I am trying to be patient til late May to do some trimming on mine. I bought this at a garage sale for 50 cents last fall. I put it out on my deck for awhile then brought it in when it got too cold. I repotted it last fall, cost me more for a new pot and soil than the plant! LOL Now it has put out several more leaves and a couple new branches starting so apparently it wants spring as bad as I do. I knew it wasn't the right time of year for it but to experiment a couple weeks ago I cut off 2 branches that only had 2 and 3 leaves on them.Cut off at about 10-12 inches long I am guessing. Then dipped in rooting hormone and stuck down in the dirt in the pot so that 5 or 6 inches were out of the dirt. By gosh they rooted! The two branches are on the left and right sides here, notice the stick that I wasn't sure what to do with on the right side too! LOL I don't know if it will ever do anything but it is rooted. I know I will trim this up and make it look better come spring when it starts to grow more. I've never done it before though, so take what I say with a grain of salt cause I am no expert! LOL I found this site, but if you google it there is lots more! Here is a link that might be useful: pruning a rubber tree

It's about the same. Poor thing tipped over in the car when I was moving it to my new place a couple months ago, but it seems to be holding steady. I didn't have time to do any work besides scraping some potting mix up over the exposed roots. I'll probably wait another month or so before trying any work on it. On the bright side, the cutting I took off the top last year has rooted and is showing signs of growth. :) I'll be doing a little work on it in another month or so as well.

I agree that lifting the plant so the rim of the pot is at or above the level of the window sill is a good idea. Your plant will look best if you prune it either in a dome shape, or roughly a triangular shape. If a dome, the outer stems should be pruned back very hard and the inner stems allowed to grow until they are thicker than the outer stems. Then, cut them back to a point where they compliment the dome. If you decide on a triangular shape, a trunk at the perimeter would serve as the apex or highest point. Stems on the side that has fewest stems would be reduced in height so they form the steep side of the triangle. On the side that has the most stems, the reduction in ht would be more gradual. Can you see the triangular shape of this composition? Instead of a branch makes up the foliar mass on the right side of this J maple grove, you would use a stem that leans to the right - just as the foliage mass on the left side is made up of 2 trunks. I'm not advocating that you turn your tree into a bonsai, but the same artistic principals that are utilized to ensure bonsai look beautiful can be used for all your plantings. The same principals are very closely adhered to in floral design and all forms of art. Al

When you said, "..... on my cuttings some of the baby leaves either shriveled and died or fell off". Maybe if I cut one mature leaf at that point it would have grown instead", did you mean some of the leaves that were on the cutting when you took it shriveled and were shed, or was the reference to new leaves that occurred after the cutting was taken? After cuttings are taken, they need to be prepared by reducing the leaf surface area; this, because the cutting often just collapses and fails if it can't keep up with water needs of the leaves. Note how I reduced the leaf surface area to insure the cutting would be able to supply enough water to the foliage: If you look carefully at the second image from the top (Ficus benjamina), you'll see a leaf at the base of both branches. These are the leaves I referred to in my post above - that should be removed as soon as the branch is pushing growth. It's the first thing I did after the cutting struck (rooted). "I was considering combining all of these plants into one pot or putting the small one with one of the bigger. I am starting to wonder if that may be too much for one pot. Thoughts?" My experience with group plantings has been that you're going to end up with roughly the same increase in plant mass, no matter how many propagules you have in a pot. IOW, all else equal (especially pot size/ soil volume), a single plant will grow faster than individuals in a group planting, and there won't be much difference in the total vegetative mass between the 2 plantings. And, in most cases you can achieve the same degree of fullness with a single plant as you can with a group planting. It just requires a little bit of attention to pinching. One thing we hobby growers often forget is, we aren't obligated to keep every bit of mass a plant produces. That's a less pushy way of saying, if we don't take control over what the plant is doing in terms of growth, we might be less apt to end up with Beauty, and more apt to end up with The Beast. The concept behind why we prune is a simple one, so I urge everyone that grows a branching plant to learn how to control and shape it. Not only is the process extremely rewarding, it's FUN, and definitely adds to the personal satisfaction we get from the growing experience. Al