Hi there,
I was at my friends house last night and he was remaking his garden when i got there i didnt notice any plants in it but on my way home ( when i was in a rush ) i noticed a nice juniper in a corner. He said i could have it but i was in a rush so i just kinda pulled it out of the ground and put it in a bag. It came out quite easy as the ground around it was all dug up and it came with almost all of its roots. So i got home and had no time to pot it so im going to do it now , do you think it will it still survive ?

Oh forgot to ask should i bare root it ,leave it as it is or a half measure ?
Thanks
Nico

Enaisio wrote: Oh forgot to ask should i bare root it ?

Nope, do not bare root the Juniper. Actually, I think it will be safe to say that you should never bare root or wash out completely the roots of a Juniper. I think a good safe practice would be leaving at least 1/3 of the root system untouched.

Anyways, more knowledgeable members of this forum might expand on this topic. Wait for further replies before doing something drastic that might prove to be definitive.

Alain

Ok thanks i will wait then

Enaisio wrote: Oh forgot to ask should i bare root it ,leave it as it is or a half measure ?

Plant it ASAP. It can be bare-rooted, but I'd just put it in the ground as-is, trying to avoid any further disturbance of the roots.

Ok so i didnt bare root it but i took away about 60 % of the old soil so it would fit better in the pot , the root ball close to the trunk was quite compact and full of thin roots probably because it was in a corner of the garden sorrounded by rocks this must have simulated a pot. I couldnt pot it in the ground cos i dont have a garden so i put in a training pot ( its actually a polysteren fish box ) this was suggested to me by a local garden center owner when i said i work in a chip shop lol he says its got good isolation from frost .
I hope this is good enougth for its survival .

Enaisio wrote: I hope this is good enougth for its survival .

Yep, looks like an excellent solution - if you didn't forget the drainage holes.

Ok good
The pot has already got 4 drainage holes at the bottom corners but i also aded another 4 in the the middle so the drainage should be fine also the soil i use is pretty fast draining .
Thanks alot for youre help ill keep posting progress
Nico

Hi,

By accident and looking into a different thread for another topic I found this on Michael Hagedorn´s blog regarding rootpruning and thought it would be useful to share:

"Finally, a disclaimer: It won’t matter much what soil we use if we’re using questionable horticultural practices like barerooting old trees each time we repot. Please don’t do this. Without leaving a solid mass of soil on the roots we won’t manage to create the dense, stable, dependable root systems that we should see in our pots each time we take them out. This disclaimer could go on for pages on multiple subjects. But soil choice is a primary decision."

Alain

Aklain, good point. Although.. I think..

- In this case there is a need for -eventual- full bare rooting; POssibly in stages. Just to get the garden soil out
- I find that my rootballs drop a lot of substrate when repotting, causing an 80% bare rooting with just a normal repot-with-root-reduction.