we do a lot of ficus bonsai here in karachi, Pakistan. Ficus trunks do get
fused over time , if there are enough arial roots between the branches
bringing them close, or if the branches are close enough to fuse when they
grow thicker. time my friend is the common factor.

ovais


I purchased a ficus at a grocery store recently. It was about 5 foot tall
and made up of about a dozen separate trunks about 1" think (or less).
I've
cut the tree down to about 1 1/2 feet. I would like to see if I can fuse
the separate trunks into one or two thicker trunks by wrapping them
tightly
with cable ties.

Has anyone else had luck with this? Will the separate trunks fuse
together?

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You can save yourself time, and go to one of those nurseries that sell
braided-trunk figs, perhaps even with a golf ball laced into the trunk.
In other words, you can easily get fig trunks to fuse; the question is: is
it a good idea in bonsai?

Where are you located? If you're in Florida, you'll be able to get a giant
fig in no time, no cheating needed. If you live in Northern climes,
you'll find it easy to keep a fig alive, but difficult to get it to grow
into a bonsai.

My first worry is what species of fig you have: some figs will bud back,
others won't. You may have F. benjamina, which is a great tree for
shopping malls, but not a great tree to use as bonsai. If you top it, it
may not produce any branches lower down at all.

My next worry is what your tree would look like if you succeeded in fusing
the trunks. Many figs grow in "banyan" style, with aerial roots creating
additional vertical elements, but this is an airy growth pattern; out of
one tree, a jungle. Other figs are "stranglers"; they grow over a tree
and smother it. They look like a mass of fused snakes. What you are
suggesting des not resemble any normal fig growth pattern; it is a mallsai
pattern.

If I were you, I'd go to a good nursery and buy shorter figs of a species
well-suited to bonsai. Willow-leaf fig is a species that produces a fat
trunk even under northern, indoor growing conditions. Then I'd give it
plenty of light, keeping it outdoors as much as possible. Good luck!


I purchased a ficus at a grocery store recently. It was about 5 foot
tall and made up of about a dozen separate trunks about 1" think (or
less). I've cut the tree down to about 1 1/2 feet. I would like to see
if I can fuse the separate trunks into one or two thicker trunks by
wrapping them tightly with cable ties.

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++++Sponsored, in part, by Evergreen Gardenworks++++
************************************************** ******************************
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+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++

Someone wrote:


I purchased a ficus at a grocery store recently. It was about
5 foot
tall and made up of about a dozen separate trunks about 1"
think (or
less). I've cut the tree down to about 1 1/2 feet. I would
like to see
if I can fuse the separate trunks into one or two thicker
trunks by
wrapping them tightly with cable ties.

Nina responded, in part:

If I were you, I'd go to a good nursery and buy shorter figs of
a species
well-suited to bonsai. Willow-leaf fig is a species that
produces a fat
trunk even under northern, indoor growing conditions. Then I'd
give it
plenty of light, keeping it outdoors as much as possible. Good
luck!


I add this chiding followup:

Folks, the grocery store is the ABSOLUTE LAST place you want to
shop in for plants (or even cut flowers, for that matter)!

In no particular order:

1. The light level in the average grocery store is very low (for
plants). Anything alive in the plant section will quickly go
poorly.

2. The grocery staff AT BEST are amateur gardeners; at worst,
they worked in produce last week and may do so again next week.

3. Plants in a grocery store will have arrived there in the most
circuitous manner possible; heaven only knows when, or even
where, they started out. They probably will not have seen the
sun for 2 weeks.

4. Would you buy a t-bone steak (or even a gallon of milk) at a
nursery?

5. Plants in a grocery store are an afterthought to the cut
flower department (always located near produce!) which itself is
there solely for spur-of-the-moment purchases for that dinner
party for the boss when the flowers don't have to last past that
one evening. (and don't)

You should buy food at a food store. Grocery stores these days
try to be all things for all people. In most cases they do this
badly (at best), carrying inferior products when they step
outside their normal range -- selling food. So, buy plants at a
plant store. Buy hardware at a hardware store. Etcetera.

(Note: They're not alone; you can buy food at most drugstores
these days.)

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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ovais wrote:

we do a lot of ficus bonsai here in karachi, Pakistan. Ficus trunks do get
fused over time , if there are enough arial roots between the branches
bringing them close, or if the branches are close enough to fuse when they
grow thicker. time my friend is the common factor.


....and Pakistani climate also ..
Theo


ovais

I purchased a ficus at a grocery store recently. It was about 5 foot tall
and made up of about a dozen separate trunks about 1" think (or less).
I've
cut the tree down to about 1 1/2 feet. I would like to see if I can fuse
the separate trunks into one or two thicker trunks by wrapping them
tightly
with cable ties.

Has anyone else had luck with this? Will the separate trunks fuse
together?

************************************************** ******************************
++++Sponsored, in part, by Evergreen Gardenworks++++
************************************************** ******************************
-- The IBC HOME PAGE & FAQ: http://www.internetbonsaiclub.org/ --
+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++

Caught-Napping:
Here is a website with several demonstrations of the technique you are
asking about:
http://www.dugzbonsai.com/tridenttrunk.htm

Instead of just bundling the trunks together, this guy wraps the trunks
around a "frame." I have seen pictures at other websites where people
have done this with various ficus species. In my opinion the results
can be excellent. I picked up a Ficus benjamina just like yours at a
grocery store to play around with this technique. Too early to give any
results but a couple of observations: 1) Grocery stores and Home
Depot are not the best place to buy trees, however, if you want some
cheap material to experiment with you can get several F. benjamina for
$10 or so. F. benjamina is not ideal for bonsai, however, F. benjamina
is hard to kill, and a good plant for a beginner to learn with. I have
bought several from grocery stores and have never had one die. 2) As
far as the trunk fusing technique, someone pointed out on another
thread that F. benjamina doesn't backbud, so you probably need to
keep at least a couple of live branches on each individual trunk for
quite a while. I think you can get around being stuck with branches in
the wrong places by wrapping the trunks around an inner frame in a
spiral fashion, so each individual trunk can have branches to the side
or back. 3) Although F. benjamina doesn't backbud much, it is very
easy to do thread grafts with ficus, so you can easily put a branch
anywhere you want. (See Colin Lewis' website for a nice article on
thread grafting:
http://www.btinternet.com/~colinlewi...g/Thread.html.)
Since ficus are also very easy to propagate from cuttings, you can use
rooted cuttings for your thread grafts, rather than twisting a branch
around from the same tree. 4) I assume your ficus is a Ficus
benjamina. I encourage you to experiment (and share your results) but
as others have pointed out, there are other ficus species probably
better suited to bonsai, so you might think about trying this technique
with other ficus species. A cheap way to accumulate a large number
of small trees to fuse is to buy one tree and root all the cuttings. It will
take a while for the cuttings to get big enough to use, but in the
meantime you have your grocery store tree to experiment with.
Good Luck,
John Carnes

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A big problem with these trees in pruning. If you prune all the foliage from
a trunk you might lose it. In the beginning when the separate trunks are
easy to see this isn't much of a problem, but I have a three trunk tree that
I have to be very careful with.

Billy on the Florida Space Coast

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FWIW the grocery store is "Lowe's Foods" and I believe their plant
supplier is the same as the "Lowe's" nursery. The plant seems pretty
healthy actually.



(Jim Lewis) wrote in
news:004a01c31ed2$d75f0540$c8112cc7@pavilion:

Someone wrote:


I purchased a ficus at a grocery store recently. It was about
5 foot
tall and made up of about a dozen separate trunks about 1"
think (or
less). I've cut the tree down to about 1 1/2 feet. I would
like to see
if I can fuse the separate trunks into one or two thicker
trunks by
wrapping them tightly with cable ties.

Nina responded, in part:

If I were you, I'd go to a good nursery and buy shorter figs of
a species
well-suited to bonsai. Willow-leaf fig is a species that
produces a fat
trunk even under northern, indoor growing conditions. Then I'd
give it
plenty of light, keeping it outdoors as much as possible. Good
luck!


I add this chiding followup:

Folks, the grocery store is the ABSOLUTE LAST place you want to
shop in for plants (or even cut flowers, for that matter)!

In no particular order:

1. The light level in the average grocery store is very low (for
plants). Anything alive in the plant section will quickly go
poorly.

2. The grocery staff AT BEST are amateur gardeners; at worst,
they worked in produce last week and may do so again next week.

3. Plants in a grocery store will have arrived there in the most
circuitous manner possible; heaven only knows when, or even
where, they started out. They probably will not have seen the
sun for 2 weeks.

4. Would you buy a t-bone steak (or even a gallon of milk) at a
nursery?

5. Plants in a grocery store are an afterthought to the cut
flower department (always located near produce!) which itself is
there solely for spur-of-the-moment purchases for that dinner
party for the boss when the flowers don't have to last past that
one evening. (and don't)

You should buy food at a food store. Grocery stores these days
try to be all things for all people. In most cases they do this
badly (at best), carrying inferior products when they step
outside their normal range -- selling food. So, buy plants at a
plant store. Buy hardware at a hardware store. Etcetera.

(Note: They're not alone; you can buy food at most drugstores
these days.)

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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****
*********
++++Sponsored, in part, by Evergreen Gardenworks++++
************************************************** *****************
****
*********
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--
+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail BONSAI-

+++++