Japanese Maple rebuild
Posted: August 26th, 2019, 8:14 pm
Time for me to fess up, and admit i made an enormous mistake about two years ago. I decided to take on a Japanese Maple that was in the process of being rebuilt. I saw 15 years into the future instead of 15 minutes, and went home with a tree that was suffering from terribly waterlogged soil that was causing leaf deformities whereby new leaves would turn brown shortly after extension, and the stubs of once beautiful branches only hinted at what i was going to have to regrow over the coming decades. I think pity was taken on me for taking on such a tree, and i was passed on photos of the tree all the way back to it as a seedling in a pot, along with the handwritten notes of the owner(s?) before me. I think these photos and notes more than anything have kept me passionate about caring for this tree and nursing it back to health over the coming decades; the weight of responsibility!
At the time i was forced to do an emergency re-pot in the middle of autumn into a wooden grow box, removing around 80-90% of the old soil, but did no root cutting whatsoever. What i found was lots of dark brown roots rather than healthy ones. In fact one solitary white root on the underside of what looked like wet clay was my only real source of hope at the time. Never the less I'd committed (lost my mind?) and now had to make what little best there was to make of the situation. FYI don't use a coir peat heavy mix, nothing good can come of it.
In my haste to get the old soil out i hadn't allowed for how impossibly heavy the grow box was with soil and tree that i couldn't lift it to move it around the garden, so i got it into the shade of a large garden tree and crossed my fingers that it would make it to winter. That it did, and i wasted no time getting it out of the grow box and into a relatively deep bonsai pot. Despite the new pot being smaller than the original extremely shallow square one it was in, the root system was so poorly that it didn't even trouble the edges of the pot. This was a blessing in disguise, as it meant i could just pop it straight into the pot and not have to cut any roots on a tree that really needed all the help it could get.
Well it leafed out in Spring of 2018 to my immense relief, but there were still issues with the leaves and it copped a diabolical aphid attack right at the start of spring. This time the shoots were at least extending 3-4 nodes before visible deformities occurred; so i sprayed the aphids, crossed
my fingers once more, moved it to a protected position, and started a rotation of plain water, drying back, and a 1/2 strength liquid feed as i didn't want to overwhelm a stressed tree. I didn't touch the growth until late spring/ early summer, when just a few shoots were removed to allow more light and air in to inner buds, and then it was left to carry on.
After a stressful and hot summer here in Melbourne where it was moved indoors on virtually every single day over 30 degrees, and put back outside again overnight, it made it to Autumn, put in a halfhearted display of colour and went dormant again. I tested for movement of the trunk in the pot and, to my immense relief, found it very firmly rooted in the pot. The root system was well on the way to recovery even if the foliage wasn't totally looking clear yet.
Now i head into year 2 with this tree and some really good, healthy shoots finally appearing. Some have been wired tonight to start the beginnings of new primary and secondary branch extensions, and some of it will be allowed to extend freely the whole season to start preparing shoots for thread-grafting the trunk and thick primary branches with new branches in some of the voids that exist this time next year. Hopefully the second year of largely unrestricted growth is enough to really get this tree back on an even keel health wise.
My lesson i took from this tree was; "don't fall in love with the idea of a tree". Just because i know this tree can be amazing in 15 years time, doesn't mean i need to take 15 years off my life stressing over its well-being every day of summer. Would i have been better off leaving this tree behind and taking home a healthy plant instead? 100% i would have been.
Having said that, this tree has become a reminder on my bench that others before me have dedicated themselves to it, and i owe my dedication to it just the same. My decision making regarding trees entering my collection needed the lesson of this tree; and now i have learned the lesson this tree was trying to teach, it will be stay in my very humble collection as long as i am physically able to care for it. Here's to the next decade of development, starting now where i should have started 2 years ago. With a healthy tree.
What it looked like when i got it
Summer 2019
Today
At the time i was forced to do an emergency re-pot in the middle of autumn into a wooden grow box, removing around 80-90% of the old soil, but did no root cutting whatsoever. What i found was lots of dark brown roots rather than healthy ones. In fact one solitary white root on the underside of what looked like wet clay was my only real source of hope at the time. Never the less I'd committed (lost my mind?) and now had to make what little best there was to make of the situation. FYI don't use a coir peat heavy mix, nothing good can come of it.
In my haste to get the old soil out i hadn't allowed for how impossibly heavy the grow box was with soil and tree that i couldn't lift it to move it around the garden, so i got it into the shade of a large garden tree and crossed my fingers that it would make it to winter. That it did, and i wasted no time getting it out of the grow box and into a relatively deep bonsai pot. Despite the new pot being smaller than the original extremely shallow square one it was in, the root system was so poorly that it didn't even trouble the edges of the pot. This was a blessing in disguise, as it meant i could just pop it straight into the pot and not have to cut any roots on a tree that really needed all the help it could get.
Well it leafed out in Spring of 2018 to my immense relief, but there were still issues with the leaves and it copped a diabolical aphid attack right at the start of spring. This time the shoots were at least extending 3-4 nodes before visible deformities occurred; so i sprayed the aphids, crossed
my fingers once more, moved it to a protected position, and started a rotation of plain water, drying back, and a 1/2 strength liquid feed as i didn't want to overwhelm a stressed tree. I didn't touch the growth until late spring/ early summer, when just a few shoots were removed to allow more light and air in to inner buds, and then it was left to carry on.
After a stressful and hot summer here in Melbourne where it was moved indoors on virtually every single day over 30 degrees, and put back outside again overnight, it made it to Autumn, put in a halfhearted display of colour and went dormant again. I tested for movement of the trunk in the pot and, to my immense relief, found it very firmly rooted in the pot. The root system was well on the way to recovery even if the foliage wasn't totally looking clear yet.
Now i head into year 2 with this tree and some really good, healthy shoots finally appearing. Some have been wired tonight to start the beginnings of new primary and secondary branch extensions, and some of it will be allowed to extend freely the whole season to start preparing shoots for thread-grafting the trunk and thick primary branches with new branches in some of the voids that exist this time next year. Hopefully the second year of largely unrestricted growth is enough to really get this tree back on an even keel health wise.
My lesson i took from this tree was; "don't fall in love with the idea of a tree". Just because i know this tree can be amazing in 15 years time, doesn't mean i need to take 15 years off my life stressing over its well-being every day of summer. Would i have been better off leaving this tree behind and taking home a healthy plant instead? 100% i would have been.
Having said that, this tree has become a reminder on my bench that others before me have dedicated themselves to it, and i owe my dedication to it just the same. My decision making regarding trees entering my collection needed the lesson of this tree; and now i have learned the lesson this tree was trying to teach, it will be stay in my very humble collection as long as i am physically able to care for it. Here's to the next decade of development, starting now where i should have started 2 years ago. With a healthy tree.
What it looked like when i got it
Summer 2019
Today