I am personally not a believer in barerooting a plant unnecessarily. Necessary reasons (to me) would include parasites around the roots, rot that needs to be removed, catastrophic potting medium choice ... those kinds of things. Just a standard repotting is not a reason to bareroot, for me.

Part of this may be the fact that my plants have a very dense root system with many fine roots, and a correspondingly intimate relationship with their potting soil. I CAN get the stuff in the middle out, if I want to, but I don't generally see a need unless, for instance, I need to get cicada larvae out of my container.

The really challenging part is not barerooting the plant, but in getting potting medium back into all the inner spaces.

What I do is go halfway, and remove the outer 2-5 inches of soil all the way around, and on the bottom. I just blow it out with a hose with the nozzle set for a fine, hard water jet. I wash the soil out of the roots as far in as the water will easily remove it, which frees up a large number of fine root endings. I find that this encourages the plant to start growing into the new soil immediately, and largely eliminates the problem of having a dense, dry rootball, surrounded by wet soil to which the roots have no access.

Displacer has given you pretty good advice. I do like to 100% bareroot when I switch to the gritty mix from a normal mix, since the media is so different. But if the current mix isn't horrid, many folks just rinse away the outer 3 inches or so to replace it and new roots grow there.

Even if I'm replacing with a typical potting mix + lots of bark added, if all the soil falls away very easily -- I just let it. As displacer said, if there are lots and lots of fine rootage in there holding a "core" of roots together, I might let it be for this potting as it's a New-to-You tree.

Another reason I end up replacing it all is because with a new tree, I want to make sure the large roots haven't started a circular pattern or starting choking out each other. I've seen this in about 25% of my trees -- either I fix it immediately or make a journal note that it's something I KNOW I'll need to fix later. But in your case, even saving that until the next repot is probably fine, too.

But even in my 100+ dry weather I've never lost a tree due to complete soil replacement. I've slowed them down, Yes. But they don't decline if done with moderate amount of care AND you do replace soil without leaving any air gaps.

Fantastic fantastic information here..:-). Many great points to take in..

I also bareroot all my trees that I will be planting into my open mixes...After that, once the transplanting has to be done again at any givin time, the soil for me falls freely away from the roots too..I also recieved all my plants through Four Winds and many other places barerooted..I do make sure the rots are not exposed to long to the air for the fact that fine roots will quickly die off once dry..

They do remarkably well..

I bare root everything, but not necessarily all at once. There are many plants that tolerate bare rooting extremely well, and some that do not. For plants with very fine roots, and plants that don't tolerate rootwork as well as others, I generally remove (saw off) the bottom 1/3 of the root mass, then remove all the soil in 3-4 wedge-shaped sections equal to half of the remaining roots. Imagine a pie with 8 pieces. You remove the soil from every other piece, but leave as many roots in those sections as you can, only removing the largest. At the next repot, you concentrate on the other 4 sections that remained untouched the first time. You'll have completely changed the soil during the course of 2 partial repots, and can then skip a year or two before starting the process over again.

Al

Thank you displacer, cebury, mike and Al. I got everything ready for the repotting and then pulled out the plant from its pot. The roots were well developed but the mix was dense and not looking good (as to be expected after a few years in the pot). I was too much of a chicken to do any rootwork at my first attempt (also do not want to traumatize it in the Fall season as it may not be able to recover in time). So, I used a garden hose and spent a long time washing out as much of the mixture out of the rootball as was possible. I repotted it in a bigger pot on Friday. This morning there is a new small bright green branch put out by this plant - it seems to be relieved that it has better living quarters! Thanks to your help and wisdom I now have a new and happy tree to care for.

Ashley..you got that right..citrus, planted in the same pot and soil for years, loses nutrients. It's worse if rootbound. I'm surprised excess soil existed.
You did the right thing. Although autumn isn't the best time to repot, when leaves yellow, and a plant looks lifeless, we haven't any other choice but to repot in fresh soil/mediums. In a clean, larger pot, too. Larger, unless roots are cut.
Kumquats are forgiving plants. Good luck, Toni
PS. I'm not an expert, just a citrus lover who grows citrus. lol

There's nothing wrong with staying in your comfort zone, especially late in the year.

It sounds like your plant is happy to be with you! Can we expect pictures of it?