Brussels bonsai Chinese elm.

[Beetleman72]

So about 3 years ago I made the mistake of purchasing this Chinese elm from Brussels bonsai. I thought I was getting a nice looking formal upright. Immagine my surprise when this weird shaped tree full of wire scars and huge scars from removing large branches. I left it in the pot for the first 2 years due to my inexperience and last late summer I started losing my bottom branches, so despite the time of year I pulled it out of the pot to find a big tap root and hardly anything else, not to mention after two days of rain only the outer edges of the soil were moist. So I put it in a 5 gallon pot with sifted automotive spill absorbent as soil. Since then it has clung to life and the other day I figured out what I could do with it. So as you can see in the second pic I added 6" to the height of the pot, made a tourniquet with some romex and filled it the rest of the way up. The low branch on the left is dead, so once it has time to establish a new root system ill cut it off below that point, remove that branch and start carving the trunk. What do u guys think?

 

[Beetleman72]

And I finally managed to post a straight picture!

 

[Beng]

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So about 3 years ago I made the mistake of purchasing this Chinese elm from Brussels bonsai. I thought I was getting a nice looking formal upright. Immagine my surprise when this weird shaped tree full of wire scars and huge scars from removing large branches. I left it in the pot for the first 2 years due to my inexperience and last late summer I started losing my bottom branches, so despite the time of year I pulled it out of the pot to find a big tap root and hardly anything else, not to mention after two days of rain only the outer edges of the soil were moist. So I put it in a 5 gallon pot with sifted automotive spill absorbent as soil. Since then it has clung to life and the other day I figured out what I could do with it. So as you can see in the second pic I added 6" to the height of the pot, made a tourniquet with some romex and filled it the rest of the way up. The low branch on the left is dead, so once it has time to establish a new root system ill cut it off below that point, remove that branch and start carving the trunk. What do u guys think?

I don't have any suggestions regarding the elm. But, I wanted to say I ran into a similar problem with a imported azalea I purchased from them last year via their eBay seller, I forget the name.

The azalea arrived looking normal in a late blooming state, but one look at the soil and I knew it would be doomed if I left it in that mostly peat/dirt mix. I pulled it from the pot and there were almost no roots. It was the most bare root I've ever seen a tree. I did email them about it, but they had excuses saying they'd been using the mix for years. Perhaps it works in their climate, I don't know... Fortunately my timing was good and it went into pure kanuma, it sulked most of the year but put on a small amount of growth in the fall and stronger growth this spring. While its a nice tree I won't buy from them again, learned my lesson.

 

[Beetleman72]

Yea the soil was so compact and crumbled to dry powdery dust, and like yours it had the most pathetic root mass ive ever seen. Basically just a tap root. It's not quite recovered yet but it did survive the winter and has pushed buds that are now tiny leaves. It's still not in great health, but recovering. I figure if I leave it as it is for a few years it should have a really good radial root system above the tourniquet then I can do a complete restyle, as I hate those Pom-Pom looking leaf pads.

 

[Beetleman72]

the first pic was shortly after it arrived in fairly good health somehow.

 

[Beng]

the first pic was shortly after it arrived in fairly good health somehow.

Looked around and found the picture of mine right after I removed it from the soil. This is with no root pruning, and this tree was bought as an established released from quarantine import... Quarantine is 2 years right? Obviously an healthy established azalea should have filled most of the pot with whitish roots, these were black. The pot that came with it was as big as the canopy, the roots obviously weren't. It's one of the only trees i've ever bought that I felt wasn't representative of what it should have been "root wise" when I received it.

The flowers are beautiful which is why I bought it, many years from now it may make a nice bonsai. I plan to grow the trunk out for at least the next 10 years before it will be anything.

Had trouble posting this hopefully the picture only shows up once this time...

 

[Beng]

I don't think everything coming from there is bad though. Here is the seller I purchased my tree from, you can see he has mostly positive feedback. Perhaps it's just the imported released from quarantine trees. http://myworld.ebay.com/3017smith?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

There are others on this forum who have had good experiences with brussels see this forum. http://bonsainut.com/forums/showthread.php?9839-Newly-styled-Hinoki-shohin&highlight=brussels

 

[Jason_mazzy]

Always had luck with the black pines. Matt has some decent white pines also.

 

[Beetleman72]

The ammount of roots on mine wassimilar only they were long and leggy. The tree seemed to be in good health when I got it so i left positive feedback. It wasnt until a year or two later that I realized that something was seriously wrong. Anyway I didn't start this thread to trash Brussels I just wanted to share y latest project lol. Does anyone have any styling advice?