I've been a casual grower for a while and only recently learned about root-pruning. So this past May I took it upon myself repot a couple of old plants, the only survivors from my initial foray into growing 10 years ago. They had been potted up with no root work at all during those 10 years.

One is a pair of ponytail palms which I had wanted to separate but was afraid to for fear of killing them. But armed with my newfound knowledge I hacked the root mass in half, cut some off the bottoms and repotted into separate pots, and watched them put on significant growth over the summer.

The other is a norfolk pine which had some hard compacted soil in the center of the root ball. I couldn't remove all of it for fear of damaging the plant, so did what I could and then repotted it. I'm not going to unpot it again this time of year but for sake of conversation I thought I would ask if anyone had any advice for safely removing this hardened mass come spring?