Repotting a Big Azalea Bonsai Tree
How to repot a healthy Azalea bonsai. With Root pruning.
Azalea roots are more delicate than most bonsai tree species, so repotting them can be tricky, while still ensuring the health of the bonsai.
Azalea is not really a tree species; it’s a shrub with very fine dense roots, so we need to treat it with more care than many other bonsai.
It’s worth it though!
I’m going to repot this azalea it’s a beautiful tree it’s quite early in the season it’s at the beginning of march but i’m fearing that the roots are very compacted i would normally wait until after flowering to repot an azalea but in this case i think the soil is very compacted probably the roots are suffering it’s not draining through very well at all when i looked under it it’s really just a solid mud [Music] so first thing of course is just to ease it gently out the pot and we’ll look at the condition of the roots all the way around the edges and just decide whether it really needs repotting right now or later in spring after flowering we don’t know when the last time it was repotted hasn’t been repotted here in spain so it would have been some time in japan we’ll look at the roots and see how they are [Music] let’s just have another close-up of the soil here make a little bit of a way so we can see how it looks so actually when you look at it it is really matted with soil it is pop band so i’m glad that i looked now in early spring before it’s flowered i am going to repot it now it’s really just a solid mud and so we need to sort that out pretty quickly before flowering season the buds have started swelling so it’s it’s fine to do it now and there’s a lovely bumblebee checking it out another thing to consider about azalea is that the roots are very fine very fragile there’s a good chance you can just rip off quite a lot of the root mess and i’d much rather do it more carefully more gently so i’ll just spray it with quite high pressure it’s not very high pressure but just high enough to take off the majority of the mud and i’ll do very gently with the root [Music] hook [Music] [Music] so i’ve put a coat on because this is pretty messy work [Music] more drainage shields reuse those [Music] of course the azalea is not the same as other bonsai trees and strictly speaking the azalea is not a tree all of these fine roots very compact very dense and they’re all very very thin stringy they break very easily and as a result of that we have to be quite careful root pruning these because great chunks can come away and these are the fine roots that keep the tree alive i’m going to leave quite a lot of the root balls just intact it’s still very hard and compact but the more i dig into it the more roots i’m tearing and what we can do is just little by little over several years gradually tap down into here if you do an overly aggressive route pruning on an azalea there’s quite a lot of risk and this particular one i don’t want to risk it i need to get some rootsies and just trim around the edge get my root scissors [Music] i’m going to call that a job done the root pruning right so now i’m going to prepare the pot got these drainage screens so what we’re going to do is just tie the drain screens into the bottom with a bit of wire and bend it out the sides simple now these drainage holes in the corners we shall take advantage of for also tying the tree [Music] done [Music] right so first just a straight layer of pumice just for the drainage and for aeration now we’ll put some this soil is a mix of canoma which is acidic and organic soil let’s just flatten out the drainage layer and add some soil now i’m piling it a bit more in the middle and the idea is that we push down the tree onto the soil let’s try now now that i need to lean it a little bit towards me because it’s leaning that way a bit too much [Music] i’ll start by tying the wires loosely then later on we’ll tighten them up [Music] [Music] [Music] i’ll show you the other side looking good now i’m just going to put some soil down the sides around the edge i’m going to poke it because kanuma crushes quite easily what you don’t want is for all this soil to crush because then it becomes that compact horrible mess that i’ve just cleaned out this morning [Music] right so i’ve got my rubber hammer which is very useful for knocking the soil underneath all the roots however before i do that i’m just going to tighten up the wires a little bit more try and firm the tree a bit better into place so [Music] and we bang softly with a rubber hammer to get all the soil to settle underneath the roots once we’ve done that we put some more [Music] salt [Music] one of those soils that changes color quite a bit it goes almost completely white when it’s dry so you can see very quickly if the surface is dry [Music] [Music] [Music] let’s give it a quick toil [Music] thank you so much for watching please like and subscribe and see you in the next video you
