help with roots

[bonsaibeginer]

Hi everyone
Tonight I had to top up the soil of a few of my trees as the dogs had been through my growbed and came across an ugly set of roots on one of my ficus.

20140103_204534.jpg

As you can see there is about a 5mm gap between the nebari and these 2 stray sets of roots.... I would like some advise on how to remove them or what I should do as removing them will leave the tree with a decent nebari to work with but (I feel) a fair amount of inverse taper where the roots are removed.

20140103_204340.jpg

20140103_204438.jpg

Any suggestions on how I could minize this? Or should I just try grow roots higher.
The one I'm most worried about comes off the tree as a single root but splits into 5 smaller but still large roots....
Any help would be great. I'm planning on trunk chopping this right down to the 1st or 2nd branch too

Grant

[Webos]

I would, without any hesitation, take of all of those roots you speak of. I'd take them off right back to the trunk including the knob from which the five roots come.

I would also cut back the rest of the roots and be very hard on the strongest root in order to control and even out the growth of your Nebari.

Good time to work on figs... Your dogs did you a favour!

[Ray M]

Hi Bonsaibiginer,
Some food for thought. Just an idea. If you did a ground layer you would end up with a new root system you could then train the way you want.

Fig roots-3.jpg

I have removed the roots in question to allow for doing a ground layer. Have a look at viewtopic.php?f=104&t=14664&hilit=create This will show you how I do grown layers.

Regards Ray

[bonsaibeginer]

Thanks for the replies.
I have removed the roots tonight and slightly scored the trunk under and around the wounds to see if that could hide the bulge caused by the clump of roots...
I used the toothpick method to see if I could fill in a couple gaps in the root spread
And then chopped the trunk right back to the first branch, don't know if this was too much for one day but we'll see. Back in the ground for a bit and lots of food. Judging by the rain we just got tonight it might be a wet season here.

[ADO]

Thanks for the replies.
I have removed the roots tonight and slightly scored the trunk under and around the wounds to see if that could hide the bulge caused by the clump of roots...
I used the toothpick method to see if I could fill in a couple gaps in the root spread
And then chopped the trunk right back to the first branch, don't know if this was too much for one day but we'll see. Back in the ground for a bit and lots of food. Judging by the rain we just got tonight it might be a wet season here.

I personally wouldn't worry about air layer. What I have done in the case of poor root systems on figs is to cut the offending root system off at the base and treat the tree like a big cutting. I have done this with bases over 2-3 inches and have very good success in getting a really nice root system. I put mine in a mix of coir-peat and medium grade perlite. I keep mine under the misters in my shadehouse but anywhere out of direct sunlight is the go. a mist every now and then is good to. when you see roots coming out of the bottom of the pot, then you are good to go for repotting next season.

Good luck

Adrian