Today I woke up to a chilly 26 degrees with a wind chill of 13... Hard to believe last week we were in the mid 60's. The temps over the last month have been climbing gradually and it’s been enough that almost all of my trees have swollen buds or are getting their first flush of leaves. I am growing 7 flats of seeds of Kaede's, Japanese Maples, Japanese Black Pines & Japanese Crab Apples, all but 1 flat has begun growing. Given that warmer weather is on its way I took some time over the last 2 weeks to repot most of my trees and get them all in their new pots or into gallon containers ready to be put in the ground in my grow plot. The two trees below are two of my favorite shohin trees, the only down side to them is that they were in need of new pots.
First up is my Chinese Elm. This tree could have stayed in the unglazed pot, I would prefer to see it in a nice glazed Tokoname pot but the unglazed pot really isn't that bad. This picture was taken September 23, 2009.
Here you can see the tree in its fall color. This picture was taken November 2, 2009.
I hadn’t had a chance to look/shop for a suitable pot because I had planned on putting it back in the unglazed pot for one more year. I stumbled on this very inexpensive pot laying around on my pot shelf and the glaze really compliments the color of the tree and the bark. I am still planning on looking around for a nicer pot for it but this will definitely do the trick for the next year. Picture taken March 24th, 2010.
The planting angle was adjusted slightly forward to bring the apex toward the viewer a little more. There are a few other issues to sort out with this tree this year but I'm much happier with it's new home. All in all, the branch placement is pretty good but the entire tree will be rewired and branches refined to open it up a little more.Next up is my shohin Kaede (Trident Maple).
This tree has been in this unglazed oval pot for who knows how long and was extremely root bound. The pot is also cracked and was beginning to fall apart. This picture was taken July 17th which is definitely not the time you want to repot a kaede!
Being that repotting the tree was out of the question, I slip potted the tree into a slightly larger pot and filled it in with turface. The pot is pretty ugly but it will do the trick until the tree finds a new home. 
I had picked out a very nice blue Japanese rectangular pot for this tree but never pulled the trigger on it so when it came time to repot I was stuck for a new pot. I got a very nice antique Japanese pot a few years back from my friend Matt and had never planned on putting a tree in it... until I saw the possibility of putting this kaede in it.
I'm very happy with this pairing and even thought this tree will need allot of refining it's quickly becoming one of my favorite trees in my collection. The tree is very leggy & the plan for the tree this year is to wire up and thin out the branches. My goal is to get the tree to back bud and really start working the secondary & tertiary branches.
That's all for now, but I'll have more soon.
~ Jay
