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I Have A Two Year Old Ficus Benjamina That I Grew From A Clippin

9 years ago

A few weeks ago, my wife purchased a juniper bonsai for me for Christmas knowing that I have wanted a bonsai tree for near as long as she has known me. After doing a bunch more research then I did without a bonsai I decided that the juniper was not suited for apartment life. Especially when said apartment doesn't have a deck/balcony, plus I live in Central Florida, not exactly a great place for it to go into dormancy.

So I have decided to grow this two year old ficus benjamina into a bonsai if I can. I have a much larger ficus benjamina that I have put into the woods behind our apartment that I can also take clippings from if for some reason this two year old one will not work.

There are questions that I have, such as how do I get the trunk to thicken up? Can I even turn this two year old ficus into a bonsai?

I will probably have more, but I do not want to get into an information overload.

If it looks like there isn't much sun, it has been cloudy here in Florida today and this was just from an hour or so ago.

I have a thread about the juniper here a little ways below. In that thread someone recommended a ficus for my growing conditions and wanting a bonsai.

However, on another forum that I posted to today, I was told that ficus benjamina do not make good bonsai trees. So I am a bit confused on whether or not this can work.

Featured Answer

Dave

8 years ago

last modified: 8 years ago

i realize this is an older thread, but you can easily get the tree to grow which will thicken the trunk. Put it outside in direct sun.

Below is a photo is a clipping I took in March 2015, water rooted for a month and placed it in soil in April 2015. It spent late May thru mid September outside receiving direct sunlight. The truck went from less than 1/8" thick with one leaf, to now where it's thicker than a pencil. This small tree is only about 6 months old but is much larger than yours. I do believe the direct sunlight played the biggest role. I think your tree is just not receiving anywhere near enough light to help it grow faster. Obviously, there can be many other contributing factors which Al mentioned. He knows best. I was just sharing a little personal experience as I saw firsthand how much all of my trees grew when placed in direct sun. No level of light can compare to that.

From Al's advice, I also trimmed each branch back to only two leaves, so it's much less bushy than it was over the summer.

indoor, for the winter, all of my ficus are in a southern window with added grow lights to help.

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Comments (15)

tlbean2004
9 years ago
I cannot personally answer your questions but this guy on youtube does the bonsai things with ficus benjamina.

I will like a video down below and he also has many more videos on the subject.

Goodluck

Here is a link that might be useful: ficus bonsai
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
9 years ago
..... how do I get the trunk to thicken up? Can I even turn this two year old ficus into a bonsai?

First, there are many cultivars of F benjamina, and all make good bonsai subjects.

The speed with which a trunk thickens is directly linked to how much leaf surface area the tree has. The more leaves you allow to remain on the plant, the faster the trunk will thicken. So, if a thick trunk is your established goal, pruning isn't in your best interest, but keeping your tree in good vitality so its metabolism is robust ( helps to maximizes the number of leaves), is.

As you progress in the art of bonsai, how you look at trees and your personal concept of what it takes for a tree to be called a 'bonsai' changes. Many seasoned bonsai growers forget how excited they once were over the plants they once called bonsai, even though they had little in the way of refinement. Can you turn your 2 year old tree into a bonsai? The answer is 'yes', but we need to consider 2 things. One is, it will take quite a bit of time to produce a refined specimen, and the fastest way is to allow your tree to grow semi-wild. IOW, you would let the tree put on a considerable amount of growth, and limit your pruning to what is necessary to head off common problems, like competing leaders or keeping branch diameter in balance by pruning back the top and allowing the lower branches to grow unencumbered.

Or, you can be happy with a younger looking tree that is less refined and develops at a slower rate that the method I just described.

The object of bonsai is to produce something that evokes emotion or feeling in the person viewing the tree. We use our bonsai skills in an attempt to produce something believable - something we might see in nature on a mountainside, in a meadow, or perhaps in a grove with many other trees - something that causes us to see not only the tree, but the hand Mother Nature dealt the tree and what impact that hand had on how the tree looks as it's viewed. Obviously, younger looking trees have less interesting stories, which is why a good measure of the practices we employ are aimed at creating the illusion of age in our trees.

I'm not sure if my message is clear. I'm saying, call whatever you want a bonsai. It really only needs to be a 'bonsai' by your standards, not someone elses's. Bonsai isn't easy, so practitioners need to be encouraged and offered the kind of gentle guidance that helps us to refine our trees as well as our vision of what bonsai is.

Al
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
9 years ago
i would start.. by asking.. whats the media in that pot ...

i cant tell very easily from the pic... but it looks much too peaty ...

ken
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
8 years ago
Is the bottom picture current, Dave?

Al
Dave
8 years ago
Yes, Al. See something wrong?
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
8 years ago
No - nothing wrong, but the top could stand some thinning. To grow benjamina well, the top needs to be restrained - even if the plant is still much shorter than the ht at which you'd like to maintain the tree. This is because the plant is very apically dominant and tends to allot about 2/3 of it's energy to the top 1/3 of the tree. If you view the tree looking for verification of the tendency, you'll see what I mean. The counter measure is to regularly reduce the top, which serves 2 purposes. It keeps the top branches from getting conspicuously heavy, and it lets more light through to stimulate back-budding nearer the center of the foliage mass. Your tree is already getting some rather heavy branching at the top of the tree where things should be light & airy - twiggy. To fix that, you would first sort of bring the branch extension back inside of an imaginary ball shape by pruning back the longer top branches. Then, open up the top by concentrating on the heavy branches. Cut those back so you're leaving a pair of fine branches pointing in favorable directions, or to a single fine branch pointing in a favorable direction. The branches in the lower 2/3 of the tree would just get minimal pruning.

It already appears to have a rather nice shape (good job!), but could do with that extra measure of refinement if you're up for it.

Al
Dave
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Thanks Al! I'm much less scared to prune this tree than my large one, so I'm able to learn!

ill definitely cut the top back and report back. I'll need to look at it for a bit and see which should go and also which way the new branches will shoot out from.

all good advice and I will definitely give it a go!

thanks!
Dave
8 years ago
Here's what I have done. Before and after. Any other recommendations or places I should trim?

Before

After
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
8 years ago
Oh! ;-) I was talking about the tree in the bottom picture. That one was ok. Looks good.

Al
Dave
8 years ago
Ha! Oops! Did I ruin the small one? :) the bottom one (big one) is growing a bit spindly at the tips, obviously due to no longer receiving direct sunlight. It also thinned out and shed quite a bit of leaves when it came inside. Prior, it looked completely full all over. I'm going to give it about a month before I cut anything off the top, it's actually going through a growth spurt right now, so it may fill out a bit. I'm gonna wait and see what it looks like when the new leaves mature.
Dave
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
8 years ago
No, you didn't hurt the small one. You'll just need to think about where you want the leader to be and at some point restrain (prune) other upward-growing branches that are competing for leader status. Your eye shouldn't be confused by a tree with more than 1 head. ;-) There should be 1 branch that stands out as a leader, even if it's only a few inches (or on small plants, 1 internode) higher than the other competitors. For the plaited tree, it should be more or less directly above where the plant comes out of the ground, but that doesn't mean it has to grow in a straight line upward from that point. Movement in the trunk (curvature) isn't a detraction from the composition, so you're not necessarily tied down to choosing the centermost stem as the leader.

Al
Dave
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
I'll keep that in mind. Makes perfect sense!

With the current fresh growth happening on the bigger tree, would you agree with waiting? Or chopping it sooner?
Dave
8 years ago
Pulled the trigger and took a tiny bit off the top, all around.

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