Part 19 of a series by Eugene Howell
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Click the play button to listen to this episode.Bonsai root pruning is the one task, above all others, that can cause the death of your tree very quickly. However, avoiding the task may also readily kill your bonsai. Let’s discuss how to properly prune the roots of a bonsai to minimize the possibility of killing it.
Periodically every bonsai begins to outgrow its pot. Either the tree becomes too large for the pot it’s in or the tree’s roots become too crowded. Of these two conditions, overcrowded roots is the one you’ll most frequently encounter and it means you’ll need to remove the tree from its pot, wash all the dirt off it, untangled all the roots and then prune those same roots. If this task is not done carefully and correctly, your bonsai can die within a very few days.
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