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They're back my fusion ficus benjamina that's been going pretty well so far. You can see it's
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kind of overgrown at the minute which has helped it fuse although I think it is time for a prune
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now. I took it back pretty hard. I'm still building the main structure while also trying
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to fuse it at the same time. So as much as I want to let it grow like crazy to fuse I don't want it
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to just get too straight and boring. So it kind of needs this level of pruning every now and again
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Here's a close-up of the top. I think it should be pretty interesting looking in the next couple of
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years. Anyway after a few weeks it started budding out so it's the perfect time to repot it
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I'm also going to put it in this shallower wider pot. It's not perfect but it's
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certainly do a better job than the little pot it's in now. If you know anything about ficus you will know they have crazy roots
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This tree has absolutely jammed into this pot and it took me forever to finally get it out
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But then I guess it is sort of three trees so it's no wonder it's so tight
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And you can see the bottom is pretty much just a mat of roots. I'm going to start raking everything out to get rid of all the soil
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The more soil I remove the more you can start to see the parsnip shaped roots. Luckily they're not too bad on this tree
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They're thick but you can certainly get way worse on a ficus. So I'll just start t away any roots that were coming out of the trunk
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There's a lot of that going on actually. And then I started dealing with the actual roots, mostly t them back and
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making sure I pruned all the thicker ones back pretty hard. Thank you You can see here a lot of the thicker ones are gone now
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So I decided to get pretty radical and just shorten everything back. It looks pretty dramatic, but this will grow back in no time
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Ficus are seriously savage root growers. So I got this potted up in the ice cream pot and as you can see there is plenty of space
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for it to stretch out. Here it is in February with some stones to give it some extra support
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Since there isn't many roots because I might have chopped them all off. Anyway, it looks a bit miserable
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But in March it looks a lot happier. As you can see it's covered in loads of new little leaves
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By April it's just crazy looking so I had to give it a prune
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I do really like where this tree is going. It grows fast and I think it's starting to shape up quite nicely
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I pretty much pushing all the growth back to two pairs of leaves on any branch So that should also start to form some nice ramification
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Here it is after, there is still quite a lot of foliage. So you can already tell there is quite a lot of branching on this
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and it didn't take long for it to explode with growth. It lives under the grow light, so it's pretty much at the optimum growth levels
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So I did exactly what I did the previous month and just pruned it back again. It actually takes quite a long time to go through and prune it
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You have to take each branch or shoot and work back along with to see where it comes from and then trim it back
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As you can see it's quite bushy so it can't take a while to work out what is going on
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and where to cut. But after a while it starts to open up and you can start to see what's happening a bit clearer
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the shoots also bleed white sticky sap stuff i think this can irritate some people
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but not me i'm obviously one with nature anyway here it is after and as you can see
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it still looks like it has loads of leaves but it actually did take quite a lot off
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this tree is just really dense by June it's gone crazy again
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I forgot how quickly this tree grows it's certainly not growing like this now
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when I'm recording in winter anyway I give it another prune which I didn film I think by now you know what it looks like to prune this tree Here it is after where apparently it had got really dark
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I guess that just shows how long it can take to prune this tree. in july it looks like a real mess probably not helped by the fact that no longer fits fully in
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frame luckily i changed angle in august and we can see properly what's going on
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the top is getting crazy dense so i went on a bit of a hardcore pruning session and
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took the top right back to help balance out. I removed a lot as well as taking everything back
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I also wired a few branches down as they were just kind of going straight up. I also left the lower stuff alone as it's fine and if anything it can do with growing a bit more
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By September it's pretty much growing fully back but every hard step back will push it a
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step forward with its development so it's totally worth it. in October it's a total bush again but I had started to drastically lower the
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light levels in the grow tent so it should be slowing right down now
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you can see in November it's not changed much this grow tent gets a little busy with the other
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trees in here I'd love to be able to give this ficus a little bit more space so it can properly
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stretched out. I think it has a lot of potential and will probably end up getting quite a bit bigger
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over the years but so far I'm really happy with how it's coming along. Here it is now just chilling
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There are roots coming out of everywhere so I think we'll have to be repotted again this year
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That'll be in the next video though
