AusBonsai

Hey all, just a quick question. I bought a small Melaleuca Claret top (dwarf) as it was labeled. It was in the reduced bin at K-mart for $6. It looked very healthy. It came out as a nice tree, but when I went to re-pot it the 3-4mm roots traveled for about 5 cm under the soil then joined into one congested root mass. I untangled the roots as much as possible (bare rooted it as most soil fell away) with keeping as many fine roots on each main roots stems. I ended up saving about 1/3 of all the fine roots & all of the main root leaders.

Due to the long roots as the first 5cm had no fine roots from them I potted it as root over rock style, sorry no pictures as of yet. and then placed the pot in a water tray ans watered with Seasol.

My potting mix is 1/2 premium bonsai mix 1/2 course propagating sand & a bit of crushed dynamic lifter in the mix.

My question is: in your experience I guess the little tree has undergone a fair bit of stress, do you think It will be ok, are they fairly hardy plants.


What do you think, Will it be fine?

If a picture will help let me know & i will post one.

Cheers all

Ryan

Water well with seasol and give it light shade for a couple of weeks and it will be back in no time. Just keep the water up!

Joel.

Cool, Yeh I have it in a water tray that is about 20mm deep, bottom of the pot is submerged about 10mms, hope this will work? If it survives is will be a nice little tree for $6. I will try and post an image tomorrow.

Fingers crossed

Cheers

Ryan

i say no direct sun and keep it wet for the first weeks. Once growth gets stonger introduce sun.

Here is an image of the little $6 tree, its stands about 250mm from the top of the rock. You can see how long the roots were before any fine roots were present. they were extremely tangled and you can see by some of the twists, I managed to pull then apart without hopefully to much damage. I thought it would be a good opportunity to use the rock to help separate the roots instead of wiring them apart. It will need to grow and be refined if it takes of but fingers crossed at the moment.

it is now in full shade and in a water tray for the next few weeks
Cheers all

Ryan

Cool ryan! good use of it. the colour looks good to me you should be fine!

Ryan that is a nice start ,but there it is always a but. What your tree now needs is for those roots to be tighter too the rock with no gaps, so it looks more natural.
When you have done this.
You should then bury it roots and rock for at least 6 months. keep the top shaped as normal.
If you have some muck or clay use this to put around the roots, they can be kept there by sphagnum moss tied there with PANTY hose.
I hope this helps.
Cheers Pup

Cheers Pup, I think I might go for the sphagnum moss approach as I have bags of it unused. should I just tie the panty hose as tight as possible around the moss? (the tighter the better)

I agree at the moment it is sitting off the rock slightly as the roots were fairly stiff and tended to push the tree back off the rock.

Cheers, thanks for the tips

Ryan

Ryan1979b wrote:Cheers Pup, I think I might go for the sphagnum moss approach as I have bags of it unused. should I just tie the panty hose as tight as possible around the moss? (the tighter the better)

I agree at the moment it is sitting off the rock slightly as the roots were fairly stiff and tended to push the tree back off the rock.

Cheers, thanks for the tips

Ryan

Ryan, cut the sphagnum mix it with some of your Bonsai soil ( your mix will do ). Then as you say as tight as possible, and even tighter,( if you are not sweating and puffing its not tight enough OH! thats me ) wrap it around the roots then bury it all.

Cheers Pup

Excellent, thank you Pup

By the way I can probably grantee I will be huffing & puffing too

Cheers
Ryan

You need to move it slightly to the left or right. It doesn't really have a direction but the guidelines rightly say that a tree is never planted in the middle of a rectangular pot - always just slightly behind and to the left or right of centre. So basically, off centre both directions - NOT 'behind' centre. It gives a nicer balance to the visual picture.

Good starting stock - nice and healthy. Follow the good advice given and it should be fine.