Building a Ficus Benjamina

[TimIAm]

This tree was taken from a property knockdown with permission from the owner. The previous owners kept this tree in a pot forever (at least 20 years since I knew them it was already there). I already asked the owner if I could take it, but due to timing, tree loppers arrived before me and even cut this tree in half, so when I went to retrieve it there was zero leaves left on it.

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Here it is with can for scale. It has lovely root spread across the base of the tree. I intend to do and have done further work on the roots to try and get a 360 spread. The finished tree will still be reasonable large to match the existing surface roots and trunk thickness.

Step 1 was busting open the plastic tub to see what was inside. Although this tree was kept in the pot, it had bolted through the base. When I took the tree, I had to chainsaw through a very large root which can be seen in the picture below.

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(below) The dirt inside was like mud. There was also a second largish root which had also busted through the pot. So I had to cut through these to get the pot off. Picture below is me getting my first look at what the roots were like. I was surprised to see a decent amount of feeder roots amongst the larger roots which meant I could be more aggressive with pruning the larger roots back. I still intend to reduce the root base in stages.

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Below is round one of root pruning and final extraction from the rest of the plastic pot. I removed about 50% of the thicker root base.

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Here it is in the ground. Underneath everything is a flat steel grill, similar but thicker than chicken wire. To allow drainage, hold in the soil medium and prevent larger roots from developing (similar to putting smaller trees into a colander in the ground). The medium is scoria, course sand and premium potting mix. I feed it with slow-release pellets and seasol, similar ratio to my other trees.

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Here it is today 3.5 months later. Underneath it has thrown out a lot of new root growth. A week back I was able to further reduce the existing root base with the flat cut method. As mentioned, reduction in root height will be in stages, and it is already getting close to being able to be put in a large bonsai pot.

After much pondering, I've removed the adjacent fused trunk which sits of 35 degrees on the right side, to make it a single trunk. And just use the base and side roots from this trunk.

Plan for phase 1 was to keep it alive, promote leaf growth and be able to flat chop the roots. Next phase is chopping the trunk by at least a half and begin working on the main branch selection. This will likely be done around the end of February before the expected autumn growth spurt so I can take advantage of this round of growth.

If you're interested in what this may end up looking like, there are quite a few examples of heavy chop benjis in older threads for inspiration.

[alpineart]

Hi TimIAm, mate nothing like a good challenge and that's a good challenge .

Good on you for giving it a second chance as a big boy bonsai, I personally like the challenge of little or no foliage to work with and create something unique .
I had a standard/mop top that was layered off to make a multi trunk specimen , still progressing after quite a bit of neglect but that all my fault .

Will be good to see this in a couple of seasons hopefully i stick around even if I'm just looking in .

Cheers Ian

[Kevin]

Good work Tim,

These large trunk Ficus are hard work, but can look stunning with good care.

Please keep this progression going as I'd love to see how you tackle this one.

Good luck with it,

Kevin

[NickityNic]

Hows this big fella looking in spring?

[TimIAm]

Pretty much the same as the last photo. I did one more cut back from the top, about 15cm but I got a bit of dieback which has scared me off doing further cuts until some of that shaggy growth turns into something a bit thicker. This Spring it threw out more growth towards the top, but there is not much in terms of root growth so I'm just leaving it to grow this year.

Another reason is, I took a layer off a smaller (about half the size of this one) F. benji and it died back from top to bottom within a week.