I was planning on repotting a Hinoki I have from a larger grow box ( with bonsai soil aka second repot). I am in the Northeast south of Boston. I can protect the roots from freezing after but t question is…do I or should I wait until it comes out of its winter color? When a tree is still showing winter color is that a sign of stress and wait until it’s showing energy positive?
The general rule of thumb is to repot just before bud break in the spring so that you catch the tree just as it is starting to push new growth. This is pretty simplistic, and varies from species to species, so it’s always a good idea to check what is good for the actual tree you have.
It’s harder to tell with conifers. I just repotted a JBP, and it had already started to form new roots, so it was already several weeks late for my area. The buds on my JBPs have been already starting to push for a while, so that would have been a clue to get going on the repotting.
If you belong to a club local to you, it would be good to ask them when they generally repot hinoki cypress, as the climate in your area drives when the best time to repot is.
I hope someone with more specific information about the hinoki will respond to your question.
To my recollection Ryan was referring to cupressus being predominantly driven by daylight length and worked best in the 30 days following the winter solstice.
For hinoki iirc the recommendation was once it starts to elongate again. So that would be late March or early April just at the start of the growing season.
My bigger concern would be the amount of foliage on the tree, it seems fairly sparse. This would make a repot more challenging. If it were my tree and the would be no major root / soil issue I would wait a year.
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Thank you I was on the fence with that originally. Since you picked up on it by seeing 1/15th of the tree I am going to take that advice. It has not lost percolation, it was aesthetically driven so it can wait. thanks for the help everyone