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Hi
I received 3 acer palmatum bare root plants yesterday. They are 3 years old, about 2-3 feet tall. Quite nice looking plants but the tap roots and other roots are 90% thick and woody. It is my intention to let them grow and thicken up and I've planted them in large pots but should I attempt to hard prune the roots this Spring or just let them grow and deal with the root problem after a year or two? Thank you.

hard to tell without pictures, or knowing your experience level. In my garden I am quite merciless on my trees.

I would remove the tap roots before planting.

Thick and woody roots is what I like. But I may decide to shorter some of them to encourage smaller roots on places where I want to develop more thick roots.

Thank you both. I think I will leave them until Spring and then be merciless. I stupidly forgot to take pictures before planting them but I'll update with pictures in a few weeks once they've settled to see just how merciless you'd recommend I be.

OK, as a general rule of thum, you shorten the thicker roots much stronger than any fine roots you have. You want to avoid overly thick roots developing, as this looks unnatural.

Maybe this gets you some background , in particularly

Thank you. I'm aware of that but the problem is these young saplings have basically nothing but thick woody roots so I'm wondering how well they will recover if I hack them off leaving very little in the way of finer roots or whether I should just let them grow for a year in the hope they will develop more roots that are not from the thick tap and other woody roots so there will be less risk.

for me, since you put them in pots, I won't touch them anymore and I'll wait a year for a new repotting, what kind of soil do you put in them!!

Thank you, I think that might be the best option. I put them in 30% each of ericaceous soil, potting soil & perlite with 10% fine bark chips.

My usual approach is to look, at the roots, decide how much to leave, and then start cutting.

The trees have fine roots because that is what feeds the tree. They may be mostly at the end of the tap root, but they are there. I would leave them as is for a year, then cut off some of the end of the root, more the next, etc., and be governed by how fast feeder roots develop close to the top of the tap root.

Still no pictures, so still not possible to give you specific advice..