2,5 year ago I repotted some 2 year old Japanese Maple seedlings into a wooden growbox. Now at the end of 3 growing seasons in that box I wanted to show you how they’re doing.

Here’s the original post from when they were repotted.

The first one, #2 to make it easy, I did some cutbacks on 2 years ago so it only grew to 1,5m or 5ft but it has some nice potential in the lower part of the trunk so a big cutback will happen next year in spring after the first growth has hardened off.

As you can see the lower part has some nice movement in it so it will probably be turned into a smaller size tree.

Next up is #3, This one grew up to 2,5m or 8ft 2inch tall.

This one will be a formal upright tree in the midsize format probably. The trunk is amost as thick as the coke bottle. But still al long way to go…

1.5 years ago I repotted one of the young English oaks I collected 4 years ago in a wooden growbox. It had developped a lot of fine roots in the bonsai soil I used for it.

Here’s how it looked like at the end of winter 2021.

After getting it out of the nursery container I could see an abundance of fine roots.

After trimming the bottom 2/3th of the roots this is what I had left.

The future Quercus Robur bonsai tree then got placed into a wooden growbox.

About 3 months later new shoots started to shoot from the trimmed branches and trunk. So I let it grow freely until the end of the year.

At the end of the 2021 I wired the new shoots and in spring of this year the tree was growing vigorously. Right after the next picture was taken I unwired the tree again.

This year I even got my first batch of acorns!

So today, 23rd of december 2022 I put the tree on my turntable and took off the leaves. The new growth got wired again. Notice I left a sacrifice branch, the one where I didn’t remove the leaves, that will come off at the end of next year. Until then it can help thicken the trunk a little more.

3 years ago I ground-layered an Acer Buergerianum that I put in a wooden growbox 4 years ago. Since that last post I kind of neglected the tree for almost 3 years. It just sat there in a corner of my garden getting watered together with the rest of the trees.

The plan was to remove the ground layer last year but for some reason that didn’t happen.

Today I finally found the time to see what had happened in those 3 years.

Ofcourse I forgot to take a picture before I started removing the screen mesh but anyway, here’s a picture right after I removed the screen mesh. It looks like some new roots grew…

Let’s look a little closer…

After removing the wooden growbox it’s obvious I can’t use it again, bottom was pretty rotten, just the way it should be.

After combing out most of the soil and cutting back the roots a great new nebari appeared, this was beyond my expectations. Like always the picture doesn’t do the real thing justice.

After potting up the tree it looked 10 times better than before. Now it’s time to start working the branches, but first I’ll let the poor thing recover for a while.

Close-up!