Repotting an Old Juniper Cascade Bonsai 🌿 | How to Do It Correctly (Step-by-Step Guide)

G'day Jude, welcome back to my channel Banzai Works. I'm David today. Just going to, it's been a bit of a warm spring, a warm winter here in Melbourne. Now it's, a lot of the deciduous have popped early this year, but luckily I was already, I had repotted all my deciduous last year. I always skip a year, so it's been good. I didn't have to do any this year, or didn't do many this year, but I am needing to change some pots on some conifers. This is a large Juniper commonus, or could be Sabina. The thing with this tree, I initially had it in this gorgeous Japanese pot. That's like the, what do you call, lotus kind of pots, but I think it's just looking very, it's too big of a pot. I don't have anything exactly where I really want it in mind, but the closest I have is something like this. It's a little bit shallower, the legs aren't as heavy, so these little feet are quite heavy and dense, making the tree look a little bit small. So this is a bit lighter in terms of the feet, the angles, the thickness, the depth of this pot. Now I want to probably put in that for this year, and I'm going to be on the hunt for something a bit more, that's hard, tricky one, maybe less right angles, like an overly deep probably. I don't want to go full cascade, I don't want to do that. Maybe something without a lip would be good, I just don't have anything at the moment. So that's the plan. So sometimes you've got to change trees, change pots, and this is one of the reasons. It doesn't need to be repotted in terms of the soil or anything like that, it's just the pot isn't doing justice to the tree, it's dwarfing the tree. So it's making the tree look smaller in my opinion, so I'm hoping that this would be less weight, this pot has less weight than this pot, and that's why I'm changing. So now I'm going to go through the process of repotting, which you've probably seen a million times, but I have to do it as well for this tree. Now I always prepare my pots early, the wire's already in, the mesh is in the bottom, so that's I have soil ready for me to work on. Now it's not going to be too, this isn't going to be one of those massive, you know, chop so much roots etc. It's actually going to be quite subtle, just getting it in the pot pretty much, and that's pretty much my process on this tree anyway. So we'll see how the roots have gone this year, I'm sure it's full. I'll need to do some, quite a bit of, actually all the moss is growing and the wires are all cutting in, so sometimes with these pots you can pull the tree right out of the pot, so we'll see if it comes out too bad, but what I might do, that was a heavy pot. All right, here we go, pretty cool, good roots, good amount of roots, that only took a couple seasons and it's full, so I'm going to have to now comb out the roots, comb out the process, and get it into this pot. So if I go straight in, I don't think it'll fit, I don't want to do that, I want to actually comb some roots out, sorry, heavy trees. So I'll just show you, this won't go straight in, which is a good thing, because I want to reduce the size of this as well, so I've got to do some root work. So normally just comb it out, and use a root hook like this one, or another tool that I really like as well, I'll show you that in a minute. In my mind I'm always thinking it's going to be a rectangular pot, so I've got to get rid of the, where it was, where the lotus will leave, like the lotus round bit, so that was on this side, and use a quality mix, open quality mix, that's the beauty of it, just pours right out. The other tool I like to use is this sometimes, especially when it's really hard to get into, but this is quite easy, so it's just another, should be able to just clean this out. Now I haven't done anything underneath, and I'll show you, I don't do anything underneath, but here's a bit denser, so I'll try and get in with this. So once I'm happy with the combing out all around, and reducing it quite substantially, well I just reduced the width of it, really still pretty much there, a few roots will come off of course, nothing too, nothing too major, but then now I get to tilt it back, and work underneath. Okay, usually you can just chop it right off, but I like to really comb it out, and get in there, combing out is a bit safer for Now you get to a point where it's quite dense, and really thick in those roots, so you know straight away, you're not gonna be able to use them, they're nice and thin, that's what you want, so you kind of have to get in there, and eliminate really, like the really tangled, and dense roots, so kind of hold it up, and you're gonna be able to see where. So really this, this makes you really focus on what roots you only want to cut off, and keep the rest, that's quite substantial, but it was very knotted and matted, so there you go, that's pretty much it, that's all I'll be removing. Now with junipers, the foliage I don't touch, because that's its solar panels I call them, solar panels absorb the sun, grow the roots, okay, and then the roots feed the tree, and the foliage grows. That's how I think of it, and that's how I go about it. So I'm just going to get the pot ready now, and replant this, and get the right angle, we'll go through that step in a minute. So with this tree I noticed that there was more roots on the back, there's more roots at the back of this side, so what it meant was that I actually lifted this tree up previously, so I need to think about repositioning it back like this, so I've got to have more soil on this side of the tree, so remember to mound up one side if necessary a bit more, so if I make this side, make this side lower, that tree can sit in at that angle, and make this tree, this bit higher, the right side higher, it should sit up, so it should like almost slightly slot into that spot, quite nicely, it needs to look like that, so that's pretty good, so I need to probably a bit more soil in here on this side, just to keep it pumped up, and then with the guy with the ties, I can really tie the tree nice and tight in there, and get that much nicer shape, because I think before it was falling over a bit much, I think it's a bit better like that, just slight angle in there, so let me just get some more soil and tuck into there, and finish off the repotting, so I've pretty much secured the tree in with the wire, added more soil into this side, which I'll give it a, using my chopsticks to get it in, now it's just the same process, use chopsticks to mound the soil up, get the soil into all the crevices, you can use your fingers as well, I try and use my fingers as much as possible, and it's just like a chopstick really isn't it, once it gets too hard, come with the chopstick, now I probably won't repot this for another three, four years at least I reckon, you won't need it, it's a much older tree, it's not going to grow like an insane amount, but I think this is a much more improved pot for the tree, so I'm just going to go through and get all the soil in, all right so here's the final product, I'm just going to water it in pretty much, and put it in the same place that it's always been, it gets pretty much semi-shade pretty much most of the day, obviously when it's summer it pretty much gets full sun, but at the moment it's, I think it's much better, much more subtle pot for the tree, I like the corrected angle that I've got now on the tree, and looks better, looks a bit better there for me, a bit more, a bit more, what's it called, we're going to raise that, I think it's a bit more less, more upright, not falling over as much, which is actually quite nice, maybe eventually you can get it a bit more over in this, into this side a bit more, it just needs a bit more reduction on this side, we don't want to go too hard this year to reduce that by so much, but overall I think it's quite nice, the gins are quite big and interesting, we'll need to work on them and get them nice and tight and cleaner, overall I think it's a pretty good result, what do you reckon, I think it's a better pot, less, less, less thickness, less heaviness, and much, much, I guess might be more balanced now as well, so there you go, all right guys thanks for watching and see you around for more videos