Ficus benghalensis "Audrey" - Pruning Question
This is my first larger plant purchase and I want to do a good job with it, but I haven't found many other posts talking about this specific type of Ficus (benghalensis).
It seems to be growing really well since I brought it home - with several new leaves, two of which were at the top of the main stem (there are three stems in the pot). But I have some concerns about its structural integrity of the main stem if it keeps growing.
Main stem -
it looks like it was pruned a while ago so that it isn't straight... if I leave it will it be lopsided? get too heavy? It looks like there is a new stalk that is going back in toward the middle (see image 2)... should I prune just above that... or somewhere above that so that that becomes the new main stalk growing in toward the center of the plant?
Smaller stem -
looks like growth came from where it was pruned... do I keep cutting those off?
thanks for the help!
Comments (12)
litterbuggy (z7b, Utah)
6 years agolitterbuggy (z7b, Utah)
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Ficus Trees in Containers
Comments (169)Insofar as how it would impact root health, there is no difference between plastic and high-fired clay/ceramic. If you can see no crazing (myriad small cracks reminiscent of a fish net with small holes) in the glaze, you can eliminate anything toxic making its way from the pot to the grow medium. If you haven't fertilized or used any type of tonics, insecticides, leaf shine, detergents, etc., it's a very good bet you have unwittingly over-watered due to the fact there is no way for water to evaporate or be used by the plant as the new medium is not colonized by roots and remains a hostile environment to roots due to lack of oxygen. My suggestion would be to lift the plant from the pot to see it the lower reaches of the soil column are saturated. If so, see figure D below. Remove the soil from the new pot, place an over-turned pot in the bottom of the pot so it fits snugly, and cover the drain hole of the over-turned pot with something that won't rot (it does not need to allow water to drain through the hole in the over-turned pot, but it's ok to use a screen if you wish). Mix enough of the soil that falls away from the roots or remains in the large pot with an equal measure of perlite and fill to the top of the over-turned pot, then reposition your plant on top of the pot. and back-fill with the remaining soil w/o the extra perlite. The shaded areas in the images above represents perched water. By comparing D to A, you can see the over-turned pot significantly reduces the amount of excess (perched) water your soil will b e able to hold, so air will return the the soil much faster. The operational words for the moisture level of a grow medium is damp/moist, never wet/soggy. After having put the pot to work as ballast, start checking moisture levels with a "tell" you can make from a wooden dowel rod. It is far superior to a finger or a "moisture meter". More about using a 'tell': 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. Questions? Al...See MoreFicus benghalensis 'Audrey.' Should I re-pot again?
Comments (0)Hello! I've been lurking and learning for some time, but now I want to jump in with a question. I bought this Ficus benghalensis in early June and re-potted it almost immediately. A month later, it was pushing roots out of the drainage holes, so I potted it up. Yesterday I spotted more roots heading for freedom and I'm wondering if I should pot up again, do a full re-pot, or leave well enough alone until spring. For reference, it spends its time in a large south-facing, slightly obstructed window and is in a standard potting mix (FoxFarm Ocean Forest, which I've always had good luck with, but I now know might not drain as quickly as would be ideal). I water when the pot feels light, which is about every 10 days or so in my cool, humid climate. It has been growing slowly and steadily - each of the two trunks has put out two new leaves since I bought it. I would love to take advantage of its youthful exuberance and see more growth, but I want to do what's best for its overall health....See MoreFicus Elastica: Please Help Troubleshoot & Transfer to Gritty Mix
Comments (19)Hi again @tropicofcancer (6b SW-PA) ! I cut a square of mesh from an onion bag I had, worked great, thanks! You were right, not much root development, so I made sure to trim only a little bit and was able to repot late Friday night. I waited until Saturday morning to flush with water and then set it outside on my fire escape. Unfortunately, the fire escape is the only place I could leave my plants outside. A couple of further questions: When will it be okay for this guy to get direct sun again? I haven't watered it since Saturday. When should I water next? Or better yet, does it need to stay moist while it is getting acclimated? 2/3 stems are slanted. Should I stake them straight up? In one of the pics below, I circled the "wrinkling" that appeared on 2 of the stems while in the previous soil mix. Is this due to salt pulling water from the stems? How could I help the 2 stems recover from the trauma? Does this mean the roots will no longer take up water? Does this mean the roots are vulnerable to sunburn? Hypothetically, if I would have removed the bottom leaves, which were the first to show signs of salt/mineral trauma, would that have slowed down the traveling of the salt/minerals upwards? I am asking this because 1 of the 3 stems does not show any signs of wrinkling on its' stem. This stem also had a combo of more root development and fewer leaves. Not sure if there is a correlation there but I found it interesting and wanted to see if anyone could chime in with the science behind what is going on there. In another picture below I circled I think is called the apical meristem (PLEASE correct me if I am wrong). This stem in particular is in the worst shape of the 3. I noticed the shealth was extremely crunchy and hard - - Is this also a result of the salt/mineral build-up? Or a nutrient deficiency perhaps? Or is it the surrounding environment that causes this in plants? The plant doesn't have any signs of shock from the repot (yet). I am holding my breath but so far, so good. I apologize for all of the questions - - I am just very curious! Thanks for reading all this if you have made it this far lol roots: roots cont'd: my outside oasis aka fire escape: close up after the repot: What does the shriveling circled below mean? too much of a slant here? Should I stake it straight up? Crunchy apical meristem(?) :...See MoreFicus Audrey growing out of control. can i stunt growth of branch now?
Comments (2)It's hard to make suggestions re what to do w/o knowing where you live. If you want to make a plant look stunted, the best way to go about it is by keeping it always in a high state of vitality so it grows a lot, and do your "stunting" manually. Keeping a plant horribly rootbound limits branch extension and forces tighter internodes (less space between leaves), but it also limits vitality and the plant's ability to defend itself against pathogens and insect herbivory. Growth is measured by an increase in the plant's dry mass. When your tree isn't growing, it's dying, so the closer you get to stagnant growth (when a plant should be growing) the unhealthier the tree becomes. Note the list of how a plant orders its use of energy. It first goes to it's strongest sink, which is respiratory maintenance (maintenance of all its living parts), followed in order by production of fine roots, followed by flower/ seed/ fruit production, the primary growth (extension of both roots and shoots), then secondary growth (thickening), and finally, the synthesis of defensive chemicals. So stress first affects a plant's ability to defend itself - not the right path to keeping a plant small. Bonsai live in small pots (relative to plant size) and are kept compact, often for centuries, yet they are some of the healthiest plants in pots. This they owe to their care givers' attention to regular root work and regular/ judicious pruning. What I'm driving at is you need to prune it; however, where you live has much to do with HOW you prune it; reason being, you want to do a hard prune in late spring to provide a framework to build on. What the tree puts on in terms of growth in summer will be desirable and something to be kept as a part of the end composition. Growth but on late fall through early spring will be long (in internodes) and lanky, so, undesirable. If you live in the N Hemisphere, you should partially prune now and prune back hard in late spring, as measured by the calendar. Overview of Good Growing Practices Growing Ficus in Containers Long Term Care of Trees in Containers Al...See More
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years agoYou have 2 options. You can cut the top back to a leaf that is growing back toward an imaginary line straight up from the center of the pot, or you can cut back harder so you take the crook out of the picture and make the top straight. The grower cut the trunk back and that's how the branch that became the new leader grew. What the grower should have done and you can still do is this:
Imagine this as your tree and the leaves are branches. ^^^
When the grower cut the top back ^^^, he cut it back to about where the knot is, and the branch that turned into the new leader (that would be the one just below the knot) grew at the same angle as the leaf stem.
What he SHOULD have done is, cut the top back only part way so there was a stub left, then tie the new branch to the stub so it grows straight:
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Your idea to prune back to the leaf growing back toward the center is what I described above. It's ok to do that if the distance from the soil line to the first crook in the trunk is longer than the distance from the crook in the trunk to the branch growing back toward the middle. IOW, as your tree zig-zags, the distance between the direction changes has to grow increasingly smaller as your eye moves from bottom to top. This is because (in nature), branches get much closer together near the top of trees, and that's what your eye expects to see. If you DON'T see the sections between turns getting shorter toward the top, it will look odd, even if you can't put your finger on the precise reason why. If the distances are transposed, I'd cut the crook out and do what I illustrated above.
Alshelbyvr thanked tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)shelbyvr
6 years agoshelbyvr
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoThanks again!! your note about letting it grow past the center line is super helpful, I don't think I would have thought of that. I think I'm going to try making a bonzi with something soon - as I recently visited a bonzi garden here in oakland, ca and loved it!
Anyways... I made the cuts! and have the cuttings in some pots. I dusted the cutting bottoms with a rooting hormone. I mixed pumice with some regular potting soil, but it is mostly pumice. Photos below. I took off most of the leaves but left the top two on each.
Let me know if you think I should remove them. I have seen some posts that recommend cutting the leaves in half? I know that the plant with no roots is going to have a hard time moving water up to them...
Will add a tiny bit of water to the soil and cover with plastic bags for a few weeks. and update with progress over time :)
main stem post cut ^
cutting 1 ^ (middle piece from original main stem)
cutting 2 ^ (top of original main stem)
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years agolitterbuggy (z7b, Utah)
6 years agoshelbyvr
6 years agogreat point!
looking at the cutting I took from the middle of the stem and thinking about what Al said in his last comment I decided to bring that cutting down to just two of the tiny branches it had coming off of it.
we'll see how it goes :)
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years agolitterbuggy (z7b, Utah)
6 years ago
Mandarina Optimista
3 years ago
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)