I have a somewhat newbie question, in my front yard there is an old azalea with stellar movement, it has been well established in the corner position between the front wall of my home and the concrete front patio now for years. My great grandmother planted it back in the day and I’d like to do it justice by moving the tree into a bonsai environment since we will be doing concrete work on that front patio next year. The year before this I root pruned around the tree, dug it up and replaced the soil with a more aggregate substrate as well as tiles on the bottom of the hole. I hadn’t payed close enough attention to it the years prior so I cannot be sure if it usually drops its leaves over the winter months, nor am I sure of what variant this species might be. I payed close attention after I root pruned this last year and it was also a very cold winter, the tree seemed to struggle a little bit, dropped all leaves and seemed to come back fairly week the following spring. I was worried I killed most of it but once the weather warmed up and I started feeding Biogold it took off and by early summer it had almost fully filled out and pushed a generous amount of back buds that have since developed nicely. My question is whether or not I should root prune at this point in the season in preparation for a full removal and repot in the spring of 2020? I wouldn’t dig it up of course but I wonder if it’s too late to perform a cut around the roots or if I should just let it continue to thrive on the newly developed roots from this past summer and spring growth? I live in a suburb on the Kansas side of the Kansas/Missouri border. The weather is usually all over the place but it has been in my opinion a nearly perfect summer as far a weather goes. The past few weeks have usually produced at least one day a week where we get into the 90s and it seems to be cooling down to where we are now getting into the 60s at night and the low 80s during the day. Thanks in advance and any additional insight is welcome!
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