Just repotted my ficus into a much smaller pot but did not have to remove many roots as the current pot was much larger and it hadn’t filled it out yet. I did remove some branches from the tree, my grow room is currently 80 degrees and 50-60% humidity so the ficus have been growing well even for winter. I noticed many new white roots beginning to sprout during the repot so the tree appears quite healthy.
Main question here is how long should I wait before I’m safe to chop the tree at the red line I drew? I have been letting the top grow to thicken the trunk and am now happy with it and would like to compact the tree greatly and build out a new canopy.
by Snrubwr
7 Comments
You should have put it into a bigger pot if you wanted to make a drastic cut. Smaller pots mean less energy, and you want more energy to respond to something like removing all the foliage
For an s curve I like it the way it is
I don’t think the chop will do ya much good. Stick it in a bigger pot and let it bulk up a bit and see what you think in a year.
You should be fine with that chop. I would try and increase light after, or move closer to the grow light, it’s a little leggy and zooming in on your pic it looks like the tree is killing off inner leaves to prioritize those at the end/ closer to light…which is etiolation.
I chop ficus year round….I aim for before the growing season, but what usually happens is annually in November I have to chop to fit everything in the grow tent. Summer is best for repot, but again, under the right conditions you can get away with a lot with ficus.
Before a chop, you could also let it get nice and bushy (put it outside in spring/summer), don’t prune, and then thread graft where you want branches, and then chop after your grafts take. Some of the upper branches are long and leggy enough where you’re close to the point of being able to do this already.
You could certainly chop, but thread grafting allows you to control where your new branches are.
Check out bonsaifys from mass market to masterpiece series. Sounds like this could be a good candidate tree!
Dont chop! The curve is great. I would wire the left branch down and the right upper branch a little bit with some nice curves.
The little pot will restrict its ability to generate new foliage after a trunk chop.