Ginseng ficus bonsai questions.....

Here's a friend's ginseng ficus bonsai he's had for about a year and a half.
A few months after having received it as a gift, it shed pretty much all its leaves and stayed bare for nearly a year. No apparent reason for this except for possibly sitting in a spot that was very low light.
Recently, after changing its location to a brighter spot, it started growing new leaves although quite slowly.
When you look at the pics of it you'll notice it is producing leaves on one side only, he's asking me if there's a way of coaxing it to sprout branches and leaves on its other side.

Here's a second pic.

It occurs to me the plant requires more light. As one often sees plant tends to grow toward the light source from a shady location. I'd suggest he turns the pot a quarter turn every few day to a week. To expose the plant to equal amount of light exposure.

Also during the winter with reduced natural sunlight. The plant may be dormant. So I wouldn't expect much growing/putting out green leaves at present.

I have a bonsai ficus purchase from a greenhouse 4 years ago. The soil medium has been glued together. I don't know why. MY question is: I want to freshen up the planting medium but I don't know how to break up the stones without breaking the plant and pot.???

Hi Kay,

I'm not an expert. Just offer common sense when comes to plant care. 4 years old specimen may be needing repot, root pruning for renew, and revival ect. I've no idea why some commercial bonsai pots with planting medium that have been glued like larval rock formation. My guess is a practical way to aid on shipment and transits? Other than that it's sure is a pain to repot, and rejuvinate your 'plant in a pot'.

I wished someone with more expertise will come and give us more feedback, and perhaps, a solution to the problem.

That glue really irratates me ;( I use a small screww driver and carefully chip it out ☺

I took a big screwdriver to the pot of glued stones and the stone layer all came up in 3 pieces leaving undisturbed soil underneath. It is a happy plant now with new soil.

WTG Kay!

The glue is for shiping,mostley from plant from China and needs to be taken off as soon as you can.A lot of this plant are not in the best of shape when you buy them as the water runs off the glue.I have been doing Bonsai for 42 years and a lot of the plant with glue on them our in bad shape when because lack of water.You can trim back the new branches to force new branchs on the side of the Ginseng. Good luck Ken

This post gave me just the info I was looking for, and some that I hadn't thought of asking about (re: the glued in substrate). :) Thanks so much! I would love to hear any more experiences with ginseng bonsai. Darling Daughter bought me a lovely bonsai in March and it did shed about 25% of its leaves. But I removed the glued on stones, watered the tree and replaced the stones. I was lucky (I think) - the rocks came off in more or less one large piece - about 70% of the rocks in total in one large hunk. I watered and carefully replaced the piece of glued together stones. Hopefully with some more light it will start to flourish.

Thanks again for the great info. :)

Spott---I hate to burst your bubble or offend people on this forum, but what you have is a ginseng ficus house plant. It is not bonsai.

Bonsai is a plant in a pot, bon is japanese for pot, sai is japanese for a plant.Bonsai can be made from many kinds of house plants.There our many styles of bonsai. This one can be made in to a lot of them.The broom style is well on it's way for the style of this plant,it would need to go into a smaller pot,about a 1/4 of the size of the pot thet it's in.It would be best to take the gravel that is glued togather off and if you want gravel on it use loose gravel on it.
Good luck Ken

I dont mean to imply it doesnt have the pontenial to be a bonsai. But it is many years and many changes before it should be refered to as bonsai. And btw, the translation is tray not pot. The Chinese, who were putting trees in pots long before it was exported to Japan, refered to the practice as pun-sei. A plant in a pot.

Spot-you can trim some of the old wood on the side thats not growing to see if you can stimulate new growth. Sometimes trees die in one side though and it may never grow there? Defenatly more light, put it outside when you can. Figs are pretty tuff though. I have a few i grew from seed and there out in the garden in full sun potbound in tinny pots and growing fine. I just keep cutting any roots that come out the bottom. Oneday i'll fix them up into real bonsai's. There mortan bay and small leaf figs(benjamin fig i think).

Thanks for all the comments and help.
I seem to remember reading in a book about the art of Bonsai, that it would take a minimum of 7 years of care for any tree to be considered Bonsai..... before that it was just a tree in a pot, lol.
I have passed on all your great info to my friend who actually owns the ficus, but so far he treats it more like a kitchen decoration and sadly will not really listen much. He is reluctant to even change the plant's location in the kitchen because he insists that it looks good on top of his water dispenser.
I suggested he buy a plastic one, lol.
Oh well, we can't save them all.

yes most plants don't like to grow inside, even indoor plants need time outside to survive for long periods of time.

Hi, I live in Spain in equivalent to zone 10a. My ficus bonsai are kept outside all year round. They prefer a bit of shade at the hottest time of the day. I have had this one around 9 years. Whenever I buy a bonsai (mostly I develop my own) I remove it from the pot and gently hose the roots down to remove the "shipping" soil and then repot using my own bonsai soil mix. This bonsai is in a pot about 16inches wide. There are so many aerial roots that one has even grown into a crack on the rock. I often have decorative features to create a PenJing style. I feed all my bonsais regularly and keep well watered in the heat of summer. Nice to join the discussion.

Here is a closeup of the aerial root structure.

Here is the reverse side of the Ficus bonsai showing the root growing into the rock. I promise I won't bore you all with more fotos !!!!

ikebana67, that's a beautiful specimen. Congrats!

LOL Please bore us some more Ikebana!!!! What's the little tree next to the Ficus?

I'm repotting my ficus and wondering if I can bury the trunk more. And then in the far future I can wash some dirt away to have a nice glom of root showing. They are benjamina and curly benjamina.

And this silly looking thing. I bought it for 3bucks and thinking I could make it all better I've never seen one like it, I think it's a Golden Gate Ficus. I'm trying to grow it out and going to pot it up. Any suggestions?

wf, in general we do avoid planting deeper than the current soil level that it's dwelling. Doing so (add additional soil) can cause you plant to be smothered and withers away. The swollen root system gives the plant an illusion of being aged. So get your creative juice flowing -- working on shaping the new growths, but leave the root system alone is my suggestion. Boys, I need to get back into my bonsai project. Remember, I'm just an ordinary gardener -- loving growing my plants. I do not have any real training on the art of bonsai-ing.
Kim

anyone else? anyone have experience with ficus benjemina? How do you get the roots to grow out and down to the soil? I've seen roots with a sliced straw, where the root will travel down the straw into the soil. I'm guessing a spray of water every day will do it. Or wrap it in plastic. I don't know, I'll have to go searching.
BTW It's supposed to be the easiest plant to train.

wormfood- planting it over a rock would look great, there looks like a fairly big gap between the soil level and the roots. You can expose more roots also making the soil level lower but planting it higher in the pot(ie. over a rock).

You see ikebana's photo at 9:50 am? How do you get those long stringy roots?

My Mortan bay fig is in a tiny pot, maybe not enough soil causes the fig to send down roots, mine just sends them down by itself with neglect. hehe!

Thanks, maybe mine gets too much sun. And too much water. They come out but shrivel and die. I've been searching for info but get sidetracked.
Wow, just looked up the Morton Bay, that's a beauty. I'd be afraid to plant that in my yard.

The roots you refer to are called adventitious roots, commonly referred to as air or aerial roots. They grow almost entirely as a function of humidity levels. If the plant is in very humid surroundings, or if you wrap the lower part of the plant in a plastic tent or pack it with sphagnum moss (not sphagnum peat - that's different) the tree will develop the roots. If they dry they die.

Al

Thaaat's what I wanted to hear. Thank you, Al. When I asked if I could plant it deeper I figured the trunk would rot. I go to my bonsai meeting this Saturday. I want to see the straw deal where the root grows down the split straw.
And someone there is selling 5 to 7 foot bald cypress. For 6$ each, for members only. ha-ha, gotta be a member ;-)
Thank you everyone.

This is a problem similar to Spott's friend.
This is a Ficus elastica, Rubber Plant, and the only thing I'm doing right is the leaf is getting smaller. I cut half the leaves off and they come back smaller then I cut the other half of the leaves off and they come back smaller. I will do it again this winter in the house.
Ficus is a good practice plant because it lets you make all kinds of mistakes and it still lives.

Here is the root. Chop marks, scars, chips, the moss is in clumps instead of smooth and soft looking. The branch is coming up and out the wrong way!
The only way to correct this plant is to plant it in a big pot and let it grow again. Then start all over and hope I don't forget what I've learned.

Here's the whole plant. Sorry about the quality but you get the idea. Can I get some feedback?

Here's one started by a seed from a bird in a old fence post....

back of it and closer

That's weird. Looks like the bird emptied his whole bowel system. But thanks for that picture 'cause it opens the tree up to some more suggestions.

Only takes one seed to germinate.

Mine (I have 3) send out more roots when the humidity is higher. I had a thought about the original plant. I cannot tell from the pics but I bought a similar plant and found the structure was held together by wire! I didn't notice until it had started to cut into the plant. As I said can't tell from the pic but check for that as a lot of those types of plants seem to have wires to hold them together.
C

wormfood- i'd plant that fig into a smaller pot and start again as a real small bonsai.