Hi
I wanted to go lazy and do some rot pruning with drilling the soil without taking the plants out of the pots.
I saw  some people do that.
any insights?

I haven't seen this and would be interested in any that have also !

thought about this for awhile. use larger drill or something like that to drill out soil and root and replace with new soil.

Id also be very interested in the results.

At least ill save on the Advil.

It will drill but not cut the roots.
The roots will twist on drill and brake off from the main root,I mean the whole root end to end.
It is a bad way to do root pruning.
The spade  well sharpened is the answer,just push down and cut roots.

My insight is probably not the best of methods .
In a small container plant because of the circular motion of the drill it may rip the roots off of the main trunk.
On larger plant probably circular motion would rip a bunch of roots and but not to the trunk.

Seems like the roots will be ripped up instead of being cut.
Fig tree's are pretty resilient though its just not a method i personally would do for a potted plant.



Here is example i recently did with a reciprocating saw pruning blade (cuts thru them like butter)  the wedges were made deep around the plant and the voids filled with new mix, also sides and top and bottom were cut off further after picture was taken.

That rootball filled the container and after all said and done more than 50% was cut off total so much new mix was replaced as well.

if the plant come to the state where it realy root bound, which i heard fig trees "like" it should be drilling mostly roots and not soil?
it can be done with a small diameter drill bit about 1.5 inches diameter to a depth of 20 inches deep. this way it can be dne in smaller pots?
i dont understand why with all the technology going today in the Ipad and I7 era bo one cares about the back of containers fig growers? :)

i saw the video about the beleclaire nursery and those guys were almost reaching their golden years with 25 gallon potted figs- if they root pruned all the trees they had they probably had to have a private back surgeon in-house.

At the nursery they probably had hired help for those chores i think but never been there.

Yes i agree fully its back breaking work that pot i showed is my smaller one as i did some 25 and 30 gallon ones this season and thus why i have been cutting down on the number of plants in our yard.
Im no spring chicken anymore.

 

I was away for about 3 months and was too late for every fig things when came back including root pruning. I took another lazy rout.
I drilled big holes near the bottom and enlarged the old one so much so that the pot bottom was barely hanging on to the top of the pot. I buried the pot half way to cover the holes. I hope it will do the job this year (I mean get ripe fruit) and may root prune next year and will replac the pot. I

Ottwan i think i saw the clip in youtube.....  if its you there -- you have quite big trees compared tot heir pot size.
probably you take this lazy route every year :)

martin - on a large tree shown in your pic, how often do you root prune? 

Every 3 years .

thank you martin