I looked through my collection and noticed that Ficus’ are taking over. So, I decided to share the progression of one of my Ficus trees. This tree has a nice story. I got it in a chocolate container from my grandmother is 2012. Since then the tree has changed a lot. One of the reasons why I am showing this tree is that when it comes to thickening the trunk we all want to plant trees in bigger containers or grow them in the open ground. With this tree I was amazed at the results I got from planting it in a small container. Within 5 years the trunk thickened from 20 mm to roughly 70mm.
In the picture, above (first photo) you can see the tree was one of two trees given to me. The tree on the right is the one that I will be focusing on in this blog. The photo below that one is the tree's trunk as I received it.
In 2014 I planted the tree into a small sowing tray and placed the primary branches of the tree. I removed a few of the branches that did not fit into the design. Must say I went a bit overboard by the looks of it.
I repotted the tree in December of 2015 into a bonsai pot. A year has passed and you can see that the trunk and the base of the tree has thickened up nicely.
January 2016, I trimmed the tree. I took photos of the tree to enter a competition.
September 2017 I left the tree to grow.
If I look back at this design journey of the tree I could have achieved better results in a shorter period but that's all done and in the past. The tree is now growing very nicely and the leaves are now smaller. With the smaller leaves the tree look more in balance.
Hope you enjoyed the progression of this tree. This will be my first post that i will be sharing under the #teambonsai tag
