Ficus Benjamina has lost all leaves, but has abundant green shoots

harrish

Hi,

I am very new to bonsai and my husband and I have been taking care of a ficus benjamina since February. It was doing well, occasional leaf dropping, until about 5 weeks ago. We moved to San Francisco from San Jose and placed the tree near our sunniest window. After this the leaves started yellowing and browning, so my husband backed off with watering. I think it may have become too dry. I started taking care of it by watering it when the soil was no longer moist. After 3 weeks all the leaves had fallen off. I thought maybe I should fertilize it as I had done every 2 weeks before the problems arose, so earlier this week I watered it and fertilized the tree (this after reading other forums seems to be incorrect). It has green shoots on all the branches and the trunk is very green still. Do you think it will recover? What should I be doing? Thanks


Holly

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Sailor_Jerry

Benjaminas are pretty panicky trees, they oten drop all their leaves when their envirnoment changes. They also just as often push out a fresh batch of them right afterwards, which it sounds liek yours is doing. I'd say your tree is doing fine, just keep watering. You might lay off the feeding until it recovers, that's kind of like giving a sick person a Red Bull energy drink.

Hope that helps!