AusBonsai

3 weeks after my old chinese quince had been repotted, I noticed some of the bark on the nebari lifting. I scraped it away, cleaned it up and sealed it thinking everything would be fine. Then a week later I noticed another spot doing the same. After following the rot down I discovered that it was quite established so reluctantly ( leaves were already out) I took it out and had a closer look. The more I looked the more I saw. I bit the bullet and started to remove all the soil from the root ball with a hook and discovered old clay at the base of the trunk which I had forgotten about. After blasting with water, well words can't describe. 35 years down the drain.
I cleaned to live cambium and soaked in Ban Rot for 5 hours. The strongest systemic fungicide I have (but it's quite old so I don't even know it it still works) Planted in 100% sand to see what happens, but really, even if it does recover two major roots are completely gone and there's precious few places for new roots to start from. If it doesn't do something miraculous, onto the fire it must go, although it might be worth trying to layer if it gets strong enough.
Moral......, make sure you know what's going on under the trunk. This can happen with any mix not just clay except maybe for pure sand or some other hard mineral. I have started to bed the bottom of the trunk onto a mound of pure sand (over your planting mix) after washing all the old mix from the roots of old trees.
Will update either in 2 years or two weeks.

Feel for you buddy. Hopefully it survives.

whoaw.

I use 50% washed river sand in most of nearly all my mixes. It is for this very reason that I do it, that I worry about things like this. So far it has worked wonders for the last 5 years or so.

That is deadset heart breaking though Mike.

I had the same thing starting to happen to an old fig and an older casy, and luckily I caught it sooner than later.

Sad news, fingers crossed for a positive result.

That tree is older than I am - can’t image how disappointing this must be.
But if it pulls through, it’s a testament to following your nose when something isn’t looking right.
Fingers crossed!

So I let the patient grow without touching it all year but fed it continuously. I put in pure river sand but it was doing so well that I paced the pot onto a larger one with potting mix. It has grown a lot but it will be interesting to see how much repair - if any - was done below the soil. I won't hold my breath..