AusBonsai

Hi All,

I have this Elm with the main trunk dieing back over a number of years. Last year repotted it and was extremely pot bound. This repot seemed to help, but I'm still concerned the die back is continuing.
I was after any suggestions of what to do to??

One idea I had was to plant it into the ground for this season to see if that will help it regain vigour and stop the die back.
Thanks!

It is difficult to comment when there is just one photo, however from what I can see I wouldn't be too concerned. It appears that there was some trauma and that the tree is starting to seal the dead from the living tissue - a natural occurrence.
My initial thought was to wait for another season then do some carving on the area.

I'm with Watto. The bark looks like Chinese elm so I have added the photo below of a Chinese elm of mine that I dug some years ago. It also has a large dead branch (the original trunk) on the top. It's not the most brilliant specimen, but I recently used branch splitters to break up the dead wood and used jinning pliers to tear off some of the dead wood to create a large jin. I will now leave it to rot naturally - maybe shorten it too.

You could do something similar. And you have lots of branches to choose from in designing your tree.

Give it a preventative spray or drench with a fungicide first and leave for a few weeks and then consider a repot into a slightly larger pot . Check out the roots while doing the repot and do a light root trim.
Even if the trunk is rotted out completely it wont matter in the long run if you can get the tree healthy again . Fertilise consistently during spring , summer and Autumn with liquid feed like Power feed.

Grant