Hello, I just rescued a Japanese Maple from Home Depot a few days ago. I've been talking about getting a Japanese Maple for as long as I can remember. Finally, I was browsing the tree section and behind all of their dead maples I saw a good looking bloodgood...At least it's labeled bloodgood. The price looked right for $79.99, I think. It was the biggest maple I've seen for under a hundred bucks... Anyway, I can talk all day but to get to the point, I'm looking to get pointed in the right direction since Home Depot didn't know anything about plants. I need to know when the best times to transplant are... I need to a good soil recipe and where I can learn about pruning it. I have a couple of slight concerns about its current condition... 1. Are the branches supposed to get so green? I attached a photo of the trunk. 2. There's white specs all over the leaves that I think is overspray from some painters. I figured this was why it was priced low but I didn't want to ask too many questions in case it was mispriced. 3. Is it ok to keep this type of maple in a container? 4. Currently, it is in a plastic container thats just placed in the clay pot that it's going in. I wanted to do some research before I repotted it. I have some Miracle Grow (trees and shrubs mix) but I don't like using Miracle for everything...Would this stuff be good for a japanese maple? I live in the Bay Area in the Hayward Hills. It doesn't get as hot as the Valley does but it does get a little windy at times. I've attached pictures to show the exposure it gets. The second photo was taken facing North. Any tips, information, books, or advice you can give me about bloodgoods would be so helpful. Thanks, Sfbay
Looks great in that pot. Do get it out of the nursery pot. Try reading about pruning in Vertrees/Gregory, JAPANESE MAPLES (Timber Press).
Hi. I would read around the discussions on this forum as regards good potting soil, esp. the role played by oxygen and how to guarantee that your roots get enough air through the use of an adequately porous mix. Another thing is to not just take out of its current pot and simply place in the one you have prepared but to get rid of as much of the present soil as possible - I try to completely eliminate the soil the rootball was in before I repot. That, plus some rootpruning, if necessary, especially in the case of circling, damaged and dead roots. All this can take some time - the roots are usually very dense, and fine - where you need to keep the roots moist - I sometimes work for 20 minutes or more on one rootball. The green color of the branches is normal. I like where you intend to place it. Best of luck. Schusch
that is such a beautiful tree! i wish we have that kind of tree here in australia. I hope u could kindly keep us up-to-dated with your photos on this tree...i wonder what it looks like when it matures. i have two maple trees that are growing in a pot. The seiryu tree looks beautiful now in a glaze pot... that's because during winter last year, i prune out the dead roots in order to fit into the glaze pot. I am now worry how on earth will i have the muscle to change soil should this tree get sick. I read from this forum that u should not fertiliser your maple otherwise it would affect the fall colors - maples don't require any fertilisation. This year I didn't fertilise my tree. I have a sango kaku that is growing in a nursery black pot like the one in your photo. the reason for that is because snago kaku is a very tall tree and would be very heay and may require to change pots 1-2 years time. Last winter I had to change to a bigger pot. The good thing about the nursery black pot is that it has several drainage holes unlike the glaze pot and also, it isight, you can repot it to a bigger size and you can move your pot to a different location without breaking your back.
I never in my life heard that about fertilizing and maples (and here in Canada we're inundated with them!). Fall colors are programmed genetically and if you don't fertilize, your trees won't be happy for very long.
It looks like a reasonable tree to me. A little pruning would help Here is an article by Nancy Friers on pruning http://www.mountainmaples.com/WS4D_Cookie=12.21.06_07,22,39_11/article2.html
Seems like a good deal. Beautiful pot, and a nice location. I have a couple of thoughts based on my experience in upstate NY. First, does the ceramic pot have a drainage hole? If not, and if you're brave, you might want to try drilling one. I've kept maples and other plants in pots with no drainage, and sooner or later it rains really hard and the pot fills up with water, or I overwater and that plant sits in a few inches of water for a week or two. The tree surely won't like having its roots submerged. I'd leave it in the nursery container, or move it to another plastic pot that can be inserted in the larger pot, rather than potting directly into the ceramic pot. If the ceramic pot has no drainage, you can't plant the maple in it directly. Also, using pot-in-pot, it's much easier to repot, and so I'm much more likely to get to it than I am if I have to lug around a great heavy pot. Lots of experts say that early spring before the tree breaks dormancy is the best time to repot, and that's been my experience, although I've repotted maples at all times of year without ill effect. As for pruning. I can't tell how big the nursery container is, but the plant seems pretty well proportioned to the pot now. The crown can get bigger, but not vastly bigger. So it will have to be pruned every year to look its best, to improve its structure, and to keep its top growth proportional to the roots. Out here, a plant that size in a pot that size would probably have to be repotted every two years, maybe every three in a pinch. Here are some general rules I follow when pruning. They are based on bonsai practice but they seem to work pretty well for bigger trees in pots and for trees in the ground, too. 1. In general, branches should grow up and out from the main trunk, and different major branches should not compete for the same space. So, if one branch crosses another, I remove one of them. And I remove one branch in a pair of closely spaced parallel branches. I remove all branches that grow from the outside of the tree toward the center. 2. When two branches grow from opposite sides of a main branch, I remove one of them. The next higher branch should also be single, but it should leave the trunk at a different angle so it doesn't shade the lower one. 3. Branching should ramify progressively--a big branch should split into two branches, each of these should split into two more, and so on. Sometimes a maple will throw a long thin branch that snakes through the crown of the tree--these I remove. With your tree, I'd be inclined to remove all the little branches from the bottom 18 inches or so. 4. I generally cut back long wispy branches such as you have at the top, to encourage a denser crown of the tree. 5. I usually aim for having a single main trunk, rather than two or three. Seems like you might have several main competing trunks, and you should probably decide which one you want to make the main trunk and which ones might eventually go. 6. Do main pruning in late winter. 7. Don't be afraid to cut off an ugly branch, even if it's pretty big! I've killed a lot of trees over the years, but I don't think I ever killed a healthy tree by cutting it back hard. (Unhealthy trees I don't prune, except to remove diseased branches.) Having said all of that--I like to leave new trees pretty much alone while they are getting established in a new location--especially those that might have been abused a bit in transit. So I'd let it grow for a season before I start pruning them. As for repotting, it would depend on how rootbound it is in the pot--if there are lots of encircling roots, I would probably gently repot in the spring, leaving some of the roots and the rootball intact. Any plant grown in a pot is eventually going to need a little fertilizer, but if you're adding new soil every year or two it won't need much. My experience is that you have to seriously neglect fertilizing for a long time before a palmatum begins to suffer, although this seems to vary by cultivar. Out here, trees in the ground don't need any fertilizer. Sorry for the long-winded response; hope it's useful. Let us know how things go.
I read some where, maybe in the Summer issue of Maple Society's Newsletter an article on What is a good Potting Mix, to make a long story short if you re-pot in September through February the potting soil may go sower, well I don't understand that statement, if you could enlighten me I would appreciate it. I am trying a new mix this year of Fir Bark, Perma Till and Neo. if you have never heard of Neo, it is a NASA soil formulation designed for growing food crops in the space stations, this is the link: http://www.advancedsoils.com/ it sure will be sterile anyways. Oh I almost forgot this is my pruning link: http://www.wayofmaple.com/index.html
Since the plants are dormant and leafless, they are not taking moisture from the soil and transpiring through their leaves, so when the soil is saturated the moisture just sits there, which can lead to rot and probably fungus problems. I try to use a free-draining mix, and I keep plants on the dry side in winter, so this isn't a serious problem for me. I love ground conifer bark as a growing medium--I've used it straight and mixed with granite grit. Hard to get it up here in NY, though. About my least favorite mix is the peat-perlite-vermiculite mix sold under so many different names, but I've used these successfully too. My experience is that most commercial mixes are adequate as long as one pays close attention to watering.
Firstly, I want to thank everyone here for their responses to this thread as I just noticed this morning how many of you have responded to it. Thank you! Here are some photos of my tree taken today. Based on advice from several different sources, I have decided to wait until the tree begins to bud before I pruned it. It seems that that time is now come. Today I am going to prune. I'll send in some photos of how it looks when I'm done. And of course I'll show pictures of the progress that this tree makes. I'm going to wait a week or so minimum to transplant. I want to make sure I see development before I mess with it's pot. Also, I still haven't chose a medium to use yet. Some of my concerns are re potting. I have read that every 2 years people re-pot and trim roots. I'm wondering how difficult it is going to be to do that from a pot this large. Will I be able to keep it in this pot forever, or eventually will I have to plant it in the ground. I tend to move a lot and would like to keep it somewhat mobile. To answer one of the questions in this thread, there are drainage holes in this pot. Thanks again for all the feedback. Wish me luck in my prune job. I hope I don't butcher this tree too much. Oh yeah, and thats my dog, Kudo. A Japanese dog! He will surely appreciate the shade that this tree provides.
