AusBonsai

Hi guys, what are your experiences like when dealing with cedar roots during repotting?
I've got a cedar that I've just styled and wanting to repot in a smaller pot.

Have any of you had success with keeping cedars in a small pot? The roots I've noticed with Cedars are pretty large and bulky.

A couple of mine have sulked for a year or more after moderate root reduction so I think it is better to reduce cedar roots a bit at a time over a couple of years.
How much do you think you'll need to reduce?

Yep, my limited experience with Lebanese and Himalayan Cedar has been that they have sulked for 6 months to a year after moderate root work. It's just a slow game with cedars I think.

Yep same experience here with Atlantic Cedar and moderate root work. Drops needles and sulks for a good 6 months afterward.

I lost my first couple of cedrus until my teacher told me he does his around Xmas new year, even with moderate rootwork they no longer die or sulk.

Thanks for the comments guys

Have you peeps seen any fine roots from cedars? The ones I usually see are like 2 to 3mms thick.

I plan to reduce the roots by more than 50%.
Last year I did a summer repot where I took it out of the nursery pot/organic soil and actually did a pretty aggressive root reduction. Somehow it survived and flourished really well. This is sort of the experimental tree and I was mentally prepared to lose the tree

The base of the trunk is 2cm and I was thinking of placing it in a 14cm pot.

That's a nice cedar, I have worked with Cedrus Deodar and have gone through 50% of the root all when I moved it from a nursery pot to a shallow pot. I have done that in late autumn and haven't had any issues and they have always pushed through strongly in spring. Noting however that I have never bare rooted them.

I think the main thing is to not bare root them. I bare rooted my first Cedar out of ignorance which was a Deodar. It dropped pretty much all it's needles and did almost nothing for about a year. It did eventually recover and is thriving now. I probably did this at the wrong time of the year as well so I definitely got lucky.

I think it depends on the variety. I have root pruned 2 Blue Atlas very hard to squeeze them into pots. One, I was sure I was going to kill it, but thought what the, I'll give it go and to my surprise, it recovered without too much needle dropping - and I mean almost to the hard wood root ball. A friend cut 2 fairly advanced blues very hard to squeeze them in together to form a double planting and I was sure he would kill them, but no, they've survived and thrived. On the other hand, I have killed several dwarf rarer species like green knight and dwarf brevifolia and have learnt they need a very subtle approach.

I find potting cedars not to be a problem. Also root chopped a large Lebanese cedar (both bottom and sides and set it out in full sun in autumn; without any set back at all; not even any needle drop. Repotted an Atlantic cedar in late summer from a moon pot to a semi cascade pot without any set back. Just don’t repot if in full spring growth,

Grant

I repotted my cedar deodora in late winter and at the same time, removed 2/3 of growth. Pot was reduced by 4/5 and though I didn't bare root, I did cut large amounts from the bottom and on the side. No needle dropped for the rest of the season and though growth was reduce, the tree remained healthy throughout the growing season. In one of my older post, I repotted the same cedar in late summer with heavy pruning bottom and top, and lost every single needle. It did survive and came back quite strong in the following 2-3 yrs.

I would repot now if I needed repotting as buds are starting to swell.

Hi guys, here are some updates. I couldn’t resist repotting the tree so I did it in mid September. Attached is the state pre root pruning. There were heaps of dead and rotten roots. Something that I have seen consistently with my blue atlases. Am still trying to figure out the balance of watering these guys.

I’ve pruned it pretty drastically.

And here it is, post flush in mid October sitting in a drum shuiming pot. It still has not dropped any needles yet. Fingers crossed, it’ll make it through summer!

Hey Mark, how'd this Cedar fair?