Time to replant swamp cypress?

[bonsaigreg]

Hi, can anyone please give me advice on the best time for replanting swamp cypress? I am in Toowoomba and have some young 18 month old trees grown from seed that are being field grown. I want to lift them to do some initial root work to give good nebari as per Neil's (Shibui) advice and also do some initial pruning to help develop lower branches. One batch which is the strongest growing are about 600 high and 10-12 diameter and the leaves have browned off for the bottom 2/3. The other batch is not as vigorous being about 300 high but these have not browned off at all so I don't know if they will stay green for the rest of the winter. When I planted the seedlings out last year they took a while to get going and seemed a bit sensitive to root disturbance. Three trees I replanted a month ago as a trial browned right off and don't look healthy at all after some root trimming and a bit off the top.

Any advice would be appreciated as I doubt they will go completely deciduous this winter.

Thanks bonsaigreg

[shibui]

Winter is a good time to do root work on swampies so I would go ahead. Even if they are not completely deciduous they will be as slow as they are going to get so still best time. All mine are completely bare now.
I have not found them at all sensitive to root work or pruning but, except for small seedlings, have not done any root pruning while they are growing.
The recent ones going brown a month ago may just have been a response to cooler temps going into winter.

[bonsaigreg]

Thanks Neil,

I think I will go ahead in the next few weeks but treating it as a learning exercise by using a control group with no root or top pruning, and three other groups with varying degrees of pruning. I am sure I will learn something from it even if it's a sure fire way to kill swampies but you have to try. I will update the results in late spring or early summer to let you know how they went.

[sheepdawg]

I live near Toowoomba and repot my swampie in late August (though could go earlier). I remove at least 80% of the roots when I do it and haven't had problems (yet). I'll link a picture below, but the plant is basically sitting on the pot it came out of which had roots escaping which were over 1m.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/zvFDK ... 70-h657-no