I’ll keep this photo essay short on words and long on images: Jorge Trak studied repotting techniques in February. We covered a lot more trees than I show here, but this Trident was one of the better documented of those we did photograph…
Jorge beginning to uncover the top roots on this Trident maple that had been growing with great abandon in my backyard for two years. There was a 9′ leader on it. It had been ground-layered for a better nebari 2 years ago.
The roots had grown through the Anderson flat and straight through the weed barrier cloth. It took Jorge 10 minutes to cut off enough of them so he could even pick it up off the ground. Look at the top edge of the flat, which is bowed out from the power of the root system.
When we uncovered the roots near the trunk we discovered a nearly 10″ fused nebari. It was about half that 2 years ago.
Cutting off the old root system with a saw. I don’t use many power tools, but this would have taken us more than an hour I think using a hand saw.
After washing and trimming, and also thread-grafting some seedlings for roots on the left side—they are the straw-colored ones. (Washing is only necessary when doing intensive root work, and generally only on young deciduous trees like this one.)
The light colored, longest roots are the seedlings that were grafted.
New home for the trident.
Tucking sphagnum into the roots near the base.
Nice green twisties so we don’t bang up our newly grafted seedlings.
We also looked at this Japanese maple that I air-layered when I got back from Japan, about six years ago.
Nebari on the air-layered Japanese maple. We did approximately the same thing with this one as the Trident, except no thread grafts were needed. Gotta love air-layers! And ground-layers. Anyhow, thought I’d share these young trees with you-
