DearRosemary
Seed
Hia! I wanted to post some of my first baby-projects and look for some advice.
Recently I've separated two twigs from my store-bought clump, and did some basic trunk wire (any criticism on the wires appreciated, first time doing a full trunk! I'm proud of the blue one). The goal is to give them a year or two to thicken up (but with a nice movement!) and then make them into small classy trees.
Hence my first question: what do you recommend for a growing medium? I've seen some of the forum plants in what I think was compost mixed with some inorganics, so I tried to copy that by planting the two gentleplants in a 60:40 gardening soil to 3-5mm pumice. Does that work? I also have some akadama and lava rock in-house and I'm thinking about perlite some time in the future.
The second question: durning the wiring the ficus in the black pot got kinda... noodle-y? I'm afraid I've broken some of it's internal structure by twisting too much (espc. given that I've started with a smaller-gauge wire that wouldn't hold it in place) and now it's a gonner. Hence why the top is kinda left as-was -- I was afraid I did it dirty and didn't wanna continue. Am I worrying too much?
The third question: as they have never been trained, their roots are a mess. They usually have like a big bulb, which has all of the small roots coming from the end of it. If I cut any of it, I cut like 90% of the roots. To remedy this I've done a torniquet (on the blue one...??? I'm not sure now ahhahaha) and hope this maybe solves the problem in a year, but I wanted to ask if there are any other ways of doing that.
Bonus question, I have this airlayered branch that is the antithesis of bonsai and frankly looks kinda silly-goofy, but I wanna keep it and train it. Do you think something along the lines of a literati ficus in the future could work here? I'm also kind of thinking about making a palm out of this long boi, leaving the trunk completely straight and leaf-less and working on a round, symetrical leaf-hat at the top.
Here are the photos of the fici in question:
Ficus #1:
Ficus #2:
The Palm (jk it's Ficus #3):
Recently I've separated two twigs from my store-bought clump, and did some basic trunk wire (any criticism on the wires appreciated, first time doing a full trunk! I'm proud of the blue one). The goal is to give them a year or two to thicken up (but with a nice movement!) and then make them into small classy trees.
Hence my first question: what do you recommend for a growing medium? I've seen some of the forum plants in what I think was compost mixed with some inorganics, so I tried to copy that by planting the two gentleplants in a 60:40 gardening soil to 3-5mm pumice. Does that work? I also have some akadama and lava rock in-house and I'm thinking about perlite some time in the future.
The second question: durning the wiring the ficus in the black pot got kinda... noodle-y? I'm afraid I've broken some of it's internal structure by twisting too much (espc. given that I've started with a smaller-gauge wire that wouldn't hold it in place) and now it's a gonner. Hence why the top is kinda left as-was -- I was afraid I did it dirty and didn't wanna continue. Am I worrying too much?
The third question: as they have never been trained, their roots are a mess. They usually have like a big bulb, which has all of the small roots coming from the end of it. If I cut any of it, I cut like 90% of the roots. To remedy this I've done a torniquet (on the blue one...??? I'm not sure now ahhahaha) and hope this maybe solves the problem in a year, but I wanted to ask if there are any other ways of doing that.
Bonus question, I have this airlayered branch that is the antithesis of bonsai and frankly looks kinda silly-goofy, but I wanna keep it and train it. Do you think something along the lines of a literati ficus in the future could work here? I'm also kind of thinking about making a palm out of this long boi, leaving the trunk completely straight and leaf-less and working on a round, symetrical leaf-hat at the top.
Here are the photos of the fici in question:
Ficus #1:
Ficus #2:
The Palm (jk it's Ficus #3):
