Repotting Adorable Chinese Yew Cutting

Alright Everybody, it’s a frustrating day today. I won’t spoil the surprise in the video, but man was this pot tough drill through! Aside from that, today’s focus will be repotting my adorable Chinese Yew cutting. I placed this bonsai in this pot a while ago but the pot is just not optimal for bonsai trees. As I eluded to earlier, we’ll also be attempting to drill a hole in the bottom of the pot to fix this issue. Let’s get into it!

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Small Chinese Yew Cutting Repotting

I know I say this all the time, but this is one of my favorite small Podocarpus cuttings! In addition, this is also one of my favorite bonsai pots. I picked this up on my trip to Hong Kong a few years ago and have been waiting a long time to put it into action. If you saw my post about the initial repotting of this Podocarpus, then you got to see when I busted this pot out for the first time! As much as I hate to admit it, this pot sucks. No way around it. It has zero drainage and water has a hard time penetrating the densely packed soil. So, time to drill!

Drilling

I have drilled holes in other pots in the past, bot no pot has put up a fight like this one. This pot was near impossible to drill through. I even had the drill bit made for ceramics! The bottom of this pot was slightly sloped inwards like a really shallow bowl, making it extra difficult to get a firm starting point for the hole. I slid all over the place scraping up the bottom of the pot but finally managed to get a tiny hole in the center. However, not much progress was made after that initial indent. I kept drilling, drilling, and drilling. Accidently touching the drill bit and burning my fingers a few times but that should have gotten cut out.

Repotting

Besides the impossible pot, the actual repotting was a breeze. The root ball of this bonsai is nice and spread out, almost keeping it upright on it own. For this repotting, I am using a custom soil mix composed of equal parts akadama, pumice, black lava rock, and organic bonsai soil. Stay tuned here for more info about my indoor bonsai soil mixture, coming soon!

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Final Results and Considerations

What I learned today was not to mess with sloped ceramic. I haven’t given up completely, I’ll come back and get a hole in this pot somehow. But for now, I’ll let the pot have the win. This repotting of my adorable Chinese Yew cutting is another one that falls into the relatively easy category and I can’t wait for this tree to start growing so I can showcase the nice “Y” shape split it has.

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The Gallery has all these photos and more. Don’t miss the growth of all my bonsai trees!

If you missed my last post about my Large Podocarpus Cutting Repotting you can find it here!

Learn more about Universal Bonsai Soil Mixtures here!

Learn more about Tropical Bonsai Soil Mixtures here!