I have a Green Island Ficus (originally gotten from a box store with moss glued to the trunk, restored to bonsai greatness with excellent advice from this forum).

It's been sitting on a deep pebble tray and I realized recently that the roots had grown out the bottom of the pot and into the pebbles. I started out to fix this, but then I realized the tree was fruiting tiny figs (it does this frequently) and I knew I'd have to cut back a lot of the branches if I was going to chop off a lot of root--there is a lot of root in the pebble tray--so I removed most of the pebbles, left some larger rocks to balance the bonsai dish with the tree in it, and have continued watering it as usual waiting for the fruiting to be over so I can do major surgery.

Today, however, most of the leaves have abruptly yellowed and when I brushed my hands over the tree, most fell off. There are new buds, as there always seem to be. I should add that we're in the midst of an unusual June heat wave here, and the tree got hit with high temperatures all of a sudden yesterday. Not absurdly high for August, but we've had a very cold sprind and early summer so the heat wave was a very big change.

I don't see any obvious bugs or disease on the tree that would explain a sudden event like this.

Needless to say, I'm now going to carry through with my plan of cutting back the roots and repotting, and I'll give it all new soil of course. Does anyone have any other advice for how to care for this tree and--I'm hoping against hope--bring it back to health? It's very pretty and fruits all the time and I'd be very sad to see it die.

Thanks for any advice!

Minda

The roots have been down into the pebbles for many months before I undertook to do something about it, and the fact that I recently removed some of the pebbles mean they now have more of a chance to dry, not less.

Also, I always let things get dry between waterings, I'm one of those people who err, if I do, on the side of too little water, not too much.

Even if is root rot, removing the excess roots and replacing the soil would be the best treatment for that in any case, right? But I suspect it must be something else...

Thanks so much for helping me figure this out. Any further thoughts would be most appreciated.

Best,

Minda