Helping my ficus recover and be the best little tree it can be

[Atticus Rex]

Hello, thank you for all the helpful info on these forums.

I got this ficus as a gift a month ago, covered in dead leaves with only a few surviving. Apparently it's 16 years old. A relative had it shipped to me and I think it was in the dark and cold and perhaps underwatered for too long during shipping. After putting it in a sunny spot and giving it some food spikes and consistent water, it's begun sprouting new leaves to go with the few that survived! It looks like there might also be some damage to one of the exposed roots.

Someone suggested that I prune off some of the small branches which lost all of their leaves. Is that a good idea? Is there anything else I can do to help it recover?

 

[bonsaidave]

Pull the food spikes out if you can. When a tree is stressed like this they don't need fertilizer.

At this point I would leave all the branches and just let the tree grow leaves where it wants to. You should think about it as being in survival mode right now. It's got sprouts on the trunk and that's a good sign. It means it is alive and fighting.

Make sure the soil doesn't have places where it is water resistant. If it got completely dried out some of the soil might have bone dry pockets that can't get wet without some work. Chose a couple small spots and gently dig down to see if it's wet. Use a chopstick as a tool. If/when you hit roots thats deep enough. If there is no moisture you can fill these spaces with water and let it permeate the soil around it. I would do that a couple times if you find dry spots. Fill the spots, you dig, with the soil when finished.

Keep an eye on the soil for watering or not watering. The tree is using very little water until that new growth has some time to leaf out.

Be sure to do some searching about ficus care.

Post follow up pictures in a week so we can see the progress.

Good luck!

 

[sorce]

Welcome to Crazy!

Someone suggested that I prune off some of the small branches which lost all of their leaves. Is that a good idea? Is there anything else I can do to help it recover?

You need to help us determine what it is recovering from...

Are the twigs dry? Wrinkled? Snap?
Are all the old leaf nodes green with new buds?
If you removed most of those overly clumped out top branchings...
How many green growing tips will you still have?
A close up focused on the clumps will help.

So here's my thing.....
Cutting the branches won't help it recover, well, it depends! If cutting a bunch of dead stuff or slower to grow stuff from the outside lets more light into a larger % of new growth, cutting it WILL help it recover....

But honestly.....

It doesn't look unhealthy at all.
In fact, you can tell most of those twigs are new, this years, which gives an Idea of how powerful this tree is, how much energy it stored this year alone! Unless of course they are all snapping dry!

So assuming you went seeking US to create a bonsai, and not an ugly houseplant....

Cut it back now while its in a rebooting stage!

Problem is....

Those are hella shitty clumps of branches!
Near impossible to see where to cut it to for a good final image.
So you may have to go it alone!

IMO...you have a day, day and a half to make the decision....
So take your time and learn about building branches....

Try to get better pics....

Yeah...I wanna see better pics....

There is a good tree in there, but it will be difficult to coax out.

Sorce

 

[KingJades]

Do we have any updates? At this point, the less work you do on the tree the better for it. Let it recover.

 

[JosephCooper]

Take off the dead leaves, the branches may still have buds.

Read A TON on indoor bonsai so you really know what you're doing!

Good luck!