Grafting Ficus trunks together

dracothered

Hi all,

I just read an article a few days ago and was wonder if any of you have tried the methiod of binding several Ficus trees together at the trunk level and let them fuse together. This is suppose to be a way to getting a larger trunk and cutting down the time you need to weight in grow a Ficus Bonsai tree.

What do you all see as the pros and cons of this idea. Mind you I'm not looking to try and create a instant Bonsai because there is no such thing as far as I know. I'm sure Jack Wickle would agree with that. Having the pleasure of meeting the man and taking one of his classes have help me greatly in my little bit of knowledge that I have.

Corbin
Draco the Red

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Joanie

Apparently it works, I've got three little guys that are about a foot tall and maybe 1/4" in diameter, and have taped them tightly together with green tape. The person who talked about it said that it wasn't necessary to peel the bark off where they would be touching, although you would think that would help, but maybe just from proximity they will fuse eventually as long as they stay tight and don't move around.

He also says that if you take the little plastic growing pot and hang it by one side, so that it is tipped sideways and can sway in the breeze, the tree will grow in interesting and twisted ways. He has done it many times and is considered to be very knowledgable about ficus. His trees are wonderfully twisted, sort of flattened, and very Vietnamese. It's hard to keep damp, though, so that may be more suited to a greenhouse culture.

Good luck!
Joanie

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dracothered

What I saw was start new Ficus's from clipings and after they root bind them together. Why not take the clipings and bind them together and root all at ounce.

Corbin
Draco the Red

pootsie

Draco, aka Corbin:

"Why not take the clipings and bind them together and root all at ounce?"

Simply, because some of the cutting may not strike, and you will have to end up undoing the binding and doing it over again.

I've had a few goes at this with mixed results. I've found that supertight binding all the way around encourages rot and some of the cuttings will perish, again requiring a do-over.

Here are some of my successes and failures (with links to other members' projects also):

First attempt
Failed attempt
Do-over

pootsie

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p.s. My cat is a bonsaiTALK Master.
Columbus Bonsai Society

Bonsaifreak

I've got a set of green island ficus cuttings and a separate set of salicifolia, each tied together with a tight strings for over 6 months. No signs of fusion so far but my understanding is that it takes a couple of years to occur.

Jerry Meislik has a good example in his book about Ficus.

Jorge

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dracothered

Ok, all of you more knowledgable Ficus Bonsai growers out there how long does it take to fuse the Ficus trunks together? Do they need to have some of their bark removed so the cambiant layers can touch? What else is needed to be known?

Corbin
Draco the Red

pootsie

From what I know (which is only slightly more than you, honestly) is that the rate of fusion is variable, depending* on a lot of things that affect the rate of growth:

• what kind of ficus you are growing
• type of soil
• available nutrients
• watering
• light
• air circulation
• temperature
• humidity
• size of cuttings to start with (larger ones can grow faster)
• number of cuttings
• ummm, some other stuff

I had some fuse within 5 years, and there's another project I have going with fusion in about 8 months.

I've learned a lot about growing ficii in the interveneing 5 years

I'm sure that joining cambium would help, since that is really creating a graft.

pootsie
*I'm a lawyer, and I've been trained always to answer a quetions with "It depends ..."

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p.s. My cat is a bonsaiTALK Master.
Columbus Bonsai Society

Elm237

Read the thread Rainy Day Project by dbz12fan this is about the exact same thing.If I knew how to link things I would create a link for you. You can get to it via the search bar at the top of the main page, just type in the title and it should come up.Hope this helps a bit.

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Elm237

dracothered

Here is the link hopefully it works.

http://forum.bonsaitalk.com/showthr...iny+Day+Project

Corbin
Draco the Red