I have four or five azaleas in the front yard that are something like twenty years old. We are making landscaping decisions and sometime over the next nine months or so will be replacing them. My first thought, of course, is put one or more in pots. I can wait until cooler weather - it is around 90F/30C most days now, and mosquitoes are out, and it is wrong weather to put new plants in. What are the limits of how big a plant is too big to put in a pot? Should I start right now trimming some branches off? They are all three-five feet in diameter. Should I try to trim the root ball now?
There are no limits to the size you can put in a pot. The problem is more often finding th right pot.
I dug up an azalea of almost 2 metres diameter a few years ago. As this way an ebay kinda deal, I had to do this when the owners wanted it out. In the middle of summer; I got near heatstroke that day. I did not prepare the tree in any way. I trimmed it back to the first side-branch with decent foliage, brought it home in a tarp and there I cleaned up the roots (clean cutting the stumps, removing some of the field soil). Then I watered, placed the tree in the shade, out of the wind and kept the soil moist. Within a month the tree started throwing growth.
I do not know what the rest of spring/summer will be in your whereabouts, but I think you could lift now, with the right aftercare. It it tricky and very depending on your local conditions. Otherwise, do this when summer cools down into fall, and humidity increases again. Use a large pot. Mine is in a 60cm diameter container.
The next week won't be much worse than now, so I will probably move a couple just as you say. I have a couple of spots in the backyard that I might be able to stick them in the ground until I can get the right sized pot - and after digging them up I will know what the right size is. Late July to mid September we can probably count on 100F/37C or so but there is some shade there. We'll see.
