Quick blog: ficus salicaria 89

You all know about the willow leaf ficus, at least you should.

I blog about it quite often.

Well, for those not in the know, it’s the ficus salicaria.

The ficus “89”, though, is a variation of it. You see, back in 1989, in Vero Beach Florida, at Jim Smiths nursery, it got cold. Cold enough to freeze a bunch of willow leaf ficus to the ground.

It didn’t kill them, but what grew back had bigger leaves and grew faster that the stock plants.

I’m not really sure what happened and it’s above my pay grade to figure it out. I could assume what happened but that just makes an ass out of the person doing the assuming. It’s above many bonsai people’s pay grade.

Anyway, this tree has bigger leaves and grows fast. It looks nice now, it had a full canopy and quite bushy. The fast growth caught me by surprise and all this wire… ….cut in pretty badly. But that fast growth rate will fix that soon enough.

Why is this a “Quick Blog”?

Well, you’ll see soon enough.

Linger on the before shot……..

‘Cuz it’s all coming off

More so than usual.

There’s not gonna be a pretty “every branch wired” tree at the end.

Only a stump with some more stumps growing out of it. Even more stumpy than the above pic.

Snip!

Snakt!

Chop!

I’m taking advantage of that fast growth.

Let’s build some taper.

Fertilize, water, FULL sun.

And that’s that.