Ficus microcarpa one year progression

[Grovic]

Hello,

This is the first tree I bought in April 2019 from a local nursery:


In June 2019, I pruned and wired the tree:


Some weeks after:



October 2019:



Two weeks ago I decided to repot it, I was wondering why the trunk didn't get any thicker even though the first branch was allowed to grow unrestricted, here's the reason:


The growth happened in the buried portion of the trunk.



Here's the tree in it's bonsai pot, the weird looking aerial root was allowed to stay for now in order to help with the recovering of the tree:



And this is the tree today and without the aerial root:





Any ideas for improvement?

Thanks for reading.

 

[DonovanC]

I would chop off that potato next repot. You have a good amount of roots above it, so it’ll be fine. Also, in the meantime, pile the soil a bit higher up the trunk to encourage some more roots down there. The more roots you have above that potato the better it’ll fair after you chop it off. Developing a nice radial root base will help create taper by thickening the base (nebari). Alternatively you could grow areal roots all over to hide the potato but I prefer to always start with a good root base.

 

[choppychoppy]

Two weeks ago I decided to repot it, I was wondering why the trunk didn't get any thicker even though the first branch was allowed to grow unrestricted, here's the reason:

I would saw the bulb off and create a flat nebari. Save any long rootage like I pointed to in yellow. I would cut along the red line next summer.

 

[Grovic]

I would saw the bulb off and create a flat nebari. Save any long rootage like I pointed to in yellow. I would cut along the red line next summer.

View attachment 311255

@choppychoppy thanks for the input, unfortunately at this moment the roots above the red line are gone . I'll begin by piling the substrate on top of the bulb as suggested by @DonovanC, and hopefully by this time next year I'll have enough roots to saw the bottom.

 

[DonovanC]

@choppychoppy thanks for the input, unfortunately at this moment the roots above the red line are gone . I'll begin by piling the substrate on top of the bulb as suggested by @DonovanC, and hopefully by this time next year I'll have enough roots to saw the bottom.

Well thankfully microcarpa grows roots easily, and honestly you could probably still cut the big root off and grow it as a cutting. I’ve had success in doing this during the summer with the tree outside. But that’s risky, and honestly (IMO) you’re going about it the best way.

 

[Grovic]

June 2021 update: I decided to keep the bulb and grow roots around it in order to have a very wide base. Luckily it had developed some roots on its own, but some needed to be grafted.

This is the tree before bare rooting it:


And during the process:


The aerial root was pruned at the red line, the blue area had no roots so I thread-grafted three cuttings to fill the area. I also thread grafted two cuttings in order to fill the gap between the soil and the start of the curve to the left.


This is more or less what I'm aiming for:

 

[Grovic]

after repotting the tree in 2 parts ultra hard akadama, 1 part kiryuzuna, I pruned most branches back to two leaves: