At 08:41 AM 10/20/03 -0400, Håkan Bengtsson wrote:
Thanks for your reply. My intent was not to wash the roots just for the
sake of it. I never do. But is good to know in a worst case scenario. I´ve
read in some books and magazines that you should NEVER eliminate more than
1/3 of the soil on a japanese white pine and was wondering if NEVER was a
too strong word.

NEVER is definitely too strong of a word for me since I routinely
remove most if not all the soil from Pinus parviflora when repotting when
dormant.

It just occured to me that there may be less disagreement than apparent on
this issue. In light of my previous post on washing P. thunbergii roots-
there is soil removal and then there is SOIL removal. If a P. parviflora
has a fairly dense rootball, removing all or most of the soil may only be
possible with significant root damage. In this case, it is not soil removal
that is the problem, it is root damage that occurs in the process. That is
why I actually like to wash roots as opposed to mechanically removing
soil, root damage is kept to a minimum. P.p. is far more sensitive to root
removal and damage than P.t. When repotting P.p. , you can keep the damage
to a minimum by doing constructive root work to the nebari and surrounding
root ball, but removing the fines from the inner rootball through washing.
Periodically of course, you will want to remove portions of the inner
rootball to rejuvenate the entire rootball over time.

Brent in Northern California
Evergreen Gardenworks USDA Zone 8 Sunset Zone 14

http://www.EvergreenGardenworks.com

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