Your benjamina is not a 'Midnight', but more likely just the species plant. I'm not sure where to start, but I should mention that the plant is already obviously light starved, as evidenced by the extremely long internodes and lack of foliage near the center of the canopy. This stress will weigh heavily on the plant as winter approaches & the plant goes into a quiescence lacking vitality and energy reserves. Though benjamina usually has few disease problems, a weakened tree will almost always suffer scale and or mite, sometimes mealy bug infestations, especially during winter. Corrective action - supply more light.

Benjamina (weeping fig) already has a pendulous and weak growth habit, which is what causes it to weep, so you will have some difficulty getting branches to grow to the vertical w/o staking or wiring. Without improving light conditions, no technique will allow you to achieve your goal. If you can increase the light the tree receives, this is what you should do:

Select a single branch that originates from each of the twisted trunks & wire or stake it to near vertical. The 3 or 4 (can't tell from pic) branches should be allowed to grow in an inverted cone-shape with a gradual widening/separation of the branches as they grow upward. All 3 or 4 of these branches should be allowed to grow unimpeded until the desired height is reached - then terminate them. In the meantime, all other secondary branches that have at least 5 leaves on them can be pruned back to 2 leaves in the spring or early summer. This will force tighter growth on secondary branching, which will feed and strengthening the main framework of the tree while maintaining something of a vertical habit (long branches will automatically weep unless you wire/stake them - short branches will not, and dense secondary growth presents multiple pruning opportunities).

This, I know, is quite a bit to absorb, so I'll let you ponder it. If you have other questions, please ask. I have around 15 Ficus b. and at least 15 other Ficus of varying species growing as bonsai or in various stages of bonsai development, so I'm very familiar with the growth habits and cultural requirements of the tree. I cannot stress enough that benjamina, even the oft touted, so called "dark-loving" 'Midnight' is a plant that craves full sun. W/o more light, I'm afraid your efforts will be frustrating at best.

In the link I provided, you'll find an article I wrote with more info and input/comments/questions by myself and others on Ficus b. culture.

Good luck.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Click me to learn more about Ficus b.

Thank you, Al! I had already read that link (it comes right up in a Google search - in fact, that is how I first discovered this forum) and several other pages on Ficus B. when I first got mine, and that's the reason I installed the spotlight.

A few followup questions (main question in bold):

1) Yes, I know the light is not enough, but I was pleasantly surprised that the plant did not protest more. Anyway, that corner is really the only place where it makes sense to keep it (well, there is one other, but it is every darker!). There are no windows in that room that face east or west - only the sliding door to the south balcony, which has no place for a plant. So, would adding a second spotlight help? The spotlight is using a "cool white" fluorescent bulb, which is rumored to have the right frequencies of red and blue in good supply. I could easily add a second one like it, perhaps mounting it in a slightly different spot to reduce shadows (like to the right, closer to the clock?). What do you think?

You said, "The branches should be allowed to grow in an inverted cone-shape with a gradual widening/separation of the branches as they grow upward." (I can understand why you couldn't tell if there are 3 or 4 - there were originally 3, but one of them grew two equally dominant branches, so higher up it's 4.) If I keep them separate and start widening them in a cone shape from now, it seems that my tree will always have wire/tape/stakes all the way up for the rest of its life, because it wouldn't have any strength of its own. Avoiding that was why I thought of fusing them into one larger trunk. But I think I also see why you suggest letting them widen a bit - it would allow for a wider fuller tree proportionate to its height as it grows taller. I was just hoping that whatever tying, staking, etc. that I do will not have to be there permanently, so I'm looking for a way that the tree can strengthen itself - that's why I thought of fusing. So I tried something that is a compromise between what you said and what I was imagining - see what you think. {{gwi:825972}}I used 15mm paper tape that is designed for staking plants - it has a very slight stickiness that only sticks to its own sticky side - when I looked at the choices in the plant store, it seemed to me that tape rather than wire would leave less of an indent (I hope to be able to remove it later), and paper rather than plastic would allow the trunk to "breathe". I chose one spot where the three original trunks could easily touch each other, and wrapped semi-tightly there. Then I continued up a little to where I could pull in the wayward branches that resulted from the trunk termination at the nursery, but I only pulled them in a little - they don't touch. I'm hoping that some fusion will take place where they are touching (for strength), without losing the individual identity of the (now 4) branch-turned-trunks. Here is a photo of what I did - I know it's hard to see the anatomy of the stuff that is now under the tape, but with my description, perhaps you can get the idea. So, what do you think of: (a) using the tape rather than wire? (b) getting a spot to fuse slightly for strength? (c) the amount I pulled the branches in?

After doing the taping, I noticed for the first time that I will have this issue come up again several times - the nursery not only pruned the original trunks, but also the dominant branches, and the most dominant of the smaller branches that come from them as well. So the main path of growth changes direction multiple times. This time I only dealt with the first big direction change - is that correct, to wait and do the others in stages as the branches get bigger? Or should I take advantage of the soft green stage - selecting my future "trunks" now and taping/staking them vertical as well?

Thanks for mentioning that I should prune in the spring, not now. Because new leaves are coming out very well right now, I was thinking of doing a little pruning, but perhaps it needs all its leaves for the time being. Or do you think a tiny bit of pruning on the longest ones would be okay now?

One other thing I did was to pivot the pot around until the part of the tree that has the least branches and leaves is facing the light sources. Am I correct in assuming that ficus, like many other plants, will grow more in the direction toward the light? It's the least pretty this way right now, but if it will grow toward the light, it will soon even out.

Thanks a lot for sharing your insights from experience.

osakawebbie:

Check out the "Fuse-grafting" postings that I submitted to this forum a few weeks back. The fusing techniques can be applied to your plant material as well. Just use shorter length stainless-steel screws and you'll be fine. You can fuse-graft additional Ficus B. material onto your original trunks and have the branches of the new material terminate at the height(s) that you want branches to grow. Don't worry too much about all the additional branches spoiling your ultimate design. As the individual trunks fuse into one "composite-trunk, a new vascular system will form in a few years, and the extra branches can be pruned away without killing off the portion of trunk that supported it. The Japanese call this "broom-style", and many bonsai trees are trained this way.

As an added bonus the trunk will be much thicker. This will give you a much more "mature" looking tree in a short time. Provide excellent growing conditions for the next 5 years, and, let the tree grow "wild". All the additional leaves and branches will force the tree to generate a larger vascular system to transport water, etc. to all the new vegetation. The trunk will fuse quicker also. While tree is growing, use some Bonsai training methods to control the growth and shape of your trees. Just don't go overboard with the pruning at this stage. You can refine the growth later. Good luck. Frank

You said:
Thank you, Al! I had already read that link (it comes right up in a Google search - in fact, that is how I first discovered this forum) and several other pages on Ficus B. when I first got mine, and that's the reason I installed the spotlight.
A few followup questions (main question in bold):

1) Yes, I know the light is not enough, but I was pleasantly surprised that the plant did not protest more. You can consider the sparse foliage that grows mainly at branch ends & very long internode length a silent protest,color> Anyway, that corner is really the only place where it makes sense to keep it (well, there is one other, but it is every darker!). There are no windows in that room that face east or west - only the sliding door to the south balcony, which has no place for a plant. May I suggest that you keep it on the balcony whenever you can & when temps are above 50-55*.color> So, would adding a second spotlight help? Yes - another spotlight would double the amount of light striking leaf surfaces.color> The spotlight is using a "cool white" fluorescent bulb, which is rumored to have the right frequencies of red and blue in good supply. I could easily add a second one like it, perhaps mounting it in a slightly different spot to reduce shadows (like to the right, closer to the clock?). What do you think? Of course I would encourage you to add the second light. BTW - cool whites are rather weak in the red portion of the spectrum (red favors flower/fruit formation) but emits good amounts of light in the blue end, which is preferable when supplementing light for foliage plants like Ficus b.color>

You said, "The branches should be allowed to grow in an inverted cone-shape with a gradual widening/separation of the branches as they grow upward." (I can understand why you couldn't tell if there are 3 or 4 - there were originally 3, but one of them grew two equally dominant branches, so higher up it's 4.) If I keep them separate and start widening them in a cone shape from now, it seems that my tree will always have wire/tape/stakes all the way up for the rest of its life, because it wouldn't have any strength of its own. When staking or wiring a tree, the wire need only be in place long enough to allow ample lignification of new branches. Light is key here. With ample light, the plant is able to lay down layers of "reinforcing cells" in the cambium, which strengthen the branches. Low light conditions cause rapid extension and growth so weak it cannot support itself as the plant "reaches" for light.color> Avoiding that was why I thought of fusing them into one larger trunk. But I think I also see why you suggest letting them widen a bit - it would allow for a wider fuller tree proportionate to its height as it grows taller. I was just hoping that whatever tying, staking, etc. that I do will not have to be there permanently, so I'm looking for a way that the tree can strengthen itself - that's why I thought of fusing. So I tried something that is a compromise between what you said and what I was imagining - see what you think. I used 15mm paper tape that is designed for staking plants - it has a very slight stickiness that only sticks to its own sticky side - when I looked at the choices in the plant store, it seemed to me that tape rather than wire would leave less of an indent (I hope to be able to remove it later), and paper rather than plastic would allow the trunk to "breathe". I chose one spot where the three original trunks could easily touch each other, and wrapped semi-tightly there. Then I continued up a little to where I could pull in the wayward branches that resulted from the trunk termination at the nursery, but I only pulled them in a little - they don't touch. I'm hoping that some fusion will take place where they are touching (for strength), without losing the individual identity of the (now 4) branch-turned-trunks. Here is a photo of what I did - I know it's hard to see the anatomy of the stuff that is now under the tape, but with my description, perhaps you can get the idea. So, what do you think of: (a) using the tape rather than wire? Either will work fine. You just need to be vigilant & remove the wire before it bites into the cambium.color> (b) getting a spot to fuse slightly for strength? Unnecessarycolor> (c) the amount I pulled the branches in? Looks fine at this point.color>

After doing the taping, I noticed for the first time that I will have this issue come up again several times - the nursery not only pruned the original trunks, but also the dominant branches, and the most dominant of the smaller branches that come from them as well. So the main path of growth changes direction multiple times. This time I only dealt with the first big direction change - is that correct, to wait and do the others in stages as the branches get bigger? Or should I take advantage of the soft green stage - selecting my future "trunks" now and taping/staking them vertical as well? Yes, select the framework of your tree now. Allow the 3 or 4 branches you train to the vertical to extend to slightly less than your preferred end height, then terminate them. If you give the tree good light & tip-prune branches (with 5 leaves or more) regularly to prevent over-elongation, you'll have so many pruning opportunities that you would be able to control growth direction and shape by using only selective pruning.color>

Thanks for mentioning that I should prune in the spring, not now. Because new leaves are coming out very well right now, I was thinking of doing a little pruning, but perhaps it needs all its leaves for the time being. Or do you think a tiny bit of pruning on the longest ones would be okay now? As mentioned above, you can tip-prune branches with 5 leaves by removing the growing tip and perhaps the first leaf behind it. This will force secondary growth from leaf axils behind the pruning cut.color>

One other thing I did was to pivot the pot around until the part of the tree that has the least branches and leaves is facing the light sources. Am I correct in assuming that ficus, like many other plants, will grow more in the direction toward the light? Yescolor> It's the least pretty this way right now, but if it will grow toward the light, it will soon even out.

Thanks a lot for sharing your insights from experience. You're welcome.

Alcolor>

Thanks for the responses, Frank and Al. I've been slow in getting back to you because for some reason I'm not getting email notification even though I asked for it, so I don't realize that posts have come in.

Frank, at first when I read your post on my thread, especially where you said, "You can fuse-graft additional Ficus B. material onto your original trunks," I thought you might be talking about grafting into the top of the termination point of a trunk, so that the growth would continue upward without zigs and zags - I don't know if that is even possible, but it turns out that isn't what you are talking about, but rather starting back at the ground level with additions that have roots. That sounds like it would take a long time from when I start with a spindly green thing (the only parts of my ficus that don't have sharp bends from the nursery's pruning), get it to grow roots, place it among my current trunks, and get it to join in so well that the old and new all function as one. If I was lucky, I guess I would end up with a trunk that starts out fat and then suddenly gets thinner at the point where the current trunks are terminated.

But now that I have the thought, does anyone know if I would be able to split the top of a terminated trunk and graft an unpruned little branch into it? That would be a really sweet way to solve this!

Incidentally, the first of the three pics that Al posted on your thread (with 3-4 trunks that fused in a couple places - {{gwi:100642}} is a direct link) is one that I had seen somewhere else in my searching, and that was what originally gave me the idea to try fusing. Interestingly, it is Al who feels that fusing is not relevent in my situation.

Al, your way of replying inline was very helpful - thanks. Responding to some of your comments:

May I suggest that you keep it on the balcony whenever you can & when temps are above 50-55*.
I agree that that would be best for the plant, but I'm not really a plant hobbyist like most on this forum, but simply want to decorate my livingroom with green - all year round, not just in the winter. Also, I've heard that Ficus B. don't like to be moved, so it might drop its leaves twice a year if I did that. So I'd rather add a second light and hope for the best - if it doesn't work out, I'll buy something different that likes shade.

Allow me to point out that all that sparseness you see in the center is very recent - for 2-3 months after I got it, it had its original dense growth (about 3 times as much foliage as there is now), was not shedding leaves, and was growing. Then suddenly it started shedding leaves and many of the branches actually died - I read more and realized that I hadn't been giving it any plant food/nutrients. I rectified that, and it started growing well again, but I had lost a lot of branches, especially in the interior area. All the photos are after I cut out all the dead stuff (and accidently cut one or two good branches from confusion over what was connected to what). But yes, I know that it should have more light, and with more light it probably would have withstood my neglect of food with less loss. I'm just pleased that it is doing as well as it is - I expected more problems.

Yes, select the framework of your tree now. Allow the 3 or 4 branches you train to the vertical to extend to slightly less than your preferred end height, then terminate them.
Okay. I have a long way to go before I'll have anything as long as my preferred height - it's about 2 1/2 feet tall now (including top foliage but not counting the pot) and I would like it about 5 feet tall eventually. The nursery terminated the trunks at about 20 inches above the pot. So my next challenge is selecting which branches to make vertical, and how aggressive to be at bending the stiffer areas. I'm just asking for general principles from your experience, not specifics for my tree, but sometimes examples are useful, so here are two more photos (click on thumbnails for a bigger view). This time I held foreground foliage out of the way and inserted a paper towel behind the area I want to show you, because I know it's really hard for you to see what's going on in a 2D image.

{{gwi:825973}} {{gwi:825974}}

The first one shows my next decision point on one of the trunks - there are four branches to choose from. The biggest is the one on the bottom right, but since the trunk is already tilting that direction (because this is part of the one trunk that split into two farther down) and the branch goes even more in that direction, it will take a lot of training to get it to become vertical, and I don't know how much training is actually possible with a branch that thick 81/4 inch diameter). [By the way, notice on the branch in the right foreground, slightly out of focus, the new green branch sprouting - new growth is starting to come back in the center area now that I have cut away the dead junk - hooray!]

The second photo is of that biggest branch, showing the rest of it, especially the line made from whichever is the largest branch at each point. You can see that there are two more places where pruning changed the direction - the first just a couple inches from where it left the trunk and the other one at the right side of the photo, when the branch then turns away from the camera (that last leg is longer than it looks). My questions about this process are:
(1) Is it generally best to choose the largest or strongest looking branch at each point even if more training is needed to go vertical, or is something smaller that is already closer to vertical a better choice? In the second photo, you might be able to see what I'm thinking - the big branch is nice and long and strong, but if now or next spring I boldly cut it off, the little one that goes almost straight up will become the future for that trunk. The question stems from the fact that I don't know just how much directional change I can train into branches that are already strong and covered with bark, like that first joint going to the right. If I can get that big guy to bend upward in a relatively short distance, great, but otherwise, perhaps it makes more sense to resign myself to having a one-inch "jog" in the route and just utilize the small guy that goes up already. I know you would need to handle my tree yourself to be able to give a specific answer, but I'm just using this as an example to ask for your recommended rule-of-thumb: keep larger branches and try to bend them aggressively, or use whatever is already going up?
(2) When training, how hard can I pull on the tough branches at one time? Of course right now I'm only using paper tape so I can't use much pressure at all, but if I used wire I could exert more strength - is that okay (as long as I don't break the branch, of course), or should I do a little at a time and tighten the wire every couple weeks or so? If you know of a good web tutorial on these kinds of things, that would be great - the only pages I found about bonsai techniques seem to assume the reader already knows how much they can bend a branch, what material to tie with, how long it would take before the branch was trained and the tie could be removed, etc.

Sorry to have so many questions. I guess I'm trying to get my ficus to do something the nursery never intended: become a tree. ;-)

...... does anyone know if I would be able to split the top of a terminated trunk and graft an unpruned little branch into it? That would be a really sweet way to solve this!

Yes, you can, but it is much easier and surer to perform approach grafting on this plant. Simply pull a flexible branch into position & tie it against another branch or stem. They will quickly merge/fuse cambiums at the point where they touch (6 mo - a year, depending on growth rate) and you'll be able to sever the newly located branch/stem from it's original source of water & nutrients.

Interestingly, it is Al who feels that fusing is not relevant in my situation.

The only reason you might try it is if you were somewhat advanced in the art of bonsai & wanted to create additional taper in the trunk to further the illusion of an older tree. The trunk is already well-lignified & rigid, making this type of grafting irrelevant to your purposes. Incidentally - "Hokidachi" or the "broom style" alluded to above, has nothing to do with grafting. It is simply a tree style that has a formal (straight) trunk and multiple branches that fan out from the top of the trunk in roughly a half dome shape.

Also, I've heard that Ficus B. don't like to be moved, so it might drop its leaves twice a year if I did that. So I'd rather add a second light and hope for the best.

It is widely parroted that tropical Ficus like to pout and throw their leaves at you whenever you make a cultural change. This is a complete misconception. When exposed to sudden chill or a fairly rapid decrease in either photoperiod or light intensity, physiological changes in growth hormones will cause an abscission layer to form at the base of affected leaf petioles. Leaves soon after abscise. Changes in cultural conditions that are improvements; however, (warmer conditions to 95* or increasing light levels or duration) do NOT cause this effect. Improving conditions will show increased growth & a tendency to backbud more readily, which causes a lush, thick canopy.

Okay. I have a long way to go before I'll have anything as long as my preferred height - it's about 2 1/2 feet tall now (including top foliage but not counting the pot) and I would like it about 5 feet tall eventually.

You're not as far away as you think. If you want the tree terminated at around 5 feet, only the top half will have foliage, and any structural branches you train to vertical now will be terminated at around 40". From there, secondary and tertiary branching will grow above the framework to complete the canopy. See? Only 10 inches to go. ;o)

So my next challenge is selecting which branches to make vertical, and how aggressive to be at bending the stiffer areas.

Don't bother worrying about bending the stiff branches. There are multiple mechanical techniques that will allow you to do this, but it's unnecessary. I can tell you're impatient & are looking at 10 weeks instead of 10 years. ;o) Just allow the tree to grow a little. Soon, Voil You'll find a branch growing vertically right where you want it & a little judicious pruning will allow you to select it as a primary part of the framework. Through thoughtful pruning, you can also balance energy flow and branch strength to allow small branches to catch up to their bigger counterparts in size, but let's save that lesson for later on.

Is it generally best to choose the largest or strongest looking branch at each point even if more training is needed to go vertical, or is something smaller that is already closer to vertical a better choice?

This depends on your skill in manipulating branch placement. I'm very patient & have dozens of Ficus trees to work on, so I'll always opt to prune a large branch that is spoiling the looks of the tree back to a usable smaller branch I can train or wire into something usable, then wait. In your case, I'd also suggest smaller branches for now & patience.

When training, how hard can I pull on the tough branches at one time? Of course right now I'm only using paper tape so I can't use much pressure at all, but if I used wire I could exert more strength - is that okay (as long as I don't break the branch, of course), or should I do a little at a time and tighten the wire every couple weeks or so?

This is another call that needs to be made based on your experience. Ficus branches are generally very flexible, and you can do some pretty radical bending on benjamina when it's growing hard, but now is not a good time to be doing anything so radical - this in both the consideration of where the tree is in its growth cycle and the work you've recently done.

Concentrate now on letting your tree recover from what you've already done. Your tree is already severely stressed & will have a pretty tough winter. Keep it on the dry side (soil) as growth slows (it may do better than average if you give it a second supplemental light, but hard to tell). A fertilizer formulated for tomatoes is a good choice, but don't overdo in winter. Hopefully, there will be enough light that your tree can enjoy conditions that see it producing more energy than it's using.

Good luck.

Al

Great info! Exactly the kind of things I needed to understand. By the way, I don't think I'm impatient for the final result - I just wanted to know what actions are best to take early in the process, and you had recommended that I choose my main branches now rather than later. You compared 10 weeks to 10 years; I'm figuring something along the lines of 3 years of gradually using shorter and shorter items to sit the pot on and having it on the floor in 3-4 years, but if it takes longer, I don't mind. Also, since this is not really my hobby, I would like to do what I can now and then not have to mess with it for a while.

See? Only 10 inches to go. ;o)
I'm focusing on the trunk, trying to get it where I want it, so to me I see it as 20 inches to go, from the 20 inch termination points I have now to the 40 inch termination points I will create later. That's why I was asking about fusing the trunk just a little - I'm lacking confidence that 40-inch trunks that are twisted for only the first 12-15 inches will be able to hold themselves nice and vertical under the weight of all that foliage, without either permanent wires/stakes or a spot of fusing part-way up. Right now I have tape wrapped tightly at the 15-16 inch point (you saw it in an earlier photo) - unless you think I'm hurting something by having it there, I'll just keep it there and see. If the trunks decide to grab hold of each other, great; if not, oh well.

Your last post gave me what I see as three good options for making straight trunks: (a) approach grafting, (b) training a horizontal branch to vertical, and (c) waiting until something shows up that is already vertical and gradually eliminating others to make it dominant. So I looked at my ficus to see which approach might work best for each trunk. Of the four termination points, one looked like it might have already have a little thing going vertical that I could encourage by pruning around it next spring. For the others, the approach grafting idea appeals to me because it would result in a straighter trunk (even if the thickness will change at the point of the graft) and less struggling with multiple pruning points down the line, as I showed you in my previous post's photos. At the moment I don't have a lot of branches that can be easily brought to the right location, because they all start above the termination points (except one "lone ranger" that you can see in my earlier photos, which only has one leaf and one bud right now) so they need to make a big S curve. But I found one that would work, so I decided to try it and see how it goes through the next year.

{{gwi:825975}}In the photo (click for a bigger view), my index finger is on top of the trunk termination, and the branch in front of it is the one I'm grafting in, which comes from the stubby trunk on the right side of the photo (a third trunk seen in the front center is unrelated). The upper part of the branch is healthy green, with ten leaves, and has never been pruned so it doesn't have any of those strange kinks. I used tape today, but I will probably buy some wire and replace it, because I assume a graft would need a pretty tight squeeze to get the hint that I want the two to become one. Also, with wire I will be able to see how it's doing later on - I can't see under the tape.

I won't do anything else to the tree now, so it can recover as you said. It does seem to be happy - there are new little leaves every few days - but it probably does need some rest, and autumn is coming. Next year, if this graft is looking like it's going well, I'll select two more straight sprouts to use for the other two trunks that need them (perhaps even the "lone ranger" will have gotten longer by then), and then start lightly pruning the rest of the foliage to encourage tighter growth.

You mentioned water and fertilizer. The plant came with rocks on top of the soil in the pot (some sort of light porous rocks that hiss when they get wet - they make a nice appearance), so it's a little difficult to get my finger down there to test the soil dampness. But I watch the leaves - when they start to look slightly less than full strength (like a little ripple shape or something), I water - I read that technique someplace. For food, I'm currently using a simple liquid that comes in little bottles that you snap off the tip and stick into the soil - I guess when it is watered, some of the liquid comes out. There were two varieties: for flowers and for foliage, and Ficus B. was even listed as one of the examples for which the foliage formula was intended for. My ficus seems to like it. The instructions recommend two bottles for this size pot, but perhaps I should drop back to one bottle when winter comes. But the liquid is not coming out very fast (the two bottles have been there about a month, I have watered twice since then, and I would estimate that they have lost perhaps a cubic centimeter of liquid each). When you say "fertilizer" I assume you mean this kind of thing (or the solid kind in stick form), what I would call "plant food", right? Having grown up with a large yard with flower beds and a vegetable garden, I think of "fertilizer" as compost or other such thing one mixes into soil, but in the case of house plants I assume that's not what you mean - correct me if I'm wrong.

Incidentally - "Hokidachi" or the "broom style" alluded to above, has nothing to do with grafting.
That's what I decided when I looked it up. In fact, it sounds a lot like the sort of pruning the nursery did on my ficus that I am trying to undo!

So if you think I'm on the right track, I feel like I've gotten enough info from you to have some clues on how to do this. Over time we'll see whether my tree agrees! ;-) Thanks again!

I'm lacking confidence that 40-inch trunks that are twisted for only the first 12-15 inches will be able to hold themselves nice and vertical under the weight of all that foliage, without either permanent wires/stakes or a spot of fusing part-way up.

Well, your tree IS a weeping fig, so an initially upright growth habit may be a little difficult to achieve in low light conditions, but with a little of your guidance, it's an easily attainable goal, even w/o relying on grafting or fusing techniques.

I used tape today, but I will probably buy some wire and replace it, because I assume a graft would need a pretty tight squeeze to get the hint that I want the two to become one. Also, with wire I will be able to see how it's doing later on - I can't see under the tape.

What you've done there is fine. The branches needn't be tightly bound together, only touching. Wire will cut into the cambium quickly as the branch caliper increases, so stick with the paper or the green and stretchy polyethylene grafting tape that's readily available.

When you say "fertilizer" I assume you mean this kind of thing (or the solid kind in stick form), what I would call "plant food", right? Having grown up with a large yard with flower beds and a vegetable garden, I think of "fertilizer" as compost or other such thing one mixes into soil, but in the case of house plants I assume that's not what you mean - correct me if I'm wrong.

"Don't feed the plant - feed the soil" is sage advice when you're talking about garden culture, but in container culture, there are not enough nutrients available quickly enough to satisfy plant needs w/o supplementation. Much of what works in the garden (soil related) should be left in the garden as you make transition to container culture. You WILL need to take control of your nutrient supply. What you're using now may or may not be effective, but my guess is that it's very ineffective. It allows you no control of nutrient delivery volume or timing. Get a small container of MG soluble tomato fertilizer on clearance this fall & it will last several years. A suitable alternate would be a soluble, balanced mix (20-20-20 is very common).

Incidentally - "Hokidachi" or the "broom style" alluded to above, has nothing to do with grafting.
That's what I decided when I looked it up. In fact, it sounds a lot like the sort of pruning the nursery did on my ficus that I am trying to undo!

Exactly (nursery pruning)! This style begins with a "chop" of the trunk or large branches above a bi/trifurcation so nothing but a stub or stubs remain. The new branches that form from the callus surrounding the wounds are then trained to near vertical & become a part of the o/a structure.

I think you're good to go. Have fun!

Al

Thanks! One last quick question about the fertilizer. I live in a megacity in Japan - nobody grows tomatoes around here, and the brand name you named would also not be applicable. Can you tell me what kind of ingredients I should be looking for? I can get liquid plant food that is more controlled (you measure it rather than stick it in the soil) - if I get a type that is designed for foliage plants, and use it according to the directions, would that be good?

Shoot for a liquid or granular soluble in the ratio of 1:1:1, 1:2:2, or close. A slightly lower first number is to be preferred, but the balanced blend will serve you well. Go easy on the fertilizer during winter if you see growth appreciably slowed.

Al