Worth a defoliation on this Tiger Bark Ficus?

[Lawlcat]

I'm debating defoliating my Tiger Bark Ficus. I feel the leaves are a little on the large size, but I'm also not entirely sure how much smaller they could realistically get. Any thoughts on the matter? It's right about the time for a defoliation but I haven't done one yet on this tree.



A couple close-ups of the leaves and their current size

 

[Forsoothe!]

Yeah, do it now in your rainy season. Cut the leaves off at the base of the leaf and leave the petiole in place to guard the bud in the axil. When it's bald, trim all terminal buds. When you see that you have good growth at all bud locations, repot and prune the roots hard. That will check growth and keep everything smaller.

 

[cbroad]

I would also say leave your lowest branches alone or at least don't cut those terminal buds, let those run and gain strength to hopefully thicken them up more (assuming this fits in with your design). It seems some of the upper branches are thicker than the lower ones, you're going to have to keep the apex in check while the lower stuff thickens up more.

Nice tree!

 

[Forsoothe!]

Either you're going to reduce all the leaves by using up the reserve energy, or you're going to re-balance the growth of the different levels of the design. Miniaturizing the leaves is draining upon the tree. One, or the other, not both at the same time. Forcing smaller leaves is what you do when you are otherwise satisfied with the design, et al.

 

[Lawlcat]

I decided to go ahead and do a partial defoliation. Forsoothe reminded me that I can use defoliation to rebalance the tree, which was something that my newbie addled brain hadn't really had at the forethought. I had been struggling with this tree where my apex branches were getting longer and longer and more spindly, whereas the bottom left branches and the frontmost bottom right were not thickening up as much as I'd like. So I took the apex, the right hand supporting apex, and then the back right pad (you can see post defoliation how thick those branches were getting).

Hopefully this has the desired effect and gets a bit more vigor going to the branches I left, especially that bottom left curved down one. I want that to thicken up considerably to bring some weight back to the left side of the tree