Well ...... 150-200 feet? ;o) As long as you're able to keep it viable and provide the cultural needs the plant wants, the height of the ceiling will ultimately limit the height of the tree, unless you do it first - much to be preferred. You really only need to cut the tip and last leaf off the branch to force back-budding, and now is a great time to do it - so get after it!! ;o) If you take the growing tip + 2 more leaves, then strip the bottom leaf & put it in damp perlite in bright light (not full sun) it will root for you. "My debate about repotting this plant is that it always looks so great so why rock the boat." My car still has oil in it - why should I change it? I'm at the grocery store, but I'm not hungry - why should I buy food? We change the oil to keep our car healthy for the long haul; and we buy food to stockpile for the short term because reason tells us that though we may not be presently hungry, it's a good bet we soon will be. If you do your preventive maintenance on healthy plants, they hardly notice the minor indignities we deal out, but if that plant was allowed to slip from stress to strain, we have a more serious problem and a much longer recovery. To me, doing regular maintenance on a Ficus in the summer and having it completely recovered, growing robustly, and full of energy reserves when fall comes makes soo much more sense than skipping maintenance, discovering the tree is struggling and in trouble in Sep, and then trying to decide the best strategy to help the plant limp through the winter under strain. Al

When the soil mass is very compacted and the root mass severely tangled and impacted, there is no question vitality and growth rate is being significantly affected. Most growers believe that messing with roots is taboo, and you risk killing the plant if all you do is stick a wooden skewer deep in the pot to check moisture levels. With attention to a few details, root pruning is no more dangerous than pruning the top of the plant. It SHOULD be a regular part of everyone's skillset, because w/o root work, a gradual but steady decline with notable and visible symptoms are inevitable. The only way to turn that stead decline around is by eliminating the cause, which brings us back to eliminating root congestion. This is a Ficus benjamina. It was purchased in a 3 gallon nursery can and was about 4 ft tall when acquired. The roots were horribly entangled - a solid, 3-gallon mass of roots. I chopped the trunk off so there wasn't branch or leaf on the trunk, sawed off the bottom 2/3 of the roots put it in this large bulb pan and took 3 years to get a start on the branching. The plant rebounded from the severe work like nothing had happened. The roots are a mess after 3 years in the bulb pan, so I do another root reduction. My goal not only includes the elimination of the root congestion, but also root reduction to the degree I can fit the plant into a bonsai pot, something you're obviously not concerned with. This illustrates how severely the root mass was reduced. Note the HUGE roots I cut through and simply eliminated. These roots serve no purpose in containerized plants, and their removal makes space for the fine roots that do all the work. This is the plant after a pruning and being reinstalled in a training pot. Note the huge scar near the soil on the left where a very large root was removed. That will heal in a few years. In fact, I think it's already healed. This plant is scheduled for more root work within the next few weeks, and I'll be sure to take pictures. I'm hoping to put it into a shallow bonsai pot as a lot of progress has been made in development of branches and it's ready for a pot. Many would pooh pooh what I said because 'this' is houseplants, 'that' is bonsai, but skilled bonsai practitioners know how to keep plants healthy, happy, and beautiful under extreme circumstances. Borrowing a page here & there from their book only sets you apart and above those that don't recognize expanding their skills benefits both grower and plant. I'm not pressuring you to act on what I said. My only goal is to put the information out there and relate/illustrate the advantages in case you DO want to act. The difference between a houseplant people struggle to keep healthy for more than a few ears and a bonsai that is both healthy and beautiful after hundreds of years, lies primarily in how the roots were treated. Take good care, and good luck with your new tree. ;-) Al

Choosing an Appropriate Size Container How large a container ‘can’ or ‘should’ be, depends on the relationship between the mass of the plant material you are working with and your choice of soil. We often concern ourselves with "over-potting" (using a container that is too large), but "over-potting" is a term that arises from a lack of a basic understanding about the relationship we will look at, which logically determines appropriate container size. It's often parroted that you should only move up one container size when "potting-up". The reasoning is, that when potting up to a container more than one size larger, the soil will remain wet too long and cause root rot issues, but it is the size/mass of the plant material you are working with, and the physical properties of the soil you choose that determines both the upper & lower limits of appropriate container size - not a formulaic upward progression of container sizes. In many cases, after root pruning a plant, it may even be appropriate to step down a container size or two, but as you will see, that also depends on the physical properties of the soil you choose. It's not uncommon for me, after a repot/root-pruning to pot in containers as small as 1/5 the size as that which the plant had been growing in prior to the work. Plants grown in ‘slow’ (slow-draining/water-retentive) soils need to be grown in containers with smaller soil volumes so that the plant can use water quickly, allowing air to return to the soil before root issues beyond impaired root function/metabolism become a limiting factor. We know that the anaerobic (airless) conditions that accompany soggy soils quickly kill fine roots and impair root function/metabolism. We also know smaller soil volumes and the root constriction that accompany them cause plants to both extend branches and gain o/a mass much more slowly - a bane if rapid growth is the goal - a boon if growth restriction and a compact plant are what you have your sights set on. Conversely, rampant growth can be had by growing in very large containers and in very fast soils where frequent watering and fertilizing is required - so it's not that plants rebel at being potted into very large containers per se, but rather, they rebel at being potted into very large containers with a soil that is too slow and water-retentive. This is a key point. We know that there is an inverse relationship between soil particle size and the height of the perched water table (PWT) in containers. As particle size increases, the height of the PWT decreases, until at about a particle size of just under 1/8 inch, soils will no longer hold perched water. If there is no perched water, the soil is ALWAYS well aerated, even when the soil is at container capacity (fully saturated). So, if you aim for a soil (like the gritty mix) composed primarily of particles larger than 1/16", there is no upper limit to container size, other than what you can practically manage. The lower size limit will be determined by the soil volume's ability to allow room for roots to ’run’ and to furnish water enough to sustain the plant between irrigations. Bearing heavily on this ability is the ratio of fine roots to coarse roots. It takes a minimum amount of fine rootage to support the canopy under high water demand. If the container is full of large roots, there may not be room for a sufficient volume of the fine roots that do all the water/nutrient delivery work and the coarse roots, too. You can grow a very large plant in a very small container if the roots have been well managed and the lion's share of the rootage is fine. You can also grow very small plants, even seedlings, in very large containers if the soil is fast (free-draining and well-aerated) enough that the soil holds no, or very little perched water. I have just offered clear illustration why the oft repeated advice to ‘resist potting up more than one pot size at a time’, only applies when using heavy, water-retentive soils. Those using well-aerated soils are not bound by the same restrictions. As the ht and volume of the perched water table are reduced, the potential for negative effects associated with over-potting are diminished in a direct relationship with the reduction - up to the point at which the soil holds no (or an insignificant amount) of perched water and over-potting pretty much becomes a non-issue. ******************************************************************** CLICK ME FOR MORE ABOUT WOODY PLANTS IN POTS FOR THE LONG TERM. Al

Once you truncate the main stem, it can't extend and it won't grow any more leaves. What it WILL do is grow new branches from the axils (crotches) of some of the existing leaves. The greatest certainty of that happening is from the axils of leaves and possibly from immediately above any leaf (bundle) scars immediately below your pruning cut/pinch. You can train any new branch that occurs to grow vertically so it takes the place of the one you removed (becomes the new leader). If you really want your plant to have a sturdier trunk, you should do more than pinch it. A 1/2" trunk that is 30" long won't bend nearly as much as a 1/2" trunk that's 60" long, so shortening it by half is actually what I'd do. If you don't want to shorten it that much, you should move right into a pinching program so as to avoid any branches becoming too long and exerting a lot of leverage that tends to make the trunk want to lay over. Allow any given branch to grow to 3 or 4 mature leaves, then prune it back to 2 leaves. You can practice pinching at any time of the year, as long as the tree is healthy. Habitually pinching all extending branches back to 2 leaves maximizes ramification (# of leaves and branches) and makes your tree as full as it can be. Also, the rate at which branches and trunks thicken is directly proportional to the amount of leaf (photosynthesizing) surface on the tree, so regular pinching helps (a lot) to keep trunks strong enough to support the foliage. Root congestion limits growth, and particularly extension of the main stem and branches. It also causes the plant to lose it's older leaves. In severe cases of root congestion, the plant might only have 2 or 3 leaves way out at the growing tips of branches, and the plant becomes very reluctant to back-bud. Don't wait to repot until the plant is in severe decline. If the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact, your plant will benefit from repotting. Potting up doesn't relieve the limitations imposed by root congestion, though it can allow the plant to briefly grow a little closer to its genetic potential. Still, potting up is better than confining it to a pot too small. Al