AusBonsai

Hi everyone,
Got a couple of little chinese elms which I want to pot up soon, one of them has already burst it's buds in most sections of the plant while the other plant has not burst at all yet as it lost it's leaves this winter. My question is should I do the root prune on the one which has burst it's buds already and leave the other till it warms up a bit (september?) or just wait for it to warm up and do both at once?
I will have to remove 2/3rds of the root mass I'm guessing to get them into the desired pots.
Any help?
Cheers - Pat

Hi Pat,
Maybe I am doing the wrong thing, but I have already repotted all my Elms - particularly the Chinese ones.
I reckon they are pretty forgiving and as for a 2/3 reduction I think you are being gentle

Our Northern hemisphere friends on here need to be cautious sometimes because of the extremes of winter, but we are lucky in Australia as we dont have such extremes (in the majortiy of places)

Before I hack into a plant, I often think about what would our local Sydney Bonsai nurseries be doing right now, given they have 1000's of trees to repot......and then I hack into it.......

Good luck with your elm repotting.....the secret is not in bare rooting, it is in the aftercare

Regards
Steve

Thanks Steve, with that in mind, you have given me the confidence to at least do the budding tree and see how it goes for a week or two until I attempt the bare tree.
I'm eager for spring to arrive!

I repotted every elm I own yesterday, and hacked the root back to next to nothing on some of them. None of mine have leaves at the moment and most are very raw stock.

So I would say now but we all have our own ideas!

You won't kill an elm as long as the aftercare is good. One of the few trees you can repot practically anytime and have them come through with flying colours. Mind you, I think Seijues are a bit more sensitive. I'll find that out soon enough as I just repotted a friend's seiju and it wasn't until I was settling it in its pot that I looked at the budding along the branches and realised it wasn't a Chinese elm. He's confident it will handle it so we shall see.

I have a few elms to do myself, but will not have time for another fortnight
Also my Trident maples need doing as they are strating bud out now

As an aside, I will be repotting ALL of my trees into 1-2 parts Zeolite / Maidenwell mix this year

I have repotted 5 trees so far and 4 of them were in Rays mix and 3 had ma sses of Curlgrubs in there. Zeolite mix i have heard will not get them at all

Ken

I've done all my Chinese Elms. I finished the last two days ago and I messed with the roots severely (root over rock, my first one!). Chinese Elms are so forgiving.

I've also done four tridents which began to burst and re-organised the roots on a few trident cuttings. They've all began to move though.

Can't beat them join them! A little root over rock maple (maybe Amur) had started to pop so I decided to do my elm raft today as well. One led to another as I kept swapping pots and I ended up doing all three elms that I collected last year and my largest trident.
They will sit in the shade house for now in case we get any bad frosts though.

I am planning to do my elms this weekend as my son will not be playing footy. Got to use the time when it's available as footy is very high on his priority list.

They will sit in the shade house for now in case we get any bad frosts though.

No sooner had I re-potted mine than it started blowing a gale! They're in their sheltered positions and all are wired in but still, this damn Melbourne wind at the moment is a hazard.

I see a lot of people have begun Re-potting. Is this because you have a lot of trees and you need to start early or is it a good time to do Chinese Elms? My Chinese Elm only just lost its leaves.

My Chinese Elm only just lost its leaves.

I'm surprised it did at all in Brisbane.

Buds are popping all over the place here, it's time to move.

Fair enough. So I could let mine wait a bit until it buds?

I reckon. But with Chinese Elms it's not so important as they're so forgiving.

Thanks