[DK] Ficus racemosa - Entry 1

[The Specimen]

Great progression and story.. thanks for posting

[billa]

Nice work!!! looks like you have a nice house too!!

[GavinG]

I think tree height is measured from the top of the pot, not the bottom or the legs, so you should be OK. Very fine tree for the time scale.

Gavin

[kvan64]

Hi all.
I have asked people to help confirm about the height of the plant - whether or not 25mm is for the overall height or from the rim of the pot in the competition thread but no answer so to make sure, I have decided to trim down the tree hard. However, the trimmed tree looked imbalanced so I went on with a total defoliation. The whole process shortens the overall height to just 25mm. I guess this also helps show the "real tree" in a way.

So this is my final submission for this entry. In this progression I have chosen the traditional approach – drastically reducing the tree’s height through hard chopping and completely re-growing of branches. This proved success as the tree was not only reduced in height but also took shape very quickly. In opposing to the method used in my flowering quince entry, I did no wiring and used clip-and-grow method on this tree. The tree was heavily fed with dynamic lifter pellets and watered well during the grow season and then heavily pruned to help with ramification and leaf size.
As the chopping and root-work were severe, scaring is a major drawback in this progression. The tree is trying to repair those scaring but they are still quite obvious at some angles. When healing is complete, I’m sure that the scaring will just add characters to the tree and this may not be seen as a weakness any more. For the mean-time, I will continue to feed and prune the tree to develop further ramification.
Thank you everyone for your support and following up on this thread.
Cheers
DK

[Hackimoto]

Wow, Great results in less that two years.

[xtolord]

[Steven]

G'day DK,

Unfortunately there was no update in the period December to April so I've reluctantly had to move your entry into the forum for non conforming entries.

Regards,
Steven

[anttal63]

Shame 1 cracka little tree !!!

[Boics]

Damn that sucks.

Bad luck DK - great result here and really demonstrates to me the power of the chop!