howdy y'all

well along with the bonsai show, bill valivanis ( rochester's premeir bonsai master) had an open house and i picked up some pots and an american larch.in my overzealousness i forgot to take begining pics it was 8pm and was planing on doing this today but that didnt happen.this was a tough one the roots were huge compared with the pot i picked out for it but bill said it would work. the pot is a handmade (not molded) tokoname which are usually very expensive but this one has a slight flaw in the clay so it was 20$ i teased out the roots and then just started cutting this makes me soooo nervous but it was no different that the dozens of root pruning vids ive watched. i sprinkled some rooting hormone over the rootball and started the 40 minutes of getting the soil in and around it.



its a little high in the pot but the roots will be reduced in time .its a little off kilter at the moment but once it is accustom to its new home it will be wired into position, probubly this fall

I really like Larch trees. I get nervous every time I prune roots too...and every time I do any major work.

Luckyyyyyy! So do you have any plans with this tree, or are you just going to let it thicken up for a while? There's so many branches to choose from on this tree.. It has lot's of potential in my eyes, and would even make a great literati.

Very awesome tree.. and a tokoname pot for 20 bucks... WOW

Very nice, money well spent.

mwid,
my plans are to keep the basic shape i picked it for the domed top it looks cool....the trunk will be bent more to get the straightness out of it and bring the top lower( its to tall for the pot the master said) the top will be cut to produce better taper there is already a thinner branch that will work great paralleling the trunk and some branch selection ...if it survives i really hacked the roots

I remember reading somewhere before I potted my larch that they don't appreciate being pot bound or heavy root pruning.
Keep us posted. I'd like to know how true that is.

well the root bound thing was wrong this one i couldnt even get a finger into the rootball when i took it out and you can see its very healthy hopfully it was wrong 'bout the root pruning too

Good to know. When I potted mine I was afraid to prune too heavily.

i have benn doing alot of reaserch on root pruning lately.it seems that pretty much everything can take a hard root cutting. the roots are just like branches ,if you cut a fat one smaller ones will branch out .the goal is to get rid of all large long roots and to have as many fine roots as possible it is supposed to be done late winter early spring as the buds begin to swell.this one was done a little later than it was supposed to so ill keep my fingers crossed...2 days and still O.K.