Hinoki having problems

[Steven]

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all doing well and your trees aswel.

Id like to get some advice and inputs from you all.

Ive got a hinoki cypress i bought last autumn from someone who left it standing by the wall. It was in a bonsai pot at one point of its life and was moved into a nursery pot with nursery soil for reasons i dont know.

My plan was to pot it into a large box and make a raft out of it in spring but life got in the way and i never made the time to do that major operation… i did however remove a lot of dead interior branches (50% roughly of the whole tree…)

Over the course of spring and now summer i never really noticed any new growth (or i just didnt notice minimal growth) but i started seeing dry and dying tips across a lot of the tree. Furthermore the foliage feels kinda coarse/dry and not fleshy as i would expect for healthy growth.

Im thinking there is a major problem with the root system and the poor soil its in and i kinda wish i had been able to pot it into new and better soil.

Weather over here has been unusually moist, wet and not as hot as last year. Im inclined to try a repot into better soil outside of the usual repotting windows to check the roots.

What dou you guys think what the issue could be? And what would you do?

Below are some pictures of the trees foliage and the soil it stands in currently.

[Steven]

So no one have any experience with hinokis? Just giving this a bump.

Thanks for your time!

[NEBeech]

I personally wouldn’t repot it outside the repotting window based on the pictures. The foliage looks decent enough to get you into an appropriate potting window.
Are you still getting percolation in this container/soil?
I would focus on nailing the balance of water/oxygen up until that point.

They are slow responders in my experience so make sure your expectations are aligned with the trees capabilities.

The only thing I might consider would be to increase the oxygen if that root ball is intact. If you were to try to pick it up at the base of the truck would the whole root ball slide up out of the pot? If so I might drill some (8-12) holes around the pot. Lightly remove the outter 1/2-1 inch of soil around the compact root ball. Place back in the pot, that now has the additional holes drilled and backfill the 1/2-1 inch of created space with pumice and wait until your normal potting window.