Yes. I remove large leaves and leave just new small ones
This is how original ficus looks now, 1 and a half year later - 26 individual plants and counting
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You can defoliate the ficus easily. I just did it to my tree about 3 weeks ago and after about 10 days it flushed back like crazy. Summertime is the best time for ficus defoliation.
The original mother tree died eventually after trying to force backbudding lower on the trunk and was replaced by it´s own cutting that I expect to be as thick as mother tree was in some 2 years, maybe less, they grow pretty fast.
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And the replacement tree died too for some reason (not enough roots yet?) so it was replaced with another cutting this spring with quite a lot of roots now. Today it was cut back a bit.
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New cutting took repotting and pruning well and now I will let it grow for the rest of the season.
And I will be back with this one once the main tree will look like a main tree
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The following user(s) said Thank You: Clicio, crent89
Well, I had to share the mame here after "slight" change too, didn´t I?
As all the branches refused to grow downwards and turned around back up, I decided for a new shape to the side.
Now I am just going to keep it this way.
3 pics with different backgrounds.
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Mame has been repotted into a smaller pot and repositioned.
I look at the size of the trunk, the size of the pot, and speculate how much room there is for roots. If this were outside during hot weather, how often would you water it? Twice a day just doesn't seem like enough because there doesn't appear to be much room for soil to hold water.