Boingo

Hi.

I live in CT. I guess that's zone 6? Anyways, it's fall now and it's starting to get a little colder at night.

I bought a decent sized Chinese Elm a couple of months ago from a nursery. It's in a 1 gallon bucket. It's completely rootbound and the top of the soil is hard as a rock. Water seeps in, but VERY slowly. When I bought it there were some smaller branches that were dried out and dead. I cleaned it up, removed all the little dried out branches and put it outside.

Two months later, the same portion that had the dried branches originally, has some more smaller branches drying out. This isn't happening anywhere else on the tree. The rest of the tree is doing great.

It definitely needs to be repotted. I was going to leave it til Spring, but that portion of the tree that has smaller branches drying out is worrying me. Like water isn't able to reach part of the roots for some reason. I even tried a submersion watering, but that didn't fix it.

I'm trying not to fidget with my trees too much, or do things at the wrong time of year, which is why I wanted to leave it til Spring. My natural inclination is to do something (anything) to fix it, but I've heard that's not always best when dealing with trees.

But with a portion drying out while the rest is doing great, should I repot it now? Or will that do more damage with winter and colder weather coming up soon?

Hope that made sense.

Thanks.

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