I bought my new ficus at Wal-Mart about a week ago. I broke the rocks out and I have been following the care tips on this forum since. I have it sitting in my kitchen window with a southern exposure. It gets a lot of light during the day and it is doing really well. I can see new leaves sprouting out and it seems to have gotten much greener.
I've seen that people give the age of their tree a lot. How do I know how old it is. Also, it has multiple trunks, and the trunk on one side is close to the edge of the pot so how do I know when to re-pot it.
Agreed, a picture is worth a thousand words. As far as age goes, I don't know where you've been reading about people posting the age of their trees, because I rarely see it online. At most, people offer the time in care and training. Either way, it doesn't really matter how old a tree IS, but rather how old it LOOKS.
I agree that is the purpose of bonsai a ypoung tree looking alot older than it really is and to be honest that is why I adore bonsai it amazing 
Unless you know the exact year the ficus was planted in, telling age is impossible. However, you could take a guess, and use that. I think what you mean by people giving the age of there tree is how many years the tree has been in training. Seeing as its a Wal-Mart bonsai, I'd say it hasn't recieved any formal training, so when you start training, thats when you start keeping track.
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SaturnsPattern
- Full Member
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- Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:15 am
- Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
The only way to get a to-the-year age with "regular" trees is to count how many rings are within it's trunk. The trunk's girth increases during each growing season, and everytime growth stops (where the tree goes dormant), and begins again (where dormancy breaks), a new ring develops. There's a tool which allows you to burrow into the trunk, and what you pull out is a thin section of wood with differently shaded subsections - counting these subsections reveals exactly how old the tree is. (1 subsection = 1 year; you count from the center of the tree outward)
From my understanding, with bonsai it's a whole different situation. You actually WANT to keep the tree small, and you do this by continual pruning. Alot of trees used for bonsai are grown out to a certain point until it's decided the tree is now a suitable size, and regular maintenance sort of keeps it from really getting anywhere. At this point as time passes there is no gain for the tree, so age becomes impossible to keep track of.
Anything after that is entirely a guessing game. hth
From my understanding, with bonsai it's a whole different situation. You actually WANT to keep the tree small, and you do this by continual pruning. Alot of trees used for bonsai are grown out to a certain point until it's decided the tree is now a suitable size, and regular maintenance sort of keeps it from really getting anywhere. At this point as time passes there is no gain for the tree, so age becomes impossible to keep track of.
Anything after that is entirely a guessing game. hth
Thanks for the help with posting these pictures. It really was quite easy.
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Nope, those are aerial roots and perfectly normal to be the way they are. As far as repotting and root pruning go, you're probably a year or more away from root pruning since the tree is likely to have been repotted/pruned very recently. You can repot, and probably should, in a free draining soil and more aesthetically pleasing pot. But, I'd leave the root pruning for a year. Get your feet wet, read up a bit, learn how to care for the tree before doing anything that drastic.
