When it comes to buying Ginseng Ficus, however, I'm hard to please. My trees must have well arranged roots, decent taper... and a low price. Trees like that aren't easy to find, and it took me years to find my first one.
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| Number one as purchased - June 2013 |
I really hadn't planned on buying another until I stumbled upon this one in April 2017:
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| Number two as purchased - April 2017 |
The base isn't very different to the first one, but I succumbed to temptation based on my desire to learn from the pruning errors I made with number one.
And then a local supermarket started selling them (wrongly labelled!) far cheaper than they're available anywhere else, so in December 2017 temptation struck once more.
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| Number three as purchased - December 2017 |
I really like this one with its single "trunk", complete with a little movement. Sure it's got a bit of reverse taper right now, but after removing the unsuitable aerial roots high up, I buried the lower half of the trunk in river sand to encourage the remaining one to fatten up and possibly to develop more in the right area. Hopefully in time that will help to produce proper taper.
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| Unsuitable aerial roots removed - December 2017 |
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| Potted up with river sand where I want aerial roots to develop - December 2017 |
Once it was settled in its new pot I removed the unwanted branches below the graft and made the first steps to smoothing out the graft site.
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| Stub at graft site - January 2018 |
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| First steps to smoothing out graft site - January 2018 |
And in February I realised that the left branch was threatening to take over from the apex, so I shortened it.
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| Left branch taking over - February 2018 |
At the same time I did a bit of wiring. This photo shows my proposed new potting angle as the tree is currently leaning over backwards.
Number two is getting similar treatment.
Meanwhile in November 2017 I decided the trunk of number one had thickened enough for me to shorten it.
Due to early mistakes I'm not too happy with the overall shape of the trunk, but hopefully with time (and branch development) that will improve. And hopefully I'll do better with number two and three.
Additional photos including future updates will appear here:
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| Balance restored - February 2018 |
Number two is getting similar treatment.
Meanwhile in November 2017 I decided the trunk of number one had thickened enough for me to shorten it.
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| Number one after pruning - November 2017 |
Due to early mistakes I'm not too happy with the overall shape of the trunk, but hopefully with time (and branch development) that will improve. And hopefully I'll do better with number two and three.
Additional photos including future updates will appear here:
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