Just viewed yesterday and Bjorn decision of removing all of the original soil from the juniper kinda surprised me, as I though one couldn't do that with a juniper.

Fact is: I have a sabina juniper still in a training pot that I'm planning to move to a different pot this winter (basically mostly to change the position of the tree). It still won't be the definitive pot, as the tree still needs at least a season or two of training.
It is quite clear to me that the original soil in the rootball is probably too wet for the juniper: even tho the rest of the soil is quite draining, that part is always damp.

The video made me wonder: under which conditions is it safe to bring a sabina juniper to bare roots, and would my reason for giving it that type of stress justified?
I mean, the plant is probably 30 or 40 years old, and that's most likely the soil it grew in the entire time, it can't be that bad...

I am not sure. I hear all the time the concern of a complete soil replacement. I have not run into problems there yet, except for by Taxus. SO I routinely comb out junipers and remove 90% of the old soil. I do not wash them though.

I would however wait forthe right time of year to do this.

Interesting question. I too have learned not to bare-root junipers and I didn't know it's different for Sabina's. I do have one (and it's a Yamadori I purchased earlier this year. It wasn't cheap) so I'll be following this topic with much interest.

As it is the beginning of the Spring in the Southern hemisphere, I have just repotted a Juniper. Almost all the old soil was thrown out, but I didn't bareroot it and did not wash the roots, which were trimmed to fit in its new Japanese lotus pot.
It is been doing well and new growth have sprouted. If it helps.

If you don't wash the old dirt off, how do you get it off? When I try to crumple if off by hand I usually get a lot of roots.

I have a single prone root hook (item nr 2)


With this I gently work the rootball, removing substrate from between the roots. Also, I use scissors to strategically remove roots that are blocking the rootball.

The whole process involves:
- Removing all the circling roots at the bottom by sometimes litterally cutting off the bottom 10% for the rootball
- Teasing out the circling roots from the sides; Once they are longer than the height of th eleftover rootball: Cut back
- Teasing out old soil, continuously going around and around. I my rotate the plats 20 full circles, ever reaching deeper, releasing more roots.
- Broken roots are cut back. Cutting back always is to side-roots, except for big main roots (Which as often as not, die off later on).

Gentle is the word. So no strong pulling. Teasing out pieces of soil, and when roots come free you gently slide them outwards so they hang free.

Initial cleanup of a large juniper easily takes hours for me.. It really is a gentle process where you look more than that you work. At least, I do.

Naturally, this kind of work is done when weather is right (Moist/rainy) and there are weeks of growing season left. Right now I would avoind doing something like that, I would wait till march, april, may if at all possible. I have had good resutls after the first flush in spring too though.