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Repotting red pine seedlings

December 26, 2014 by Jonas Dupuich

I started repotting this year’s crop of seedlings by stepping up a number of 1 year-old red pine seedlings.

Japanese Red pine

Red pine seedlings

Instead of making seedling-cuttings, I’m letting my seedlings grow this year as I’m aiming to produce larger specimens. Letting the seedlings grow saved me some time in summer and it yielded some great roots.

Japanese Red pine

3″ seedling – roots over 2′ long

Most of the seedlings went into fairly small containers (see “Repotting 1 year-old black pines” for details).

Japanese Red pine

Freshly repotted red pine seedlings

The largest specimens went straight into baskets.

Japanese Red pine

1 year-old red pine seedling

Giving the roots extra room to grow will speed development and ease future repottings at the cost of bench space for the next year. It’s a fine trade-off for a small number of trees and I appreciate that the larger containers dry out less frequently. In the next few weeks I’ll repot 2 year-old specimens into these same baskets – a process that’s a bit more involved as the trees are a lot bigger at 2 years than they are at one.

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Filed Under: Bonsai Care Tagged With: Red Pine, Repotting

Previous Post: « For those of you who haven’t done so yet
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Christopher van Hooser says

    December 26, 2014 at 5:03 am

    It doesn’t say if you removed any roots before repoting ? If you did hope much and is there a picture?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      December 26, 2014 at 8:52 am

      Hi Christopher – good question. When stepping up these seedlings I removed no roots at all. A few broke as I separated the seedlings, but that was it.

  2. Zack Clayton says

    December 26, 2014 at 7:17 pm

    So – what did you do with 2′ of roots in a small pot? I could figure out flat and shallow, but those in the third picture do not look big enough for a healthy 2′ of root structure.

  3. Jonas Dupuich says

    December 26, 2014 at 8:18 pm

    For the most part, I coiled or zig-zagged the roots in the pot. In the past I’ve reduced the roots when I repotted but I’m experimenting with keeping everything this year and seeing if it makes much of a difference in terms of foliage growth and root growth.

    The biggest predictor of root length turned out to have more to do with the pot than the foliage. Most seedlings were planted in the wooden box pictured above, but some were grown in a plastic flat for bedding plants. When the roots hit the bottom of the plastic flat they ran all the way to the end of the flat.

  4. Zack Clayton says

    December 28, 2014 at 6:24 am

    Thanks, this should be an interesting experiment. Please keep us posted as to the results.

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