Cjr’s 2025 Azalea contest entry

[Cajunrider]

Scored one half dead Azalea on April 13 2021. Late entry.

Mostly dead from the big freeze in February 2021. Bought it for a song.





Dead part taken out and potted last night. Now to grow it before styling.

 

[Cajunrider]

5 months later with drastic pruning per @johng
I have a single trunk

 

[Cajunrider]

This one hardly grew much this year. What should I do to encourage growth?

 

[Glaucus]

Well, it was half dead. So it takes time. That said, you should have really good azalea weather. Not sure why it stalled.
I would say, partial shade, high night temperatures, humidity, good soil, moderate organic fertilizer (or liquid in substrate/100% kanuma) should do the trick.
Low night temps, direct sunlight, bad roots, they could all inhibit growth. A struggling plant won't grow much.

I do see long new shoots on your last picture. What exactly is the status and issue now?

Still trying to figure this out myself, though.

 

[Cajunrider]

Well. The root mass was solid and no nutrient was able to get through so it got repotted. The tree must have been in the back of the nursery for years. There was a 6” thick solid mass of roots that I can’t push a chopstick through. I cut off multiple discs of roots until it was only 2” thick. Still it was solid. I then cut wedges in and pulled pulled out every root that was loose. Then I cut every root that didn’t look healthy. I soaked the whole root mass into a very diluted rooting hormone solution and repotted into a much smaller pot.

I wouldn’t have done this to any prized tree. Yet for the price of $2 I will learn whether I can do this to an azalea in this terrible shape.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Interesting!

…..I’ve done this before and it can work.. Sometimes an action like this can revitalize the tree. It’s usually done with more foliage on top though. But what the hey, you are experimenting! Which is always fun.



A thought to tuck away for the future. This rootball is the norm. Older azalea root balls are always like this. A mass of fine and larger gnarly old roots twisted all akimbo with lots of fine feeder roots surrounding it.

A key way to improve the nebari when doing such drastic work is to cut all wedges right between the key roots you want to keep so as to fashion the tree’s nebari in a wheelspoke fashion. It works really well. After a couple more repottings one gets a nice robust looking rootball.

Finally cutpasting any cuts that are near or above the surface minimizes dissication . If left unsealed the water heavy azalea cells can dry back so far as to completely destroy the sap lines attached through to the roots. Cutpaste helps stop this from happening more often then not.

Yet, as you say, a 2 buck experiment. Hopefully your azalea will pull through.

cheers
DSD sends

 

[Cajunrider]

Buds!!

 

[Jimmy Pete]

Wooo!

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Hey, Interested. Joes the recovery going?

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[Cajunrider]

Hey, Interested. Joes the recovery going?

Cheers
DSD sends

Slow but encouraging.

 

[Cajunrider]

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

All Righty Now!!

Cheers
DSD sends