Ficus Benjamina history

Thank You Tom,
I have already killed two trees by trunk chopping without leaving foliage..(the last one was deliberate to see how will perform).I have one extra fig, I will try defoliating before I defoliate my cute one.
I have one huge one like 4m in a pot with 20cm trunk....need to reduce it and I am scared...Maybe if I airlayer it will shoot bellow.

You are most welcome, Neli....sounds like you have some great work planned ahead for your figs. Good luck and be sure to keep us posted!

Tom

graft foliage low, then trunk chop just incase

That is a good idea, but I noticed that other benjamina that I airlayered shot bellow the airlayer...also my old pomegranate nana has the same problem...if I chop the trunk it shoots from ground level and the trunk dies, but if I airlayer they get shoots up.
But I want to graft some huge branches...and I mean huge like 5 cm diameter to start developing the tree...I might as well graft an apex since it will be faster.

Nice work Tom. Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

Budi

Good day, Budi.....thanks so much for your kind words. It was great hearing you. I have been an admirer of your work for many years.

Best regards,
Tom

Tom, based off your first picture this species clearly backbuds even when there is no green left on the tree. I had always heard this species of ficus wouldnt do this. Since the first trunk chop have you ever had it completely defoliated again and had it leaf out?

Yes, you are right....benjamina is quite finicky and in many cases will not bud back from bare trunk or branches or will be very erratic when it does. I took a big chance with this tree and have been lucky that things have worked since I first trunk chopped it about 10 years ago. Since then I have occasionally completely defoliated the tree for purposes of rewiring and thinning; however I have noticed that the foliage is very reluctant to reduce in size if any when I do.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Tom

thank you, that does help. I am not worried about reducing foliage size as the tree is giant and the leaves seem to be to scale. I just dont want my branches dying from being defoliated, as it is a fused (at least somewhat fused) tree and i wouldnt want to lose parts of the nebari if upper parts die. Do you lose any branches when you defoliate? I wonder if people that say they dont back bud are trying to prune it when its not during rampant summer growth?

You are welcome.... I do occasionally have some secondary and tertiary branch dieback, but nothing major. And when I do defoliate I try to do it at the height of the growing season (here in West Virginia....late July through the middle of August).

The tree as it currently looks....It was repotted at the end of June/beginning of July of this year.
Tom

I almost didn't recognize it from the tree of two years ago. At first glance it looks like root over rock now. Very strong look to it.

Killer!!! What a beauty!! Really maturing now. What a treat!!

Very nice progress.

very good

Tom, when I see your marvelous Ficus I am sad and hoped I lived in a region with a warmer climate.
(nowadays the climate is even hostile..)

I could try indoors, but I am afraid for the bonsai lumberjack

Tom Simonyi wrote:The beginning of my work with this tree began with a 7 foot tall clump of trees that had fused together over a period of several years.  

Great job with that! I'm curious though - did you do that just praying that it'd make it or did you have any special tricks? I'm curious because when I first learned of trunk-chopping as a practice (which immediately got me into bonsai), I had a pair of ficus b topiaries, one of which I immediately did a trunk-chop on, bringing it from 7' to ~1', then spent months watching it slowly die only to find out later that ficus b's are known for *not* back-budding on hard-wood where there's no foliage left...you obviously just went for it (and had incredible success), am hoping to know if you had any special tricks or anything because I do still have the other 7' ficus b (it was a pair of topiaries) and it's just sitting there, would love to trunk chop it but just didn't think it possible til I saw your post here...

Great tree, if you have any recent shots I'd love to see how far it's come!

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No tricks. Just lucky I guess. This photo was taken in July 2018

Looks great! Would you consider removing the third branch from the the left (the thick one). I would think it would fill back in pretty quickly, but may add a little dynamism to the image. And maybe a thicker one from the right section to restore the balance.
Pardon if you weren't looking for suggestions. I have an autographed copy of your ficus book that I picked up at one of our club meetings, which is just to say I am a fan.

Cheers,
David

Hi David. Thank you so much for your suggestions and kind words. I have never written a book on ficus and I think you might have me confused with Jerry Meislik. He has been a long time friend and teacher for me and many others including you evidently.
Best regards Tom

Yes, my mistake I'm not sure how I mixed that up.. we'll just say I could tell you were a student of his work.

I just cut back a couple of my benjimina.. I'll try to post an update once they fill out a bit again.

I will always be a student of Jerry’s Looking forward to seeing your work with your Benjaminas

MrFancyPlants wrote:Looks great! Would you consider removing the third branch from the the left (the thick one). I would think it would fill back in pretty quickly, but may add a little dynamism to the image. And maybe a thicker one from the right section to restore the balance.
Pardon if you weren't looking for suggestions. I have an autographed copy of your ficus book that I picked up at one of our club meetings, which is just to say I am a fan.

Cheers,
David

Fully agree on removing that branch, would also consider removing the one that's directly to the right of the central, thickest limb (would have to see 360 + in the canopy to b sure!), I'd also work toward a smoother curve/silhouette of the canopy (ie, the 'peak' isn't centered it's slightly to the right-of-center, I don't think that needs to be trimmed-back, but rather that the limbs directly to the left-of-center need to be allowed to go a little taller to *extend* the peak-height that's reached at the apex just right-of-center!)

What an awesome tree, am still in disbelief someone could do this with a ficus.B, not only did I kill one this way myself but I have another large, in-ground ficus B that has 1 little side-branch (and then a proper canopy, it's a 7' tree), anyways I chopped the top half off so that the little side-branch was the new leader, both to make it niwaki down the line and to maybe get it to back-bud low enough that I could harvest it for bonsai- it back-budded lower down the trunk but only within ~3-4" of the cut site, not a foot down or something :/

How often do you repot this beast?

About every third growing season or so. Hope all I well with you and Leigh.