Hello.

I have an indoor ficus tree that's about 20 years old. I'm the third owner. Its pot is actually a cut-off two-liter soda bottle. It's never been treated as a bonsai. It's grown to maybe 3.5 feet high, and all the branches are on the top half of the plant. The lower branches have all been pruned off at one point or another.

The base of the trunk is about half an inch thick. What would happen if cut the tree back to about six inches tall? Do you think it would die, or would it sprout new branches at that six-inch height? I would love to make this into a short bonsai tree with that half-inch thick trunk as its base.

Is it too risky to try it?

Thank you!

Here's a picture of the ficus.

benjamina's are temperamentfull. Some people have good luck cutting them to a stump. Others have failed and seen their plany die.

I would probably put it in a bigger container, and outside in spring. Loads of sun once settled outside, goor fertilizer. Then once happy health and pushing growth, trim removing 50% of the branches, and defoliating the rest..

Key would be to get it healthy.

Thank you, leatherneck.

That's great advice. If I bring it back to full health first, it will be better off, no matter what I decide to do to it next.

So how about this for a crazy idea, building off of leatherneck's advice...

What if I plant the tree in a sunny spot in the spring, and once it gets rooted in and stable, I graft a few small branches from the top onto the lower part of the trunk, between six and ten inches from the ground. And then once I know that those branches have been accepted, I cut the trunk off just above the new branches, thereby leaving me with a tiny tree, complete with branches, thick-ish trunk, and solid root system.

That seems less risky than just chopping the trunk off at 10 inches. And it gets me the little tree I'm looking for. Do you all agree, or am I just a newbie dreaming impossible dreams here?

Thanks.

It can be done, if the grafts take.
It takes time anyway, so you can consider other options besides trunk chopping.

Very cool. Thank you, Clicio!

Grafting could work. One downside of it in the case of this specific tree would be that the branches you have now have larger internodal lengths (distance between 2 leaves) and larger leaves than a Ficus benjamina that is about 1 foot tall would have and the aesthetics will be out of balance.

Something you could try would be to top chop just above the 1st branch and see if backbuds lower on the trunk. If it backbuds, great! If it doesn't you still have material you could use for grafting.

Thank you, Bunsen33. I like the idea of the intermediate chop, just to see if it will bud lower down. That seems less risky than either of my two ideas so far.

Ok, it's about time that I update this topic.

I didn't quite go with any of the plans we discussed nine months ago.

When spring came along, I took my big tall ficus tree, and I buried it very deep in a 5-gallon bucket. Actually, a single 5-gallon bucket didn't allow the depth that I wanted, so I cut the bottom out of the 5-gallon bucket and stacked it in another 5-gallon bucket. That gave me an extra few inches of depth. And I drilled holes in the bottom of the bucket for drainage.

Anyway, I buried the tree, putting the rootball all the way at the bottom, such that almost the entire trunk was underground. I put it in some good potting soil, and I brought it inside next to a sunny window. I overwatered it at first, and all the leaves fell off. But it came back strong.

When I was satisfied that it was healthy with plenty of new growth, I went through a few phases of chopping, removing branches and trunk, starting from the top.

And when it had new growth again, I unpotted it from the bucket and found, as I had hoped, that it had grown some strong roots near the soil line. So I chopped off most everything below that, and I put what was left in a nice pot. Now it is looking really healthy with plenty of new growth.

This may never be a proper, good-looking bonsai, but it's such an improvement over what I had 9 months ago. Thanks to you all for your advice and support.