holes. I placed the pine outside, and watered the tree.
The problem is that I noticed that the bottom needles ware turning yellow. I searched online and found that this situation is normal, the pine is shading old needles.
After 4 days the pine looked like this:

I was watering the tree every 2 days, its close to October here so its cold outside.
Yesterday , when I came home from work I see that my pine is continuing with needles going yellow, even an entire branch is yellow now.

I decided to take action and repot the tree. I wanted to wait until the spring to repot, but something had to be done.
I took the tree out from the pot and it was severely pot bounded so I had to remove the old soil and the roots that ware going round and round in the pot. I ended up with this:

I used 1 part commercial bonsai soil and 1 part akadama, and some used soil from the tree, mixed all together and repotted the tree in the same pot. I watered 2 times and now its outside again.
I did use some old soil to retain mycorrhiza.
I also removed all the dead yellow needles.

This is how the tree looks now:

It has been 24 hours since then, and the tree is looking okay, but what do you think about the repotting. I removed a lot of dead, black roots. The new soil retains the water more time, but I don't think its a problem because the tree does not get rain on it.
What to do if the tree continues to lose all the needles from a branch or more? Will the bare branches live until next spring?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

What to do if the tree continues to lose all the needles from a branch or more? Will the bare branches live until next spring?

You should have done nothing and waited it out.
JWP are known to be sensitive to sudden changes and I know they're pretty sensitive about damage to branches. So you probably had a case of two things: fall happening, all new foliage looks OK.. And some shipping damage maybe that was showing up. It can very well be so that those yellow branches have been damaged a little and dropped their needles because of that.
In general, we do one insult per season (or sometimes per year) on pines. Shipping counts as one, change of environment counts as one, and now you've hacked away a large part of the roots as well in the wrong time of year.
I don't know what kind of soil it is in right now, but it doesn't look like the right bonsai soil for a pine tree to me.

So in all honesty, I would be surprised if this tree survives the winter.
But all things said and done, the best action for you right now is to protect it from frosts this winter and take good care of it.

Keep in mind that the tree arrived healthy and that it showed no signs at all of being root bound. Next time it might be a good idea to ask first and act later

 

[Anturaju93]

Keep in mind that the tree arrived healthy and that it showed no signs at all of being root bound.

The soil was hard as concrete and the wire around the trunk was biting the trunk. I removed the wire and lifted the tree from its pot and all I saw was roots and roots. I wanted to do nothing to the tree until spring repot, but the yellowing of the needles day by day forced me to take the drastic decision to repot. I just hope that it makes it.
Seeing the pictures I attached, do you think the black mass of roots I removed was live roots?

 

[NaoTK]

At this point think of it as a fall collection bonsai: put it on a heat mat outside in partial sun and do not move it ever. Make sure the tree is wired into the pot and very sturdy.

 

[Paradox]

Outside during the Romanian winter might not be a good idea. You are going to have to provide it with very good protection when winter comes but still cool enough to have winter dormancy

 

[BrightsideB]

It’s a nice tree. The mycelium in the soil adds to the compact mat of soil. I have one that is like a brick because the mycelium is holding everything in the soil in place. And the mycelium is also attached to the roots. It is a symbiotic relationship between fungi and tree. They share resources they produce with each other. And pines love their mycelium buddy. It looks like you didn’t remove too much soil or roots. If you start to lose more recent grown needles or the tree all starts to yellow. Then lesson learned. It means it is dying. But it looks like it just shed older needles it didn’t need to survive. I don’t know about your location but good luck. Spring work is always good for roots. But learning this takes experience so that is what we do.

 

[sorce]

I think it will be fine.

Welcome to Crazy!

Sorce

 

[Nybonsai12]

Ooof.
1) potential damage during shipping?
2) repot out of season?
3)hacked away what appears to be more than half the roots?




good luck, hope it pulls through for you, next time wait and ask before taking actions.

 

[Lorax7]

The soil was hard as concrete and the wire around the trunk was biting the trunk. I removed the wire and lifted the tree from its pot and all I saw was roots and roots. I wanted to do nothing to the tree until spring repot, but the yellowing of the needles day by day forced me to take the drastic decision to repot. I just hope that it makes it.
Seeing the pictures I attached, do you think the black mass of roots I removed was live roots?

Removing the wire is the only one of those actions that made sense to do now. Soil that isn't draining as well as you would like is cause to do soji (Here's a link to a good article by Jonas Dupuich on soji) and to tie a ribbon on a branch to mark it as a tree you want to repot in the spring. It's not an emergency requiring an out of season repot. You weren't "forced.... to take the drastic decision to repot." You saw some yellow needles and made an ill-advised decision to repot. It happens. Everybody makes silly mistakes like this when they're just starting out, although those mistakes are typically less costly than this one because most people new to the hobby don't have a tree as expensive as this one presumably was. Just learn from it and move on. Next time, seek out some advice before you act and, above all...

What sort of protection are you able to provide this tree for the winter? Do you have somewhere you can put it where it will stay cold but remain above freezing?

 

[Anturaju93]

Yes, I will definitely protect this tree during winter. I have an unheated garage or an unheated closed balcony that is super bright and always has a windows open just a bit for air circulation, in the same location and orientation as the tree stands now. The garage has windows but receives less sunlight and in January it can go down as -5 Celsius inside. In the balcony it never goes down to freezing. When to move and where? I was thinking to let is sit outside until -2 Celsius and move it in the unheated balcony near the window, and keep it there until the weather worms out a bit. Romanian winters are getting wormer year after year with less and less snow and frost.

 

[Potawatomi13]

Question: you say tree never gets rained on? Why? Also what is new substrate that holds too much H2O? Personally might have said not now but seeing needles might have done same as you.

 

[Linn01]

Overwatering? I made the same mistake with a dead tree as a result. I refer to Brian Van Fleet who told me: My friend Peter Warren was watering my trees once and when he got to a JWP he said, “here is how you water a white pine” and he proceeded to get the pot wet, fence behind the tree wet, and the ground wet, laughed a little and moved to the next tree.

 

[Anturaju93]

I live in an apartment and I have the tree outside next to the window. It receives morning sun, the windows is East situated. When it rains it does not rain next to the window, except it there is a large storm, so I will control how much water the tree receives.

 

[Potawatomi13]

If tree survives is going to need more sunny location for good health/survival. Most pines must have good Sun most of day except possibly latest hot part of afternoon.

 

[Anturaju93]

I have some good news: my JWP almost stopped losing needles the next day after repotting. I think the problem was underwatering, because I'm not used to water my plants so often and the soil in witch the tree came from Japan was almost 100% grit, as you can see here in Peter's video:

I have lost two week branches but nothing to worry about. This is what the tree looks today, what do you think?

 

[Shogun610]

Sigh… any affects of shipping , repotting etc won’t show up right away.. you’ll have to wait and see. Additionally even if soil wasn’t ideal those yellowing needles are normal at this time of year as long as new grown needles are healthy. JWP don’t need watering that often like a JBP would because they are high mountain pines. All advice above is great. I would caution against learning from Chan, and that’s a maple .. he has a greenhouse and the climate in UK is very different from where you’re at if I guessed. But it’s all good learn and use advice above for recovery during winter. I made n00b mistakes myself when I started out probably still do.. best advice I’ve received is .. if you’re questioning it .. then don’t do it. Patience is best

 

[MaciekA]

Needles that turn this type of yellow late in the growing season are indicative of retranslocation (export of nutrients out of the needle to be reclaimed/stored by the tree) and the retirement of elder needles. I am not a pine savant so I can't say it can't be a reaction to repotting, but it's definitely not typical. As either a thought experiment or an actual experiment -- which many of us due to pruning have done a million times -- cut a large branch off a JWP today (thereby simulating the loss of water from the roots from a rough repot), toss it on the floor of your workshop, leave it there, and see how long it takes for those needles to lose color. You aren't likely to see retranslocation in the form of a shift to yellow, rather, you should see a loss in color saturation to an olive drab followed by eventually brown.

Retirement of needles can happen to elder needles, but it can (in JWP for example) also happen to all of the needles on any shoots that are much weaker compared to other much stronger shoots on the same tree.

A JWP that is hoppingly-vigorous and where few if any shoots are shaded out won't abandon as many shoots as one that's either growing much slower (i.e. in a bonsai pot), but it is still liable to occasionally choose some, even in that vigorous state. The photos don't show everything perfectly, but at least some of the shoots on which you had all needles undergo retranslocation (chlorophyll yanked out and reclaimed, hence revealing the yellow) and get whole-shoot abandonment look to me like relative weaklings (or on weaker branches) compared to adjacent branches which have been let run and stayed more vigorous.

I have an 8 foot tall JWP and it'll annually shed any tiny wimpy shoots I haven't removed, and at the same time it'll preserve much stronger, bigger, better-lit shoots elsewhere. I've watched it produce 100s of shoots and go through the process of selecting what it wants to keep (that is, unless I do that for it by removing weaklings and directing attention to my favored branches/shoots).

Nothing in the pictures looks too surprising or upsetting except the autumn repot, and if the tree can still draw water and roots don't succumb to winter, will probably be OK (if not terribly happy for the awkwardly-timed repot) if you maintain high sun. I agree with @Shogun610 about the effects of shipping not appearing this fast (I think the yellowed needles were already on their way out as a result of being on weaker shoots, ordinary slow-JWP stuff), as well as avoiding Chan's advice on pines. Get a Mirai Live account if you want to gain confidence with pines.