The fact that I am a novice will become immediately apparent when I say that I didn't know that Calamondin Orange trees were a form of Bonsai! That said, I purchased a healthy plant online and proceeded to immediately re-pot it, as I had read (somewhere) that they like to spread their roots in a wide, rather than deep, pot. I couldn't find a wide and shallow pot, but carried on regardless. Now I have two, very healthy, but gargantuan branches growing out of the original plant, with leaves that must be eight times the size of their counterparts!!! Apart from anything else, it looks ridiculous and not what I was after at all. So, what can I do now? Can I re-pot it back into a smaller pot and prune off these appendages?! There is now, also, some (small) sign of leaf curl and a couple of holes in some leaves....what should I be doing about them? (Apologies for the blurry photos!) (I am in the UK)
Your plant selection is, or was, a bonsai. It was potted and pruned to keep it very small. Giving it a better pot with more room to grow gave it the opportunity to be the plant it was supposed to be before the bonsai efforts. You could repot in the original pot, or one slightly larger, but you would have to prune the larger shoots and selectively prune the roots. This is Fortunella genus if I recall correctly, but like those in Citrus genus, can drop leaves with little provocation. I'd expect leaf loss when you transplant back to bonsai status, but it should recover.
Many thanks, thanrose! Now, I wonder if you would be ultra helpful and explain what you mean by 'selectively prune' the roots? As a beginner, are there certain roots that I should/shouldn't touch, and how will I know the difference?! Sorry to be such a know-nothing-newbie!
Sure. You don't want to cut off entirely any root that looks more substantial than the others. There might be 3, 4, 5, or more kinda sizable roots compared to the newer whitish threadlike roots. On Citrus and Fortunella so far as I've seen, they are yellowish once they are more mature, and a little paler when new. Try and keep the greater portion of them unless you must trim to fit back in the bonsai container. The wispier roots that are at the edge of the root mass can be trimmed, again if necessary to fit in the container. This is where the art of bonsai comes in. (I'm certainly not of that persuasion.) You want to cut the roots proportionally to the way you cut the branches, so if you cut back 10% of the top, cut 10% of the roots. I probably would trim just the top and try to leave the roots intact. They just might not fit anymore. In order to keep a bonsai flourishing, you may have to do some specific research on this type. Good luck.
