It's time to try some trunk fusion on my Ficus Religiosa seedlings. Currently I have 7 larger 4-month old plants I grew from seeds since last November, and they're looking ready for some training. The tallest plant in 20cm from ground to top leaf node and the thickest trunk is 9mm at just above ground level.
I choose 3 largest ones to work with this time. They looked somewhat pot bound and deserved repotting anyway. I was not going to root prune them this time, but I had to remove soil out of roots, so some finer roots were lost during this operation.
After stripping roots and removing some bottom leaves, I found optimal way to connect 3 plants and cut all leaves that were looking inside. Then I used 0.5mm steel paper-covered wire to connect trunks. I used pliers for twisting to make sure connection is tight enough.
After binding, I planted the result in a larger pot an cut some of top leaves making sure I don't discriminate any one of plants:
Four days later, a few leaves died out, but the rest look good and new leaves are growing on top, red in color by some reason:
The color may be due to lack of nutrients, or just a normal thing under plenty of light (last few days were very sunny). Wired connections also look fine:
More details and photos:
flybonsai.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/ficus-trunk-fusion.html