Meet Harry, my 26+ year old... rubber plant?
This is the very first plant that I ever bought, 26-27 years ago:
We named him Harry :-) I THINK he's a rubber plant, but I'm not positive.
He's a tough one, though! He survived YEARS of me having no idea how to take care of a plant, and at one point every limb had died! A friend came over one day and helped me save him, though; they cut off all of the dead limbs so there was really nothing but root and one tiny little sprout, and over the years you can see that he's definitely rebounded! He's over 4' tall now.
The question I have, though, is how to make him thicker at the bottom? You can see that most of the limbs have growth in the top 6-18", but that leaves 2-3' of empty stalk.
I read online that I could nick the limb and it would promote growth, but that didn't seem to work.
I WISH that I could prune him down to be closer to 2' tall, but that would remove the majority of the leaves! Would new leaves grow on the remaining bare limb?
He's in a South-facing window. I water him weekly, and give him 4 Jobe's fertilizer spikes 2-3 times /year. You can also see that I have several stakes for support, with most of them tied to the limbs and then tied to a center stake to keep them from falling over.
TIA!
Comments (14)
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years agoJason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC
3 years agoRelated Discussions
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tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
3 years agoken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years agoJason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC
3 years agoAdam Gilchrist
3 years agotapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoThere is no doubt that root congestion is robbing your plant of as much as 90% of its growth potential (or more), and significantly affecting vitality, and appearance. An outline of what I would do:
* Flush the soil thoroughly by pouring a volume of water equal to at least 10X the volume of the barrel it's in, then after it's stopped draining fertilize with a full strength solution of Foliage-Pro 9-3-6.
* Move the plant outdoors as soon as night temps are reliably above 55*, or put it on a moving dolly and move it in and out of a temperature sheltered spot as weather allows.
* Do a full repot (includes bare-rooting, root pruning, and a complete change of grow medium) a couple of weeks before the summer solstice, so first week of June. The repot will be a chore because of how tangled the roots will be, but I can walk you through it if you decide to follow the outline provided. At the same time you repot, remove some of the trunks so you're left with 2, 3, 5 trunks. Prune the trunks you chose to keep. the fattest should be the tallest, and you can cut back as hard as you wish. If you like, the shortest trunk could be no more than 2-3" tall. If you can find 7 trunks that compliment the position of each other, go for it if you like, but 3 or 5 is most reasonable. The trunks should all be different heights.
This tree (Styrax japonica, aka Japanese snowbell) was about 10 ft tall in my growing on beds when I chopped the top and some very large branches off after lifting it from the beds and potting it in a cut-off nursery can.
The next 2 images show a summer's growth and wounds starting to heal.
Same tree ^^^ a couple of years later, just coming into leaf.There are actually 2 trees styled in this image. My intent was to remove the side with less eye appeal at some point, which is why the left side moves to the left and the right side moves to the right. This spring, I decided to change direction and leave it as a twin trunk, so I lopped off a good size mass from the right and redirected the top so it moves left. Looks much better.
Anyway, what you can take from the images is, a healthy tree will tolerate a lot of work if it's healthy, work that isn't like torture, more like a minor operation with the potential to save a life. At some point in the not too distant future, your tree is going to shut down unless you intervene.
Al
Jason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC
2 years agotapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
2 years agoJason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC
2 years agoYou're correct, @tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a), I'm in western NC.
I started to bring Harry in today, but found that the bottom of the old whiskey barrel pot has completely rotted away! So I had no choice but to move him to a new container.
Luckily I'd already bought a new pot. It's about 4" larger than the original, so I simply moved him over and added new soil around the edges without disturbing the roots.
I could see that the roots had grown to the edge of the old pot, though, so it definitely needed room to stretch.
Here he is today, about 6' tall!! :-O You can see that I'm going to have to find several 6' long bamboo rods for support through the winter.
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
2 years agoIMO, it's better to shorten the stems to increase their rigidity than to erect stakes and rigging to mechanically 'help' stems too thin to support their top mass, but I'll leave that decision to you. I find that a very large fraction of hobby growers are very reluctant to remove any growth their plants put on, even though it is an essential part of putting together a tree that is full/ compact/ natural looking at some point in the not too distant future ..... according to tree time, that is.
I don't know if you have the pot 'up on blocks', but the pot shouldn't sit in the effluent that exits the drain hole after you water. We water to beyond the point of saturation in order to flush accumulating salts (dissolved solids) from the grow medium. If the water containing the salts has a pathway by which it can get back into the pot, the level of salts in the pot and in the effluent will reach an isotonic balance, which effectively undoes the benefits of flushing the medium. Example:
Best luck!
Al
Jason, zone 7A, near Greensboro NC
2 years agoHU-622143985
2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)