Unpotting and Repotting Podocarpus Grouping

Unpotting and Repotting Chinese Yew Grouping

Yes, you read the title right. I will be unpotting and repotting my Podocarpus grouping that I created a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, one of the cutting I put in this grouping didn’t make it. I’m not totally sure why this happened but I suspect the pot may have been too shallow for optimal growth. So, I will be repotting the grouping into a new pot with a new soil mix!

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Current Condition

Since the last repotting, one of the larger cuttings I placed in the back of the grouping passed away. It turned brown and appears to have withered up. I don’t know if this was due to a lack of water since none of the other trees experienced the same thing. Another thing that crossed my mind was that maybe the pot was too shallow and the roots just happened to be near the surface and dried out faster than the other trees. No way to know for sure but what I do know is this cutting is dead. It hurts my grouping a bit and I will now be making a grouping with the three smaller cutting and taking the larger one out.

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Unpotting and Repotting Podocarpus Grouping

Grouping

Removing all the cuttings was relatively straightforward. The grouping hasn’t had enough time to grow together and the roots are not intertwined quite yet. I am choosing to use the three small cuttings in this grouping and not the larger one because I want these three to grow in unison to create a mini forest at some point. I might bring the larger cutting back into the grouping later but for now, I’ll leave it on its own.

For this repotting, I am using a premixed inorganic soil along with mixing in my own organic soil. I am using a smaller pot in order to somewhat limit the growth of these cuttings. I like their current appearance and want to keep them at a smaller size since they are slow growers. Pouring in the soil mix was a breeze. The only challenging part of this repotting was holding all the trees in place.

Individual

Luckily, this larger cutting didn’t suffer the same fate as its brother. I will be placing this bonsai in a much larger pot with plenty of room to grow. Chinese Yew trees are slow growers so if this tree stays small I may put it back in the smaller grouping. If it takes off and starts to get larger I may shape it into an “S”.

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Final Results and Considerations

I am pretty bummed that one of the cuttings passed away. That combined with all my larger Chinese Yew trees dying really stings. I still have a few Podocarpus bonsai left but none of them will be large enough to take a cutting from for quite some time. For now, I will wait patiently for these small cuttings to grow and maybe turn one into an “S” shape to honor one of the fallen trees.

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