30 year old dwarf ficus benjamina

Ininaatigoons

Shohin
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Basic cleanup. One thing I always ask myself. Q: Too much? A: It'll grow back. I should repot this in a smaller pot. Do it in the spring so it has time to grow all summer. The tropicals flourish in the heat, humidity, and long days of summer outside!
Looking at the second photo the main trunk line would improve with a chop to the left branch. Unfortunately it is in the back and the scar would be pretty big. Maybe there will be a new bud/branch when it starts sprouting.
 

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Ininaatigoons

Shohin
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Can a Tropical plant establish itself in the ground fast enough to make a difference during the few months of growth outdoors before its lifted again to be brought back inside for the winter? I think that I subscribe to the idea that trees grow faster at least initially in pots. Roots reach for confinement or leverage before they send out top growth. Here in Zone 4.5 or 5c Minnesota's real Winter started yesterday, but frost and freeze can start anytime from mid October on. Anyways a for a tropical in the ground the safe months are June, July, and August.
 

Pixar

Chumono
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Does it really matter , you would have gained 6 months of growing in the summer .
 

penumbra

Imperial Masterpiece
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If you use a small plastic glasshouse you will get 6 months in the summer
If you use grow lights in a plant room or tent, or if you use a heated greenhouse you get 12 months of summer for some plants. Other plants aren't so easy to fool. But using a small unheated greenhouse in Minnesota is not going to give you more than a few extra weeks and even that is dicey. I remember very well nearly killing a group of clivia in a small plastic greenhouse while merely attempted to protect them for frost. And it is balmy here in Virginia compared to the winters of Minnesota.
 

hemmy

Omono
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Looking at the second photo the main trunk line would improve with a chop to the left branch.
Maybe, but then you might lose the foreshortening of bringing the apex forward. It would also take the movement of the apex opposite of the trunk and main right branch. Which isn’t a necessarily a negative, I think it just makes the design harder to pull off. The other challenge with the left apex is the only other lower left branch would come from what is then an inside curve and possibly too close as it thickens.

I wouldn’t be concerned about wound healing as long as there is a lower branch to prevent dieback. The callous relatively quickly. Even if you could grow this in the ground, I wouldn’t at this point. You want the internodes to stay short and don’t need giant coarse growth. If the pot is too restrictive, try putting it on top of another larger container to let the roots escape.

Interesting that your zones May-Sept, look a lot like my old SoCal locale climate for the entire year. My F. benjamina were not super vigorous in shallow pots. I don’t think we had enough summer heat. This summer when we moved to KS and 90-100F with warmer nights, my ramification increased and apex health was restored. Yours looked plenty healthy before the chop, but if you had concerns you might try a cheap plastic greenhouse to raise temps when it goes out in May. But as the previous post said, they are “dicey” and shouldn’t be used to protect a tropical from frost.
 

yashu

Chumono
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Sorry guys I thinking about weather here in New Zealand ( we don't know how lucky we are 😁 )
I kinda figured that’s what you were going on. I certainly couldn’t tell you thing one about the geography or weather patterns of NZ.
 
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