Well the time came (a bit too soon as the weather is still quite cold) to repot the Koto-hime. It was horribly pot bound. Last year I could not get to it before it leafed out and had to simply pull some soil away and add some fresh soil around the edges. As usual this one started to leaf out before everything else.
The original pot was too large/deep and is that typical "import" blue. The rootball was clogged and the soil had degraded into "mud". It took several hours of chopstick attacking and water blasting to clean it out. I was tempted to just do it partially, but thought better of it. The whole tree needs branch and root work, and I thought it better to clean out the "junk" and get down to business.
You can see how much smaller the rootball is. There are also two large wounds on the trunk that were not properly cut or sealed. Since it is too dangerous to do both of them at once I decided to re-open the large one and try to get it to close better. You can see the size of it in the photo.
The final pot is a vibrant blue pot by "Erin". Lots of branch and root work to do, but I will just trim the branches and then let it grow rather freely to recover.
