AusBonsai

Thanks everyone for the response(s)
I guess dynamic lifter is the go, just one query - is it better placed on top of soil line or is it better to mix it through the soil at repotting time to spread it around the roots
I will buy some today depending on the price..
So with that fert schedule Jamie, you give it seasol one week then seasol + miracle-gro the next week, then seasol alone the next week etc.??
Also, if this is the case, do you just chuck the seasol in with the miracle-gro and water it in or keep them seperate (on seperate days of the week even?)
Sorry for making you repeat somewhat but I am still a bit
Thanks again everyone..

Dynamic Lifter should be on top. As it breaks down scrape it off and replace with a new lot.

Cheers

John T

After getting my hands on some Dynamic Lifter and chucking it everywhere, the plant looks like this now - I gave it a bit of a tip prune after this photo was taken to try and get some more back branching, one thing I noticed was that instead of shooting along the branches following defoliation, it shot back around the existing branches on the trunk
It hasn't gained much height but has reshot everywhere possible, leaving me with the hard task of cutting out all the poorly positioned shoots. Maybe next summer it will be kind and put growth where I would prefer!
Trying to keep the energy balance on this one is much harder than I thought it would be..
But all in all it looks really healthy etc.

Oh I forgot, here's another little pic..

Hi,
With trees which shoot back freely its better to get the trunk to the required size and then worry about the branches. If you defoliate a tree you are growing on you only slow that process down. Defoliation is best performed on trees in a more advanced stage of development.
Craig

Ok thanks craig,
The main reason I defoliated was so I could see what was going on under the foliage, in order to choose some early branches. I thought this would be a good idea at the time as some of the older figs I have bought from nurseries have had multiple branches coming from a single point on the trunk which seemed to cause lots of flaring at that particular point and ruining the taper.
I don't like having to cut deep into the trunk to remove these lumps and waiting longer for them to heal, so I thought limiting them in the beginning would save the tree some future pain(s)!

I don't really have a required size, was just trying to speed up the growth in the polystyrene box. Now I don't know what to do!

Good idea to remove multiple branches. Seems like you are on the right track.
Craig