I went to a proper garden centre today, and got better soil for my bonsai. Then I removed all the soil from my Chinese Elm’s roots, and discovered the worst case scenario…
Root rot. Fairly advanced root rot. Not good. I don’t think I overwatered it, but it almost certainly got overwatered while outside, in hindsight. Anyway, the question now isn’t what happened, but how can I help it to recover, if it can recover. Methinks it’s dead.
I haven’t given up though; I washed all the roots, and cut out as much root rot as I could bear too… the base of the trunk itself might have a tiny bit at the bottom around the outside edge, but I didn’t touch that. The only way to fix that would have been to saw through the trunk and then plant that in soil again, which seemed like more harm than good. And it might be just a bit wet/clayish from the previous soil. So yeah, I might have wimped out there, but I don’t know.
I put it in new soil, with a high percentage of grit, as instructed. Mostly grit means good drainage and less organic matter, which both mean less chance of survival for the “rot”, which is actually a combination of conditions that mutually encourage each other while attacking the tree: like waterlogging, and fungal infection. I dosed it with fungicide in the first watering after repotting.
I missed a few things though… apparently, I should have disinfected the pot with jeyes fluid before putting the tree back into it, and “soil” with no organics (in other words, pure clay pebbles, like they use for hydroponics) would have been better than other soil. But, I did the best with what I knew and what I had; I really didn’t want to wait around any longer when I was finally convinced that it wasn’t going to recover on its own.
So. Now I wait and see. It has a chance, I guess. There’s still some life in it; I know that much. The upper branches do seem to have died back though. Hehheh… I may have to put this one down to experience 
Tags: bonsai
Awww, poor little tree. *sends tree recovery vibes*
So do you think Japanese gardeners from hundreds of years ago had Jeyes fluid when they repotted their bonsais? Perhaps they did something ghastly like wee in the pot… Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that!
Could you give me details of the website you had about conflict resolution? We have new students and I want to try something different with them… maybe!
Hmm… ancient Japanese Jeyes Fluid. I guess we’ll never know now, unless someone digs up a bottle with a samurai arrow through it ;D
Seriously.. that’s a good question. I don’t know if they were aware of the need to disinfect pots etc. at all; maybe they just repaired the tree, and changed the soil since the repair presented the opportunity for something that was done regularly anyway. Or maybe they went all out and replaced the entire pot. Interesting question.
The website is PeaceForge.org. There’s not so much there right now, and it might be a bit complicated to find your way around if you’re unfamiliar with Wikis. I’m working on a new version which will be simpler, but it’s not ready yet. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help there
Thanks. Nice icon choice
good luck with the little fellow. hopefully it’ll recover after your treatments.