It must be a system glitch. It's back again now. Ingrid

Alameda, Chris could easily be a climber here (and what a wonderful one he'd be), and I just know my trellis isn't big enough. I haven't had the heart to hit up DH again to do a bigger support. The bamboo was difficult for him to deal with. It will take some sweet talking, I am sure. Weeds? It looks good now but I have tons of warm-weather weeds. That awful onion stuff that has underground runners. I use a weeder tool on them in early spring and summer. Once the roses and daylilies grow up big, I can barely fit in there to weed and they start winning out. I am not compulsive enough to do it every day. I need to. Kathy

Oh, that's beautiful. I can see why you'd want to replace it.

I had read that these trees shouldn't be turned, but do you definitely think the right thing is for me to turn it around? I'm sure. It's highly likely that the root system of one of the trees in the braided/ plaited composition was driven to almost complete loss of liability by drought conditions. Root growth always precedes top growth, so that you are witnessing some regeneration of top growth in the most affected part of the composition means the roots are recovering. The best way to facilitate that recovery is to make sure resources enjoyed by the single tree most affected are maximized. In this case, water and fertility can't be parsed out between the trees, but light can. Increasing the amount of light the most affected part of the tree receives works to maximize the amount of food (sugar/ carbohydrate) that can be synthesized by the tree's food factories (its leaves) during photosynthesis. The ability to create more food means more energy can go into regeneration of the fine roots which do the lion's share of the work. Further, if a grower avoids regularly turning their indoor trees, they inevitably end up with a lopsided tree, one side of which will be very strong and the other very weak. Should I just leave all the dead branches alone? Not necessarily. There is only one degree of dead, and dead branches can always be removed with no harm and the advantage that removing deadwood allows more light and air movement into the inner branches of the tree. However, if the branch is in limbo, waiting for enough roots to be regenerated so the root system can actually support additional canopy growth, you wouldn't want to remove them. Ficus exudes white latex from wherever a viable ranch is cut, so cut back incrementally from the branch tip toward the base. If you see white sap - cut no further as the branch is still viable. I am not actually moisturising and fertilizing at all.... Will the product you recommend take care of both? For the moisturizing part, I recommend water (sorry - couldn't resist). For fertilizer, which is not the plant's food, only the building blocks the plant uses to grow and keep its systems orderly, I highly recommend Foliage-Pro 9-3-6. It is complete nutrition from a single source, and has a list of attributes that set it apart from other fertilizers. If you are interested in the reason I'm so enthusiastic about it, just ask. As for as monitoring moisture levels in the soil, forget the adage that "you should water when the top inch or two of the soil feels dry". That is a recipe for over-watering. If your pot is 10" deep, the bottom 6" of the soil column can be 100% saturated with water when the top inch or two feels dry, and that's not an appropriate time to water. I'll leave you with something I wrote about using a "tell" to monitor moisture levels, + 2 links to threads I started re care of ficus and a basic overview of good growing practices. I have never pruned the tree... is there any advice you can give me on how to go about that? Please take 4 image of the tree from each compass point (N,S,E,W) or front, back, left, right. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Good Growing Practices - Overview Long Term Care of Ficus in Containers Al