After a few hours of teasing out the roots and clipping the slimy dead ones I finally got this mugo down to where I think it needed to be. I have to say, if it dies I won't be upset. No tree I have ever re-potted has irritated me so much. This root ball was almost solid. I seriously thought of giving up and tossing it into the trash.
Well here it is repositioned and potted....with far fewer branches.

Ha, always have patience, even when it's really hard!

I see you removed a lot of branches at the same time with root-pruning, maybe a bit too much stress for the tree?

I'm curious to see it after it has produced more branches and needles and after some styling

I was thinking it was a little too much pruning as well Yuri. I removed one main trunk and a few branches on the remaining one.
This tree was cheap so if it dies, I'll replace it without another thought haha. Next time I will pull the tree out of the container and inspect the roots before I buy it.

The second picture shows a neat side of the tree. I think if you bent the truck at the top to the right a little it'd make a nice twisted tree, like one that has been battered by being next to a rough ocean or body of water.

If it pulls through I'll try that. I thought it would be a nice windswept.

Haha wow that must have taken a while to prune, good luck.

Hi everyone.
It's been a few months since I did all the work to this tree.I wasn't sure it was going to pull through because of all the pruning(root and branch). It's produced candles and they needles are starting to pop out. I'm relieved.

Yay, and it's looking very healthy too. Good job.

Yipieee, looking good. It is feeling the love.

snuffy wrote:

Yipieee, looking good. It is feeling the love.

I'm glad it interpreted my hateful remarks as love. I said some nasty things to this tree while working on the roots. By the end of it I didn't care if it lived or not. Now I feel kinda bad. haha