Bonsai hard cutback regret, Ficus Benjamina
lukewarmtofu1
6 years ago
I did a hard cutback on my ficus hoping to get lower branching. Instead, I've gotten only one new shoot. Is there a way to encourage shoots on the other side to balance it?
And yes, I regret such a drastic cutback. Thankfully it didn't kill him, live and learn.
Thank you in advance,
-
Tofu
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lukewarmtofu1
6 years agoI'm in Los Angeles. I'd say plant is strong, it had pushed out several new leaves a couple weeks before the chop.
For the mass of new shoots. Any specific way to remove them? Or just cut all but one branch off?
I got another shoot lower on the trunk! It's tiny but there. Pic attached
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Ficus benjamina (& most other commonly grown tropical Ficus)
Comments (64)@JMJ 4Life Really sorry to learn about your tree. I assume some part of the root mass is fused, so the soil/root mass remains intact like so: If the answer is yes, unpot the plant and set the root/soil mass on a stack of newspapers, rags, old towels, dry sponges - something that will PULL excess water from the soil. Allow it to rest on the wicking material for an hour or two before returning it to the pot it fits. Use a wooden "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water, because with no water loss from foliage, the plant will require very little water. 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 in order 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 and 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' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell 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's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al...See MoreBADLY compacted Ficus Benjamina - How Agressive Can I Root Prune?
Comments (8)How aggressively you CAN root prune depends on your tree's stored energy level. Heavy root pruning of a weak tree can be damaging or disastrous, while root pruning a healthy tree while it's growing robustly can usually be done with impunity if follow-up care is appropriate. As you know, the best time to work your (tropical ficus) tree hard is early summer. There is a window between Father's Day and Independence Day that in which I do as much repotting of houseplants and tropicals as possible. Root pruning isn't an all or nothing affair. I've been working on the roots of a Taxus (yew) as a bonsai for more than 8 years, trying to reduce a very deep root system to where I can get the tree in a bonsai pot. The top makes a very impressive bonsai already because I've been working on its refinement, but a plastic clothes basket doesn't meld with the tree in harmony as attractive as a discerning eye might demand. The point is, it's often better to consider the viability of the tree and work in stages than to shoot for the moon in one fell swoop. I'd set some time aside to bare root, and I'd keep at it until you accomplished that worthy goal. Future repots will be easier, and leaving the hardened soil only assures a limited tree. Here is something that explains the seeming paradox about why plants need air in the soil. I'm copy/pasting from something I left on another thread, but it should still offer an understanding: Though roots form readily and often seemingly more quickly on many plants propagated in water, the roots produced are quite different from those produced in a soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite - screened Turface - calcined DE - seed starting mix, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher percentage of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of intercellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). Aerenchyma tissue is filled with airy compartments. It usually forms in already rooted plants as a result of highly selective cell death and dissolution in the root cortex in response to hypoxic conditions in the rhizosphere (root zone). There are 2 types of aerenchymous tissue. One type is formed by cell differentiation and subsequent collapse, and the other type is formed by cell separation without collapse ( as in water-rooted plants). In both cases, the long continuous air spaces allow diffusion of oxygen (and probably ethylene) from shoots to roots that would normally be unavailable to plants with roots growing in hypoxic media. In fresh cuttings placed in water, aerenchymous tissue forms due to the same hypoxic conditions w/o cell death & dissolution. Note too, that under hypoxic (airless - low O2 levels) conditions, ethylene is necessary for aerenchyma to form. This parallels the fact that low oxygen concentrations, as found in water rooting, generally stimulate trees (I'm a tree guy) and other plants to produce ethylene. For a long while it was believed that high levels of ethylene stimulate adventitious root formation, but lots of recent research proves the reverse to be true. Under hypoxic conditions, like submergence in water, ethylene actually slows down adventitious root formation and elongation. If you wish to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably best not to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The brittle "water-formed" roots often break during transplant & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The effect is equivalent to beginning the cutting process over again with a cutting in which vitality has likely been reduced. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in soil, the cuttings in soil will always (for an extremely high percentage of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a soil medium for the reasons outlined above. ******************************* You can skip the rooting hormone and fungicide if you want. They're not necessary. I do use a little Superthrive (for its auxin) as a root soak after repotting, though. I've done some experimenting with loose controls in place and while it has proven useless as a 'tonic', it is effective at stimulating root growth and root division. I fill a tub with water and a little Superthrive & fully saturate the soil in the tub immediately after repotting. Securing the plant to the pot so it can't move in relation to the pot fractionalizes the time it takes for the tree to establish in its new digs, too. Al...See MoreHow to save/rejuvenate ficus benjamina
Comments (4)Actually, F. benjamina is really hard to kill as long as the environmental conditions (light, soil, moisture, and temperature) are correct. They respond really well to hard pruning. I worked at a garden center for 20 years. We sold a lot of ficus, and got a lot of them back half dead due to people NOT understanding normal acclimation (ie, the leaf drop when moved), or from abusing them like overwatering or underwatering or putting them virtually in the dark. They ALWAYS came back with just a little TLC. Don't be afraid at all to cut them back as hard as you want. They will even regenerate directly from the trunk if they have to. Just be sure to do it outdoors or over a drop cloth, and don't get the sap in your eyes or mouth, it burns. And, when you do the top, knock it out of the pot, cut off a good share of the root mass, the outer quarter or so, and especially all of the twisted mass of fine feeder roots along the base of the pot. Then, try to wash off as much of the old soil from the roots as possible. Repot it in really high quality soilless mix, put it into good, bright light, run it just a bit dry for the first 7 days, then water it a little more to keep the soil moderately moist, and it will bounce back in just a month or so. When the new growth is a couple of inches long, give it a little fertilizer of your choice....See MoreNew thread about ficus Benjamina
Comments (5)I bought a group of 5 toothpick thick cuttings in a 3" pot a long time ago. I fussed around with them, twisting them together in something like a braid or plait, and they inosculated (approach grafted to each other). I ended up with perhaps the ugliest piece of vegetation I've ever seen. See what I mean? I let it grow, kept looking at it to try to find a believable tree in it, and couldn't, so I pruned it every year so it was manageable and kept looking at it. Several years later (last summer). I finally saw something and really whacked it hard. I wish I had taken a 'before' picture, but this is after: It actually has most of the attributes required of a good bonsai. The pic above was taken 8/21/4, about a month after I defoliated it completely and did hard work on it. I had repotted it in Jun and wanted it to recover before the hard work. I let it grow, mostly indoors, until this June, when it looked like this: I completely defoliated it: The pruned and wired the basic branches Now it's starting to look like a tree instead of something from The Little Shop of Horrors. I was referring to your tree when I said it COULD be a bonsai, but I wasn't suggesting you should consider that as its destiny - only making the point that there is an extremely high probability that a tree that large in a pot could easily be reduced above and below ground and grown in a small pot. FLFs have a leaf too large to be believable as bonsai trees. It's important the leaf is reasonably in scale to tree size. My trees are just houseplants that live outdoors in the summer and plants I've learned to manipulate. Talking about VISION ...... I was in Indianapolis for a bonsai convention last weekend. The headliner was an artist named Suthin Sukosolvisit (Sue` - tin ..... that's the way HE says it, but I don't think he pronounces it right). ;-) I have a before & after picture of a multi-trunked boulevard cypress he worked on that are amazing, but they're on my phone & somehow I can't manage to email then so I can download to the puter. I'll try to access and send here from phone. BRB...See Morelukewarmtofu1
6 years ago
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years agolukewarmtofu1
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoUpdate, and question on burnt leaf buds and prune.
Plant is still growing strong. It's was placed where it gets full light from morning to about 4pm. Today I noticed a few leaf buds on the new shoots had dried up. I think it's because it's gotten too much sun, but could it be too much fertilizer? Just in case it's the sun I've moved it to where it'll be in shade sometime after 12pm. I'm using your recommended Foliage-Pro at 1/4 tsp per gallon every watering, then doing a flush every 4 to 6 waterings.
As expected, the top is growing strong. Could I encourage new shoots on the trunk if I removed some of the top growth? With a slight prune up top wouldn't it also help to keep the lower branch nourished?
Thank you,
Tofu
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years agolukewarmtofu1
6 years ago
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tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)