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

Won't the wire cut in the wood as they grow? I assume this process takes at least 2 years?

I expect trunk to grow around wire. It grew 9mm thick in 4 months and wire is just 0.5mm, so I'm pretty optimistic about time. Wire rings will remain embedded in trunk, but they shouldn't cut it.

Hi, to avoid the wire cutting into the tree, use an inner tube of a tire, cut it to strips and bind the trees together, it expand with the growing of the tree and is easy inexpensive to get.

Good idea about rubber band.
But this photo illustrates how trees don't mind steel objects inside

Maybe the tree doesnt mind. But you will see it for years to come.

Two smallest ficuses I put into a separate isolated environment, spent there 2 months and developed relatively impressive aerial roots and a multitude of small branches, but were not too interesting otherwise.



So I've decided to experiment with growing very tiny ficuses using these two specimen. 4 days ago I started with repotting. I performed root pruning, trying to maintain somewhat radial root structure. After repotting I defoliated them and performed radical pruning:



Four days later, I confirm they've survived and started to regrow some leaves:



Another two seedlings I've root pruned and cut 2 months ago and slip potted a week ago, have grown long but boring branches as well:



I'm not touching their roots this time, but I believe it's time for some pruning:



I've left one of two fork branches meaning to make trunk grow sideways. I'm cutting just above leaf nodes expecting cuts to die down to these nodes. I'm keeping couple leaves for these ones to make recovery faster, but eventually I want to keep their leaves small.

More details: flybonsai.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/pruning-small-trees.html

I grown several specimen of Ficus Religiosa intending to fuse them together from the beginning, and first attempt in trunk fusion is going well so far. Now it's time for another one. My plan is to get something resembling these:





The idea is to fuse several trees, let one of them grow straight to make an apex and bend others at different heights to form branches. I measured available plants and made a wire model of today's procedure:



Here are 5 participants, 5 month old Ficus Religiosas, grown from seeds. They were initially sowed in small nursery cell container in December 2016, then in January 2017 I slip potted them to slightly larger containers, and finally in April 2017 slip potted again to a half cut 500ml glasses.



Now it's time for a proper repotting and root maintenance. Slip potting traces were very visible in roots, as kind of layers of root ball density. I pruned the roots removing ones growing downwards and keeping radial structure. Some root balls were relatively modest and easy to clean up. And some were very messy and large. Especially this one, I spent a lot of time untangling roots and cutting non-radial ones. This plant is 10mm thick just above ground and had even thicker curled roots below. That's what I got after pruning:



Done with roots, I started binding. This time I decided to use rubber bands cut from bike tube instead of steel wire, as advised above. It's easy to make very tight knots with it and it's supposed to stretch as trunk grows, hopefully not damaging the tree at all. First I bound two trees, then added third, the thick one. They actually already look somewhat fused. I used curly roots of the fatso as additional bonding. Hope that's OK in terms of nebari.


Then I added last two trunks and tightened them higher up:




Another task needed to be accomplished today is wiring. I needed "branches" to grow sideways immediately, because now they are still small and easy to bend and also this way they're going to get more light. That wasn't hard, I used some rubber- and plastic wrapped aluminum wire.

6 weeks ago I started to fuse 3 ficus religiosa seedlings. This is how trunks look like now:



Trunks at ground level have practically fused, wire is hardly visible. This is in less than two months!
One trunk is blackened in the bottom by some reason. It doesn't look rotten, just black.
Trees grow vigorously. During this time, they grew from 20cm to 50cm tall. I have to periodically add new wires on the top to keep them connected.
This is full view of the composition, after couple new wires added and some minor defoliation. New leaves grow red first, like the one on top. Later they become green and very large. Since trees were not clones, they look a bit different, have different height and width. I don't think it's a problem, future trimming should equalize them. Currently my plan is to let them grow unrestricted until they reach roof of greenhouse (it's ten more centimeters), then trim top to encourage branch growth. Branches should make trunks even thicker and I can bind them to the main stem as well.



More photos flybonsai.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/3-trunk...s-fusion-update.html

Trunk fusion I performed almost 5 months ago was certainly a success. Steel wires I used are now totally hidden under the bark, fused trunk has perfectly cylindrical shape and seams between original trunks have almost vanished. Scars from wires are still there, as well as their cut ends, which serve as some kind of thorns. But I believe it's just a matter of time until they disappear. Also, several branches have grown in various places.

More flybonsai.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/3-trunk...ed-ficus-wiring.html