Though I already introduced how to repot satsuki trees, I was asked to explain the details of repotting of them. Therefore I would like to introduce the two different ways of repotting of large satsuki trees in March. I had to stop working to take some photos, but since I cannot take those of my workings by myself, I asked my wife to do so.
Section 1. Kozan A
I bought this Kozan when I went to Kanuma to see the satsuki bonsai show in March 1991. The price was 50,000 yen. The height was 43 cm, and the trunk girth was 22 cm. Though I had planted it into a large terracotta pot (45 cm), I cut the trunk short to make it have the good taper in January 1993. And I planted it into a very large square wooden pot (80 cm) to make it grow rapidly in March 1995. The height was 35 cm, and the trunk girth was 28 cm.
I repotted it into a large terracotta pot (45 cm) in April 2006 because some parts of the wooden pot were rotten. The height was 41 cm, and the trunk girth was 44 cm. And I repotted it in March 2011 because it had passed 5 years since the previous repotting and the soil in the pot had been hard. The height was 43 cm, and the trunk girth was 47 cm.
The whole figure of this Kozan after pruning is good. Especially the taper of the trunk and nebari are very good. Though it was only 4 years since the previous repotting, I decided to repot it in March 2015 because the water did not sink down easily when I watered it in winter. At first if the scar which I had made when I had cut the trunk short had become very small, I would have repotted it into a bonsai pot. But since it is still a little bit large, I had to repot it in the same pot.
If I knew that the water does not sink down easily when watering a large satsuki in January, I always have to judge when I repot it by pushing an eyeleteer into the soil in the pot. If I can push it into the soil easily, I do not have to repot it this March, but next March.
I decided to repot this tree on March 16th. And I pushed an eyeleteer on the some places on the soil in the pot. Look at the different depths of the eyeleteers on the photos, which were pushed into the soil in the front side of the tree. Since they mean the hardness of the soil, you can understand that it is not very hard, and at the same time that each place has the each depth that depends on the nebari.
Look at the different depths of the eyeleteers on the photos, which were pushed into the soil in the back side of the tree. And you can understand that the soil in the back side is much harder than that in the front side. It means that the nebari of the back side of the trunk is much stronger than that of the front side of it. And this is the reason why the water did not sink easily.
At first, I cut the wires with which the tree was fixed and remove them. And I see the net on the bottom of the pot and know whether the roots are coming out from it or not. It indicates the conditions of the roots in the pot. In case of satsuki trees, if the roots are coming out from the net, we have to repot them as soon as possible.
When the soil in the pot is hard, we cannot pull out the satsuki tree from the pot. I always use a saw-edged sickle to separate the soil from the pot.
The root ball of the front side of the tree is still yellowish, but the upper half of it is a little bit dark. And you cannot see the roots on the lower half of it. This is the reason why I could push the eyeleteer into the soil deeply.
Bu the root ball of the back side of the tree is black or dark except the lowest part which is yellowish. And you can see the fine roots on the lower half of it. This is the reason why I could not push the eyeleteer into the soil deeply.
Now I had to decide where I should cut the root ball. Therefore at first I removed the soil beside the thick roots of the nebari, using a one-hooked rake.
Secondly I removed the dusts and soil along the nebari, using a bamboo stick. Since I must not hurt it, I had better not use an eyeleteer. And I removed the soil at the end of root ball carefully, using a one-hooked rake. In this case, I did not remove a lot of thin roots to make this tree grow prosperously after repotting. Therefore the nebari of the front side and back side keeps a lot of thin roots.
And you can see a lot of white thin roots on the surface of the root ball on the front and back sides of the tree. This means that it is very healthy.
Since I confirmed that this tree was very healthy, I removed a lot of soil from the lower part of root ball, using a three-hooked rake.
And I turned the root ball and saw the bottom. You can see a sheet of white thin roots. I knew that the tree had a very good condition in growth. Therefore I cut the root ball into halves, removed the soil and washed the roots as I always do.
And I knew that this tree still had the large scar which I had made when I had cut the trunk short in January 1993. And since I decided to repot it in the same terracotta pot (45 cm), I put the large grains of Kanuma soil on the bottom of it.
When I repotted this tree on March 16th, I did not have to fasten it with wires completely because the nebari is already completed. I fastened it with wires loosely lest they should hurt the nebari. The height is 46 cm. The trunk girth is 49 cm.
This is the whole figure of the tree on April 25th. I was surprised to know that it had a lot of much larger and stronger leaves than I had thought when I had repotted it. It means that it is very healthy and strong. But judging from the data, though it is very strong now, it had not grown thick for these 9 years till March 2015. Though it is very strange, I cannot understand the reasons.
The photo was taken on August 15th. This tree is growing more prosperously than I thought when I repotted it. The longest shoot is 28 cm. Since it had passed only 4 years since I had repotted it in March 2011, the Kanuma soil was not very hard, and I could make it keep a lot of thin roots. Therefore I think I may have to repot it in three years.
Kozan B has the same conditions as Kozan A has. I bought this Kozan when I went to Kanuma to see the satsuki bonsai show in October 1988. The price was 33,000 yen. The height was 50 cm, and the trunk girth was 19 cm. Though I had planted it in a large terracotta pot (45 cm), I cut the trunk short to make it have the good taper when I repotted it in February 1993. The height was 32 cm. The trunk girth was 22 cm. Since then, I have repotted it four times: in March 2000, in April 2007, in March 2011 and on March 16th, 2015. The height is 46 cm, and the trunk girth is 41 cm. Judging from the data of repotting of this tree, at first it did not grow large. But I think that suddenly it began to grow strongly in about 2008 or 2009.
If the scar which I had made when I had cut the trunk short in 1993 had been very small, I would have repotted it into a bonsai pot. But since it is still a little bit large, I had to repot it in the same pot. Like Kozan A, it had a lot of much larger and stronger leaves on April 25th than I had thought when I had repotted it. And it is growing more prosperously on August 25th than I thought.
Section 2. Nikko
I would like to introduce the special case of repotting of a large satsuki tree. Since I have a lot of satsuki trees (about 400) on the shelves and in the nurseries, some of them die every year. It is the dispensation of nature, but a few of them die because of my errors. But even if they were tiny, they will be making satsuki trees weak for a long time and may die in some or several years. It is a great pity.
If I give so many fertilisers to some young satsuki trees, they may die in a month. But my long experience never makes me do such serious errors though I have made a lot of little saplings die recently by giving them a lot of compound fertilisers. Sometimes I have some great problems when I cannot understand the reason why a large satsuki tree died. If I could do so, I can say to myself, “Never repeat the same errors.” I think that my experience of satsuki trees for 43 years consists of a pile of errors and several successes. It is because I have not had any teachers since I began to grow satsuki trees. I have got the knowledge about satsuki trees from the books and from seeing of satsuki entusiasts' trees, and know the nature of satsuki trees well because I helped my father to grow tea trees and make green tea in my boyhood. Satsuki and tree trees belong to the same family and have the same diseases and insects though only a lace bug is parasitic on satsuki trees.
I let an English youth plant three large satsuki trees in large terracotta pots (45 cm) after removing the soil and washing the roots in March 2009 though I pruned them, who had come to our house to study how to grow satsuki trees and how to make them into bonsai for 4 weeks from March to April. Of course though they were not very good in the style, they were not weak when we dug them from the nursery. But one of them (Kozan) is dying now. And other one of them is Nikko which I would like to introduce how to repot.
When he planted this Nikko on March 25th 2009, the height was 62 cm and the trunk girth was 29cm. Since then it has passed 6 years. It is because it was not very strong and healthy, and the soil in the pot was not so hard that I did not repot it last year. I always repot large satsuki trees every five years, which were planted in the large terracotta pots (45 cm). The photo of this tree shows that it is not healthy because it did not have any long shoots.
Since the surface of soil was hard, the water could not sink down very easily in last January. Therefore I decided that I had to repot this tree on March 27th, 2015. Judging from the whole figure, I prune it.
But I knew that my judgement was wrong when I pulled out this tree from the pot. A part of the back side of root ball crumbled. It means that the roots (nebari) were rotten there or it did not have any thick roots there. Removing the soil, I was much surprised to see a lot of roots rotten. Though it had a considerable number of good roots on the front side, it did not have any good nebari on the back side after I had removed the soil.
I washed the roots to remove the rotten roots. And I could see a lot of good roots on the front side of this Nikko, but I could not see any good roots on the back side except rotten roots.
Therefore I had an idea that I could graft a small young tree of Nikko to the bottom of this Nikko to make a root. When we would like to graft the saplings or young trees to the trunks or branches, we have to prepare the grafts of the same variety. If we did so, the colours of the part of graft on the bark and the bark of trunk or branch are same.
And I could find out the suitable young tree, cut the unnecessary branches and tried to place it in the position to graft it to the bottom of this Nikko in advance. And I
Since I confirmed that this graft is suitable for the place, I made a cut of u-letter on the bottom of this tree with a knife so that it may be matched with the trunk of the graft, and scraped the bark of the graft which will touch the cut of the bottom of the tree. And I drove the screwed nail to fix it into the a little bit upper part of it than the place where the graft contacts the bottom of the tree so that it might be easy for me to drive the screwed nail into the bottom of the trunk.
And I fixed the graft to the bottom of the tree by driving the screwed nail. And though I wondered whether I could graft other sapling to other part of the bottom of the tree or not, I gave up doing so because I feared that the bottom might begin to rot from the scar I made to contact the graft to the bottom if I would not successful in the grafting. I think that if I will succeed in this grafting, this Nikko will continue to live. And I will graft two saplings to the bottom of this tree in 3 years
I decided to plant this Nikko in the same pot again because I was not sure that it would continue to live. Though a lot of rotten roots were removed, I could fasten the three roots with wires.
But since this tree does not have a lot of roots, I had to prune it drastically. It is because I judged it could not suck the water from the roots, which a considerable volume of leaves would need. Therefore you can see a small number of leaves on the photo of the whole figure of this tree.
Since I could fasten the three roots with wires, this tree is stable now. But if it was blown by the strong winds, it would fall down. Therefore I fastened it with four wires which reached from the edges of the pot to the middle of the trunk. When I finished repotting of it, the height was 65 cm and the trunk girth 32cm. Compared to these data and those in 2009, it is clear that it did not grow thick for 6 years.
This photo was taken on April 25th. You can see a small number of new leaves. But they are coming out from every branch of this tree.
And this photo was taken on August 15th. This tree is growing more prosperously than I thought when I had repotted it. It may depend on HB101. I have poured the diluted solution of 1/10,000 on the soil in the pot every four days except while I stayed in bed at the hospital as well as other repotted trees. Though I bought it some years ago, I had not continued to use it for a long time till this year because it was very expensive. We have to pay 18,000 yen for a bottle which contains one litter. If you see the photos of Kozan A and Kozan B which were taken on August 15th, you can understand that it is very effective. Though the maker insists that weak trees will become strong if we will pour the diluted solution of 1/10,000, I am not sure that it will be very effective against weak trees.
This is the whole figure of Kozan C after I repotted it in March 2015. It is the third tree which an English youth planted in the large terracotta pot (45cm) after removing the soil and washing the roots in March 2009. The height was 49 cm and the trunk girth was 29 cm. And it has passed 6 years since the previous repotting. It means that this tree is not very strong, but I pruned it drastically to make it have a lot of new shoots because it does not have a good style. I would like to expect that some new shoots come from the lower part of trunk. When I finished repotting it, the height was 51 cm and the trunk girth 34 cm. Judging from the data, it has had the normal growth for these 6 years since March 2009.
Judging from the photo which was taken on April 25th 2015, this tree has a lot of good new leaves. But since the middle part of trunk of this tree is a little bit thinner than the upper part of it is, I must not make the upper thick branches have a lot of small branches and leaves.
This photo was taken on August 15th. This tree looks strong. And the lower branches have much more strong shoots and leaves than the upper branches. If it has some long shoots in the near future, I would like to graft two or three of them to the middle of the trunk to make the part thicker.
Attentions:
Since I have thought that all satsuki trees in the terracotta pots and in the nursery are my materials to increase my knowledge of satsuki trees since I began to grow satsuki trees in 1972 and made the nursery in 1992, I have tried practising various kinds of methods and ways to grow them and to make good bonsai according to my ideas. And sometimes I dared to practise drastic ideas. As the results of them, I made some satsuki trees die or gave great damages to them, but I got some little success from them. This is my experience.
Now that I am 73 years old, I think that I have to complete several satsuki bonsai as my final working, and that I have to give up practising any kind of drastic ideas because I think I have only several years to work in the garden in the rest of my life. Therefore this is my final renewal of my web site about repotting of large satsuki trees because I will be very tired from repotting heavy satsuki trees, taking a lot of photos.
But I would like to continue to renew it by practising the shohin or chuhin or others. Please send me your e-mail about something that you are interested in. It is because I do not have a lot of good ideas now.
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