This tree was given to me because it was too large then (2yrs ago). I take it in the house each winter but I don't know if I will be able to that this year. My DH and I both worked to get that thing outside this spring. The pot it's self barely fit through the sliding glass door. we had to use a dolly. My question is this, Can it be overwintered outside? It's next to the house where it gets morning sun and a little early afternoon.
Thanks,
Dawn
large ficus tree
I don't think so. Its bests to just get it back in the house and leave it there. Ficus trees are very tempermental in having their environment change-esp overnight. They will start to drop their leaves, the amt varies depending on how bad they wig out! If you have found a place for it inside where it is happy, I would just leave it there.
I bring it in each fall. Where it overwinters is in the sunroom. It gets WAY too hot in there during the summer. I really don' think we'll be able to move it this year. It is so large, the trunks used to be braided now you can barely see the braid. I have it in one of those great big tree pots that the nurseries use.
Dawn - I'm not totally familiar with your zone, but I assume your ficus is a Benjamina. If it is, I have several of them in very large pots and even here in San Diego, they get frostbite in the winter. Believe it or not, it sometimes gets cold here. Mine stay outside year round and the ones that are not covered have taken a beating more than once. Last year I had 2 that were frozen and lost all their leaves, the outer branches died, and they looked like they were destined for the landfill. Since I've gone through this before, here is what I do. I wait until Spring and then I trim off all the dead branches plus more to shape it. You can do severe pruning on these trees without harming them. I lift them out of the pots, take a serrated butcher knife (from the 99 Cent store) and cut the roots back. You could call it major Bonsia. This is important.....leave the plant out of the pot overnight so the roots will seal themselves. The next day you can add fresh potting soil, a little worm castings or Osmocote, and stand back and watch it recover quickly.
If you get hard freezes, you could do this before winter and then bring the plant inside. You could even scale down the pot size if you like. Don't be afraid of it losing it's leaves. They recover. I'm very good at killing a lot of stuff, and I've yet to kill one of these. I try to keep mine between 8 and 9 feet tall, so you can imagine how many times I have to do a hard prune about every other month in the summer and fall. Good luck!
Thanks chunx. That is what I wanted to hear. Got a couple of questions if you don't mind. Since we do have hard freezes every now and then and my husband(bless his heart) will not let me put this in HIS garage, I beleive it will have to go inside for the winter.
It's a gamble really, last year we had a really mild winter and I could have done what you do then I have seen winters where we've gone weeks with the time not above the mid 20's.
Since I can REALLY prune it, I was wondering if it would be ok to do so at the end of the summer. It is in such a big pot and I know it's root bound now (again). It would be a big help to be able to cut the roots down some and repot in the same pot. How do you cut the roots back? I will do this and put some better soil in there and actually leave out side until the temps get in the low 40's. Does this sound right?
Thanks for this info. I have three ficus, all outside on the east patio. They aren't doing as well as I think they can be doing, and tend to be droopy. I've begun feeding them Osmocote and I do believe a pruning, root cutting, and repotting might just rejuvenate them all. Two seem to be a little different variety than the third ficus. I think at least one is a Benjamina. Two have darker leaves than the one.
I'm in Houston, and our winters don't have hard freezes for longer than the ficus can tolerate, so they can stay outdoors. However, I think they are probably rootbound in those big pots. I'll post a pic so you can see them.
My question, too, is can I do this pruning & cutting & potting now, or should I wait. And if so, when should I do it?
Thanks, Chunx!
P.S. How do you cut the roots and how MUCH of the root system do you cut away? Are you sawing through the rootball, or chopping like with an axe?
This message was edited Jul 14, 2006 12:01 PM
I'm not sure about when the best time would be to prune them and cut the roots back, but I sure wouldn't do it in the heat of summer because of the stress. I'm also giving you advice from my dealings with them and I'm in a different zone. Keep in mind that these trees are planted here for shade, and/or decoration. They are in a lot of yards and some are trimmed to shape squares, oval, round, you name it, they do it. If it is a shade tree, they usually hire a professional to come in and pretty much top the tree and then remove most of the side limbs. They bounce back quickly....I know, I had one at a previous home I owned and it lifted up the concrete patio.
These trees are tough. As an indoor houseplant, just about everything you've heard about them is true, especially dropping their leaves. If you have them in large pots and they are over 5' tall, your plant is a specimen plant and will survive just about anything except a hard prolonged freeze. I need to tell you that the ONLY reason I go through this torture of replanting them every year is because I had one that broke through the pot, and an expensive ceramic pot at that. I have them all planted in huge ceramic pots and I don't want that to happen again since they are matching pots. If you are pleased with the size of your plant, it really doesn't make much difference if it's rootbound and will hold the growth down (supposing the pot won't break). So you can just do a very hard prune and give it a little fertilizer once every couple of months and it will be fine and continue to grow. I have a friend that has one on her patio in a really thick terra cotta pot that she's had for years and has never repotted it. She just sticks a big saucer under it and waters it more often. She still has to prune it at least twice a year to keep it in check.
OK, so if you want to repot them, I water the plant the day before I'm going to do the surgery, I then lift it out of the pot (never an easy task), I use a serrated butcher knife, I slice about 4 inches of the roots from the bottom and all the way around the sides. Just sort of saw through it. LET THE PLANT SIT OUT OVERNIGHT SO THE ROOTS WILL SEAL. Add a little soil, some worm castings, and toss the plant back in the container and fill with new soil (I also add water polymer crystals). Done with that part. To prune, you can remove entire branches, you can trim it just about as much as you want. I've gone as far as to remove more than half the growth. I usually prune first and then repot a week later. A couple of years ago, I was in a hurry so I got out my electric hedge trimmers and went to work on them...I don't suggest doing that unless you're coordinated, which I'm not. I cut off way more than I wanted to but they came back like gangbusters.
I think I answered all of Dawn's questions, so Gymgirl, after looking at your pics, I'd say you should prune the outer branches fairly heavily so they will fill back in and look more full. They look very healthy, but I never have had that many trunks on mine. I would cut them off before they got very tall, so I don't know what to tell you about that. It looks like the pots are very sturdy, so if you're happy with the basic height, I'd just cut off the tops about a foot or so and trim a lot off the sides.
One extra tip if you're going to repot them and have them sitting on soil or mulch.....before you add new soil, put down a piece of weedblock fabric over the drainage holes. That was another lesson I learned. One year I couldn't even tip the pots because the roots had grown through the drainage holes and headed for China. I had to have a neighbor come over and help me tip the pots while I used lopping shears on the roots. Now that was fun!
Thank you so much for this info chunx. I think I will be doing some major surgery this fall. I thought because they were so tempramental that anything I did to them would kill them. Since the leaves are going to fall some when i move inside, might as well get it all deone at once.
Thanks again!
Dawn
ask yourself how you would feel if you left it out and it froze.....I can tell you from experience .... I was very upset....I had always brought mine in myself and did not want to bother anyone to help me get it in..and since I am older and not as strong as I used to be I decided to just leave it.... well it is gone now 20 years and over 8 feet tall...I had to cut the top in the winter to bring it in.... If I had it back I would pay someone to move it in and out for me....It is a big loss.... I had it for so long... It is trying to put out from the bottom foot and I am going to cut the dead off and see what happens....but it will never be the same for me....so sadddd.shirley
Just a quick note about your ficus-best time to do pruning is now (foilage or roots), in the summer, while they are growing. They will recover more quickly and when winter comes they will take the cooler weather better. I use them as a hedge plant.
I don't have a photo of ficus, but here is another plant than requires the same conditions. Most people grow this as a house plant.
This discussion is what makes davesgarden.com so special. It's impossible to describe to people who aren't garden folk.
Thanks Dale. Well, I guess i'll be doing surgery this weekend then. Boy, this is going to be a job but it has got to help the thing.
Thanks for everyones info.
dawn
Thanks, Dale! So I can go ahead and just cut off some at the top and all the straggley branches, right? I think I'm going to leave the root system alone this season and just do a severe pruning to get them to bush out more (at lease the center one -- it's rather straggley). The other two I'll just shape up -- maybe swans or geese, tee hee hee!
You can treat any potted plant like it were a bonsai.
The techniques are the same for any potted plant, those pines that they grow are giants in the forest, up to 30 meters or more, and the manage to keep them in 2" of soil for 150 years. We should be able to do something like that with the humble ficus.
It is worth reading up on their pruning methods, especially their root pruning sections. Just pop into the library (or bookstore w/ a copy machine :-} There is a skill and some planning involved in root pruning, best to be well informed. Practice with your eyes and your mind before you start on a living plant.
Best of luck.
Dale,
What's that plant pic you sent?
That is someone else's work, bonsai of a different type. A prairie minature?
oooooooooooooooooooooh. I see, now. It's TINY!
The dish plantings in Dale's photos are in the style of a Japanese plant art form called "kusamono'. These plantings are grown both for their own beauty and as an aesthetic accompaniment (companion plant) for bonsai.
Al