How often do you root prune and refresh the potting medium?

How often do you root prune and refresh the potting medium?

I have never pruned the roots just got larger pots. I change the medium about every 2 years.

I wonder if the inside of the root ball had some die-back, possibly several episodes, from getting packed & hydrophobic (very difficult to accept water again, like a hard, dried sponge) over those years? If it's as hard & tight as I've seen on other larger woody plants, it may not ever be getting wet thoroughly (and would have a very hard time drying if so.) If it's completely solid, like concrete, in the middle, I think that could cause this kind of issue at the tips. No experience with a Scheff of such age in particular to have seen such a thing for sure, but this is what I suspect from reading your entry.

To help get your plant on its' way back to health, I'm pasting some info from Al (Tapla) that can explain how & why to give your lovely plant a real repotting.

Quote:
Trees in Containers
A discussion about maintaining trees in containers over the long term

It's not much of a secret to many, that a good part of what I've learned about plants and plant-related science has come as an outgrowth of my pursuit of at least some degree of proficiency at bonsai. Please, make no mistake, the principles applied to containerized trees under bonsai culture can, and in most cases SHOULD be applied to all containerized trees grown for the long term. Because of the small volumes of soil and small containers these trees are grown in, you might look at bonsai as a form of container culture taken to another level. Before most of the plants I grow become bonsai, they often undergo many years of preparation and manipulation while still in the same size containers you are growing in, so while I am intimately familiar with growing plants in bonsai culture, it would have been impossible for me to arrive at that familiarity w/o an even more thorough understanding of growing woody plants in larger, pre-bonsai size containers like you grow in. This thread is a continuation of one I previously posted on the same topic.

I grow and manage a wide variety of temperate trees and shrubs, both deciduous and conifers, and 75 or more tropical/subtropical woody plants. I'd like to invite you to join the discussion with questions about your own containerized trees and/or your tree problems. I will try to answer your questions whenever I can.

The timing of certain procedures is closely related to energy management, which gets too little consideration by most growers tending trees in containers. Because repotting and root pruning seem to be most misunderstood on the list of what it takes to maintain trees that will continually grow at close to their genetic potential, I will include some observations about those procedures to open the discussion.

I have spent literally thousands of hours digging around in root-balls of trees (let's allow that trees means any woody plant material with tree-like roots) - tropical/subtropical trees, temperate trees collected from the wild and temperate nursery stock. The wild collected trees are a challenge, usually...