Hello, l need some help please. I recieved my fig a bit over 14 years ago. God love its heart it has been through 3 moves and one repotting. It has 11 trunks and is approximately 6 and a half feet tall. All the trunks are skinny and I have most of them bound to a stake, and it is still leaning. I would like to straighten it up. I had this weird idea of pulling all the trunks together and using gardening tape and starting at the bottom taping them all together to create one trunk. Please dont be horrfied, I dont have many plants and reallyhave no training. This one is special to me and would really appreciate some help to make it a healthy and attractive house plant. I live in north Alabama and it currently sitting on the back porch. Thank you in advance.

missjellyfish, generally, pruning side-shoots, suckers etc. will promote the growth of the terminal shoot(s). When the required height has been attained, the terminal shoot can be cut off. This will stimulate lower buds to grow. The canopy is developed by judiciously removing or cutting back shoots. Here are some images.

G - what Dave said. I always tell people considering marginal (timing) repots to consider whether or not they think the tree is likely to expire before June next when deciding whether or not to repot. Usually, the answer is pretty clear, but not always. Given the number of ficus that accompany their owners to this and other forum pages in search of relief of the suffering caused by soils that retain too much water, I think we can say that ficus are picky about water and how they are watered. It really can't be seen any other way. I'll explain after I redundantly note at the risk of being redundant, the number of people that have watering issues with ficus (hundreds and hundreds on this forum alone on an annual basis) is a pretty clear indication that the little snots are just looking for an opportunity to pitch a fit and toss their leaves about the room if you get the watering wrong. If when we water a portion of the soil remains saturated, it limits root function - no air for the roots occupying saturated soil = limited root function. That can't be argued ...... sort of like, 'run a marathon while breathing through a drinking straw, expect to come in last'. Any doubters? ..... and peat does have lots of nutrients locked in the hydrocarbon chains that make up the particles. It's just that those hydrocarbon chains aren't easy for soil biota to cleave. IOW, peat doesn't break down fast enough in containers to provide all the nutrition a plant needs. That's why they invented fertilizers - so we could apply them not to heavily and not too lightly, ratherly, just rightly. Al

What it looks like is that your knife wasn't sharp enough. Also I'd never use a knife to prune. It is hard to get a clean cut (if it's not a clean cut it can take longer for the plant to heal) and can easily introduce disease and infection if the tools are not sterilized beforehand. For such thick stems use a pruner, you can buy them at home depot or lowes. To sterilize your tools, get a blow torch and heat up the blade until it gets red and then let it cool off. It goes without saying that you should choose a pruner with a blade that is pure metal, not the kind of hybrid plastic ones they have nowadays. I wouldn't necessarily prune any more off. The problem is that your ficus began branching too late and now whatever you do the tree is still going to look top heavy indoors since it can't get any taller than that.