1.  What do you call "grit"?  Something that absorbs water, not sand?  I have removed groundcover from almost all the bonsais and wow!  those "lovely little baby tears" certainly have NOT-SO-LOVELY roots.  I was quite surprised.

2.  I have a fuchsia whose roots seem to be disproportionately large in comparison to the plant.  Any special precautions or recommendations about trimming them?  I'm constantly trimming off the top of the plant, but the main roots just keep growing.  It seems roots would be very prone to disease, etc., if big ones were severed.

Thanks once again for everything.

Patzcuarense

For the fuchsia bonsai I use 3mm grit as a ground-cover and is also mixed into the soil when repottiing to aid better drainage.

For other trees such as Pines, Elms, Acers etc I use this 4mm grit for the same purposes.

In respect of the large fuchsia roots that you refer to, if you mean the thick, tough brown ones, with hardly any fine white roots on the ends, these are 'tap-roots' which are used more by the plant/tree when it is growing in open ground. These are more for supporting the plant/tree in an upright position and are not like the 'feeder' roots which are the 'clusters' of more 'horizontal' growing white roots.

I do remove these thicker tap roots when re-potting, but always make sure that there are plenty of the younger white roots on your plant/tree before doing this.

Kath
UK - Zone 8

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