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gardener_guy

Large Ficus in need of Input

gardener_guy
13 years ago


Can you help? This tree is in need of help or input. Everything about is is just confusing. The picture is below.

Thanks,

Gardener Guy


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Comments (3)

  • larke
    13 years ago

    What's confusing? These benjamina are a dime a dozen in every W-M and garden centre all over. If you want to bonsai them (and benjies are not the greatest for bonsai-ing) you need to choose a trunk (or a couple... but an uneven number is always best) and get rid of the others. The energy will then go into what's left and you can then treat it like any other bonsai (after some major work on what's left of the trunk stubs over time, and sorting out which roots go with your 'tree', etc. Or you could just stick it all in a pot and have a nice parlor plant :-).

  • tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
    13 years ago

    Shame on you for not pulling the weeds before you took the picture! ;o)

    You have the start of a very nice clump planting. The issues you need to correct are:
    * The planting probably has too many trees. You can pick a front, based on the roots, and remove some of the trees now, or wait until you cut back hard next summer - see next item. When you start thinning, select the trees you really want to keep first & mark them. Then, remove first the trees that cross those trunk lines. Then remove other trees that you feel don't enhance the composition. Group plantings should have 2,3,5, or 7 trees. In plantings with more than 7 trees, it doesn't matter if the number is odd or even because your eye cannot discern odd/even without counting when there are more than 7 trees.
    * The trees are much too tall, but now is a bad time to do any serious pruning. They'll need the energy their already sparse foliage will give them to get through the winter. I would let the planting grow wild until late June or early Jul, getting the trees outdoors & acclimated to full sun next spring/summer as soon as night temps are reliably above 55*, or move them in and out as temps allow. The object of cutting them back hard is to force back-budding from the trunks so you can chop them back to induce taper - training the new shoots into the new leaders.
    * You haven't been pinching the tree. In summer, whenever a branch reaches 4-5 leaves, pinch it back to 2 leaves to encourage ramification and smaller leaves. Ficus leaves get progressively larger (when mature) as the branch extends. Don't forget to frequently rotate the pot on the growing bench so all sides get ample light.
    * Treat the clump as a single tree. After you determine how many trees you want in the clump, forget it has multiple trunks & wire/pinch/prune accordingly.

    That's about it.

    Al

  • head_cutter
    13 years ago

    Confusing?? I'll go with Al's door #4 if you want something spectacular. It will take time but be well worth it in the end. If you take the time to pull everything together in a 'single trunk' then allow it to grow-on for a number of years you will wind up with a nice big fluted trunk and one of those broad canopies with a number of arial roots for accent.

    (as you develop the canopy you can also 'fake' the arial roots once you have a place to hide the trees added to make them -- no one will ever know if it's done right)

    For now you need to begin to cinch it together then allow one leader from each tree to just grow vertical, this will fatten the trunks over time as well as the surface roots.

    Bob

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