Tea Tree Trio

[ShaneVE]

Over December - Jan holiday I visited a few local nurseries with the intention of finding some larger lepto material. I wanted something I could start to style, clip and grow, rather than just having a bunch of developing plants that just I just water and wait. As a beginner, I am wondering if it's the right time to do a trunk chop, but also concerned after reading some leptos refuse to backbud on mature wood.

Here's what I ended up with:

1. L. Morrisonii x spectabile 'Rudolph' PBR - purchased at gardenworld.
Lots of foliage, nicest looking bark out of the 3. Should have red/pink flowers. Foliage is around 3cm long, soft. Haven't uncovered enough roots to know the nebari potential yet.

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2. L. Polygalifolium " Copper Glow". Purchased at pots galore.
Gorgeous dark leaves against white flowers. Foliage also around 3cm long, soft (not stiff). Least interesting bark of the 3 so far. Unknown nebari, but a branch is coming up through the potting mix which makes me wonder how deep I will need to go to find the roots. It's all but lost it's flowers now, and starting to push little leaves up top.

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3. L. "Mesmer Eyes" - Purchased at Aussie Outdoor Emporium.
Small 10mm, harder, shiny leaves. Interesting striped bark, and some interesting although not radial roots.

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These were all fairly root bound upon getting them home, and have since been slip potted into larger pots with a mix of native potting mix, river sand, eucalypt mulch and perlite. They're all around 12-15mm trunk diameter and over a meter tall (for what little that matters).

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[dansai]

You can always leave some green leaves if you're unsure about whether the variety you have will bud back on old wood. Safest thing to do with leptos.

Can I ask why you slip potted rather than actually dealt with the roots? In my experience, a vast majority of nursery grown plants have shocking roots. Especially if they are in larger size pots. They tend to be slip potted from small plugs with no root work and usually after they have already formed tangled roots and so the tangle just gets thicker and harder to sort out. They also tend to get buried deeper each time too.

I only get plants from nurseries now if they are very young, preferably in tubes, and the first thing I do is repot. Or if they are a particularly interesting plant, something I know forms good surface roots, or from a nursery that I am know grows its own more advanced stock with good potting on practices.

I have found it quicker to grow a plant well from young material with regular repots and root work, than to get more advanced material and have to sort out bad roots.

My advice to you would be to do a proper repot before a trunk chop. Get in and sort out the roots if you can. Leave plenty of foliage on to help with the recovery. Only take off soft new foliage. If you have slipped potted a potbound tree that probably has bad roots underneath, you have only just added to the problem. You will also have to remove all the new healthy roots when you go to repot in the future.


The only time I would slip pot is if you know the roots in the centre are good, and you do it well before the tree gets root bound and are trying to grow the tree rapidly

[ACooke]

I've got a Lepto Mesmer-Eyes which I bought thinking it was probably a Scoprium var. and hopefully a hardier one than those I've heard that others have had so many issues with - but not having the highest of hopes (I believe it's hypbrid between Lepto Scop and 2 other Lepto's).

I repotted it essentially straight away (8th September 2024, my Iphone tells me) and the roots were more of a mess than I'd hoped so the repotting tuned out to be more drastic than I'd anticipated. I removed well beyond 50% of the roots, sat it in a water-tray for a month or two (until it seemed to be on the rebound) and whilst it sulked for probably a month or two and dropped a lot of it's leaves; it bounced back vigorously, to where it's shown today (the two non-root photos).

It also back-budded pretty profusely (I only pruned lightly unpon the repot - well-less than 50% of the foliable and nothing since), sometimes from old-wood/the trunk beneath any other foliage (the two arrows and the circle - which is more difficult to see) so I suspect if you did trunk chop it, it would survive. I think a better option might be to give it a drastic hair-cut and see if that spurs any back-budding further down the trunk. In saying that, if you see the tree as un-usable without a trunk chop, then you could potentially just go for that - as long as you wouldn't be too concerned with losing it, if that were to happen.

All in all, so far, it's been far more hardy than I was concerned it might have been.

It's obviously still very rough. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do styling wise. I think it might make a nice clump-eques multi-trunk or some sort of windswept style. I've pretty much just wired it to add a little movement to the trunks where and while I could, although certainly, not all of them will remain.

Anyway, hopefully that's at least a tad helpful with one of your 3 trees.

[ShaneVE]

Hey Dansai, I put a question out on social media and a lot of people said don't try to cut the root ball in summer. I tried looking through Ausbonsai and saw posts saying similar, but then other posts saying leaving the nursery stock in it's original pot was even worse. A few experienced people suggested slip potting it so that's what I ended up doing. So you reckon it would be ok to clean up the root ball now, or should I be waiting till winter? Part of the reason I wanted to trunk chop was to direct the growth down low, instead of wasting energy on the foliage on the top half that will get chucked anyway.

Hi ACooke, from what I have seen, Bywong nursery developed it in a Breeding Programme from a cross between Leptospermum scoparium nanum rubrum, L macrocarpa and L deuense. Thanks for sharing your experience with this variant, it's good to know it has back-budded for you and survived a heavy root reduction. That gives me hope I wont kill this one!

[Rory]

Hi Shane.
I’ve been doing bonsai for about 30 years and everything I was told when I started was pretty much bad advice from what I do now. I had to figure out myself what worked well and what didn’t.
As I’ve preached many times before and now my repotting method is generally the same for all Australian natives except a little different for finicky and less hardy material. Follow the advice of those on here that mainly grow natives and have long time experience with them.

Dansai is awesome, and I’m not going to regurgitate what he said, because his advice is spot on. Read every point he made. A lot of us now prefer to leave most of the foliage on or as much as possible, depending on how much root you remove. I have simply found that from the last 20 years of trials with natives, that it is better to leave more foliage on, rather than to cut most of it off.

You can do heavy rootwork in January.
We are in strong summer months now, and I’m guessing you’re in Victoria, so you should be fine.

[Promethius]

For the little my 2c adds, I’m with Rory and Dansai about tackling roots now. I try to do my natives in peak summer heat.

Can I also ask about where you have them placed - was this just for the photos, or do you have anything growing in that area between houses? The limited sun and air movement might make things challenging.

[ShaneVE]

Hi guys. Thanks for all the response and direction and clearing up the misinformation. I will gladly get into the roots and try to bring order to chaos, that was my original plan! Am I right in thinking I will likely be putting them back into smaller pots then, if say I was taking up to 40% of the roots?

Yeah Rory, I am in Melbourne. Currently having a few 38 degree days, so I will wait for a cooler day to jump into it.

@promethius - I have a pretty small yard and 3 little kids, so I have kind of tucked the plants around the corner so they don't get collected by a wayward ball. The fence is on the north side of the yard, and up against that fence gets a good 6-8ish hours of sun. The plants have only been in there maybe a month, but so far all seems healthy.

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[Promethius]

That’s a nice setup. Fair enough!

[GavinG]

For my money, cutting back to bare wood rarely gives back budding on any Lepto. You may get some if you prune hard back to the last leaves - or you may not. They are a fiddly species that way. Cutting back to a side branch is safer. Leptos may not thicken quickly, although Mesmer eyes has been good for me, using sacrifice branches and growing long then cutting back to the last few leaves.

Starting with tube stock may be "slower", but you get to wrangle the roots early, keep the foliage close in and make shapes you actually like, from the start. Better results, less trying to "fix" stuff.

I'd leave drastic root work until it's cooler, and put them in a water bath afterwards.

Good luck,

Gavin

[dansai]

As you can see Shane, the "wisdom" offered by well intentioned people on social media can not always be correct. One thing I've taken away from it all is that the northern hemisphere has vastly different weather to us and that what works for them does not apply to us. Unfortunately a lot of information about bonsai was taken from the USA to inform our Bonsai practice in Australia. A lot of that has become dogma. Even though it is full of mis-conceptions, out of date knowledge and bad practice.

When it comes to repotting, northern hemisphere practitioners who experience a true cold winter where the ground freezes and they only have a short growing season, the repotting window is short and needs to be respected to ensure the tree has grown enough and settled in before winter comes a round again. We have definitely found in Australia that the window for repotting is much greater. I would still recommend repotting of deciduous species in late winter just as buds start to swell. And any old conifer in the late winter, very early spring. Natives and even traditional species that are young I would only not repot during prolonged hot weather, or the beginning of winter. The main thing I have found is not to do severe working of the top and severe root reduction at the same time. But I have done severe root reduction, some trees up to 80%, on younger trees (under 10 years) at many times of year without a problem. Once they get a bit older I haven't had to do it as I have already sorted the roots out. But if I got a tree in the had been grown in. standard nursery that long I would be less inclined to go that hard.

I have even had no problems doing JBP snd juniper in Autumn. But they have been young. Not 400 year old collected Junipers. As a caveat, I do live about half way between Sydney and Brisbane and experience usually mild, humid summers and no frost in winter. Most of my trees continue to grow through the winter. Melbourne would usually experience more summer heat *which slows down growth) and colder winters. But you should still see good results repotting in the warmer months. Probably best to make sure there isn't a week of severe heat coming and keep it protected from hot winds for a couple of weeks.

[ShaneVE]

Hey guys, bit of an update. I gave the first of the trio a repot today, took way longer than I thought lol. It was a right pain sorting out those roots. I had to stop to go to an appointment, came back and kept going at it for a few hours. I wet the roots a few times throughout, but tbh I am winging it here. I think just through trying to untangle and free up the roots I removed more than enough of it, and basically trimmed back some of the longer runners. What took longest was the roots that were likely from the original tube, right up the middle, very close together and compact, I wanted to reduce the height of the roots though so I persevered . Do you normally tie the plant into the pot if it's still in development?

First peak since the repot in late December and I can already see new root growth. Nice!

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removing the medium I'd slip potted into

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Back to what I bought 2 months ago.

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I put an acrylic disc under the root ball to discourage growing downwards, filled it in with my mix of potting mix, river sand, mulch and a touch of perlite. Once all potted up I put some more mulch on top.

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Potted back into the original nursery pot.

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From here on, the plan is it to keep it watered and watch for too much sun.

[ShaneVE]

I gave up

Last night after the kids were in bed I attempted to repot the Rudolph. Talk about a birds nest of roots! I Definitely see why you were talking about avoiding older nursery stock @Rory and @Dansai!

I started going at the roots around 9pm. It was 2am by the time I threw the towel in! Now I know I won't be the most efficient, I tried really hard not to just rip everything that got in the way as I was contemplating Rory's suggestion of untangling the roots rather than removing them. I was making slow progress but also on more than one occasion, I would have a root free of the nest only to snap it off 10 minutes later while trying to free another. Once I hit what I assume was the first slip pot growth, it was hard to even get a skewer in.

What do you do in these circumstances? Wait a few years for new roots to develop and chop the guts out of the old stuff? Too hard basket?

There was a larger root, maybe 5mm diameter that came to the bottom, fanned back up the side and went back into the maze. For the life of me I couldn't pry its grasp without ripping into underlying roots.

A few photos of the progression of this attempt:

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A detail on one of the problem areas:

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It's back in the pot I bought it in now. So I think apart from a getting some radial-ish roots happening up top, I would have to say the tree won this round.

[dansai]

So you have definitely found exactly what I, and Rory, were talking about.

My usual response to this is to remove a lot more of the roots. I am pretty ruthless. I figure at this stage it has the least amount of time and money put towards it so if it doesn't survive I haven't lost as much. As I said, I don't normally have to now as I avoid this sort of material unless it has something special.

You will get more efficient and quicker with more practice. Most beginners are scared to handle the roots as there is a misconception that our Natives (which is a rather broad brushstroke that is very helpful) don't like root disturbance. Some don't. Some thrive when a bunch of roots are removed. I think part of the idea that our natives don't like it is based on trying to dig plants. Our mostly poor soils mean trees have long roots and not much fine roots close to the base. Young plants in potting soil tend to bounce back relatively quickly from root removal. Another reason why doing it first up is better.

You may find that next time you go back in, you have good growth on all the ends of the roots that you have left and that to get it into a smaller pot you have to remove all the new growth. This puts you back to where you are now.

I'll be doing some repotting over the next couple of days. Ive been working away from home for the last few months so my nursery has gotten very overgrown with weeds and I have a bunch of trees that will be very root bound. I will take some pictures as I go to show you how I go about repotting. Keep in mind, most of what I have I have already repotted so they shouldn't be such a tangled mess. Although I do have a few recent nursery purchases that may need more work.

[ShaneVE]

You may find that next time you go back in, you have good growth on all the ends of the roots that you have left and that to get it into a smaller pot you have to remove all the new growth. This puts you back to where you are now.

I haven't considered this, but I suppose the idea while in development is to lay the roots out radially to start and allow them to keep growing with each repot? I see so many videos of people repotting bonsai in refinement that I figured root reduction was a common thing.

I'll be doing some repotting over the next couple of days. Ive been working away from home for the last few months so my nursery has gotten very overgrown with weeds and I have a bunch of trees that will be very root bound. I will take some pictures as I go to show you how I go about repotting. Keep in mind, most of what I have I have already repotted so they shouldn't be such a tangled mess. Although I do have a few recent nursery purchases that may need more work.

That would be fantastic. Thanks. I'll try to tackle the roots on the "mesmer-eyes" soon.

[dansai]

Sorry for the late reply. You know, life and that kinda of stuff...

I did some repotting the other day and have some photos. Hopefully will have time to post them this weekend. It definitely highlighted what I was talking about. I did massive reductions on all the trees I handled. All are fine. One has had a caterpillar decimate newer foliage, but the tree is ok.

As to the videos you have seen of repotting. This relates back to what I mentioned earlier about Bonsai practices not always translating well. Most of western Bonsai Practice in the early days was based on Japanese articles in Japanese language magazines where they were working on established Bonsai. So, the remove 1/3 from each side and the bottom was what was preached. On an established Bonsai grown in high quality media that is just routine repotting. And the success rate is probably 99.99%. It doesn't touch on developing trees. It doesn't touch on young trees. Because in Japan, that is not Bonsai. It is growing trees to prepare for Bonsai.

The thing that makes the 1/3 guideline work is that the trees being treated this way have had good repotting practices happening for years, or even decades. The focus early on in the potted medium is to develop what is known in Japan as the Shin. This is the area directly under the trunk that is considered the heart of the tree. If this is healthy and has good medium embedded in it, it will supply the tree with enough fine roots and root ends to colonise the new media and keep the tree healthy. This is the most important part of Bonsai. As it allows the tree to live long after anyone that has ever worked on the tree. But it is not as romantic, or artistic, as the design so gets less attention.

Don't be afraid to go hard on the roots of young trees. You may lose some, but if you want to have great bonsai in the future, it is necessary. If you want some trees in pots that look nice you can go lightly on the roots. But they will not last the distance in potted culture.