AusBonsai

Hi there,

After reading all the "tutorial" and "Newbie" topics, I need to open my own
I have had this Ficus for 1 month now and when I received it, it did not have these long branches.
One month has passed and because of work I did not had time to look into it - I was only watering it. It grows, and now, after reading a lot I am still not too sure what to do.
Because it does not have much shape, I would like to shape it.
But, to do so, I think I need to defoliate it, correct?
Anyway, I am after some advise, because I really want to learn and take care of it.
Thank you

Hi

Looks like a nice fig you have there.
I would suggest getting some wire onto some of the lower branches and bending them down and put some movement into them to make the tree look more powerful and old.

Figs put most of their growth on the top of the tree I can see from the images you have shown that there is lots of long leggy branches on top I would prune them back to encourage the lower growth to be stronger.
You can keep pruning back when they regrow as this will push more energy into the lower branches and allow more light onto the lower leaves.

Defoliation is used to create smaller leaves and encourage smaller finer branch growth "ramification " is the term for this.
I would only do this in summer if the tree is healthy and growing well if you do this technique I recommend removing the growing tip at the end of each branch at the same time otherwise the leaves come back the same size and you won't get as much back budding.
While the tree is defoliated it is a chance to see the skeleton of the branch structure and it's a good chance to remove unwanted branches and apply wire to the branches.

But I wouldn't do to much at once otherwise you can stress the tree. I would only defoliate once a year and never in winter.

Hope that helps there are plenty of threads on port Jackson figs in this forum I would recommend doing a search in the search function and doing some research before doing anything drastic. But over all these figs are hardy so don't be afraid to do some pruning and shaping.

Jac.

Expanding on from what Mugen has said, you are going to soon realise that you can handle the tree a little more vigorously and wont need to be too tentative when it comes to feeding, pruning and wiring.

Unless youre not sure of the branch structure or are trying to reduce the leaf size, you wont likely need to defoliate often. In this growing season, feed heavily if you want to continue to build trunk thickness and to start the basic branch structure.

You can cut branches back quite hard to encourage new buds, and when you wire them in the style youre thinking of, you might need to take off and reapply twice or so since the wire will like start cutting into the branch since it will thicken fast