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What do you do when you get a tree that is in desperate need of repotting, but it’s not repotting season? I believe there are a number of good answers to this question, and the various approaches these answers represent may each be suited to a different situation.

I recently became the new caretaker of a white pine that had not been repotted in over a decade. It is planted in what appears to be potting soil or a similarly organic soil. The soil is decomposed, and stays very wet between watering. I applied a simple operation in an attempt to get some fresh air down into this soil until I can repot it in the spring.

First, I cleaned off the soil surface removing damp moss and other debris. A small part of me hoped clearing away some of the decomposed soil might reveal a more granular soil below, but no luck.

Next, I used a chop stick to create a hole down to the bottom of the pot if I could. I wiggled the chopstick to open up the hole to make room for some open, inorganic elements.

I filled each hole with a combination of pumice and lava rock. And worked my way around the soil surface making a new hole every inch and a half to two inches.

For a healthy tree in the same pot for this long, I would expect a thick, dense root mass. The very fact that I was able to make holes to the bottom of the pot without much difficulty suggests that there were few roots, or that many had rotted over the years.

I hope these small pockets of air in the soil will help create a healthier balance of air and water in this pot until I can repot and replace some of this old soil in the spring.