AusBonsai

Thought I would post these in the hope someone recognises them with a scientific name (Ash, your up)
The larger of the three I bought home as a cutting, wrapped in a wet tissue, about as thick as pen, all others in this post and previous have been branched trimmed off or broken and put into medium for growing.
As mentioned cannot wire with much success, VERY brittle branches past a twig size, clip and grow seems to go alright though, the more you trim the zig zaggy it gets. (I haven't done it in a while)
and just having a look at them together, maybe my next forest??

Wattynine...I have a couple of these, and yes they're very brittle, almost carrot-like. I'd always assumed them to be some sort of F benjamina cultivar

Yes this one isa cultivar of Ficus benjamina. Probably best for a cut and grow method as your say. good luck, Ash

Forgot to post this, as a last minute idea,
probably make a great forest together.

Watty...same material

Todd, nice forest, it appears if let to grow they are a very upright tree, I have always kept mine in a re strive pot and they fatten up quite nicely as well.
if I may ask, how do you get your mound to stay " mounded." After a heavy rain mine would be washed flat?
Thanks for posting
Watty

wattynine wrote:Todd, nice forest, it appears if let to grow they are a very upright tree, I have always kept mine in a re strive pot and they fatten up quite nicely as well.
if I may ask, how do you get your mound to stay " mounded." After a heavy rain mine would be washed flat?
Thanks for posting
Watty

Watty, I use a fair amount of clay-based soil in my 'muck'. I collect it from an area not far from where I live; cleared farmland which was originally a Melaleuca swamp - very waterlogged. The roads in the area all have roadside drains running alongside and I get the soil from the wall of one such drain. When I dig it out, it's pretty much just clods of earth, but add water and BAAM! instant gooey mess...a great base for a really solid muck-wall. I cut it 50/50 with cheap potting mix. The resultant mixture is both easy to work and hardens up really well, but is not so hard that the roots cannot penetrate it. It will eventually wash away and I have a couple of group plantings I was looking at yesterday, thinking to myself that they probably need to be 're-mucked'. I always put gravel on top as this seems to work very well at reducing the potentially erosive effect of continual watering. Unfortunately it is quite a heavy substance and renders an already heavy slab/planting, even heavier. This F benjamina planting for example; I'm 6'5...a big guy, but can only juuuuust lift it !

Here's a couple more examples of muck walls that I made using the same ingredients. You'll notice the cracks that occur as the mixture dries out. That's normal and doesn't affect its structural integrity at all. It's good stuff.

All of these have been freely re-homed, there is one exception with one that I kept and put in a very large pot for growing on but to be honest it has grown so much I could not tell you which of these it began as.
I will re-post this when I get to do some work on my figs.
Watty