Quick question about defoliation

[JTred]

When you guys defoliate a tree, do you also remove all terminal buds? I know this is essential for schefflera, but in many of the write-ups I've seen for ficus it makes no mention of terminal buds. I ask because when I defoliated my ficus I left most of the terminal buds intact, and I ended up with relatively little back budding and long twigs with leaves only at the ends. It seems logical that the terminal buds should go along with the leaves, but I didn't know if this was true.

[bonsaiboy]

I would suspect that if your intent is to make the tree 'fill out', then yes, you would need to remove the terminal buds.

[Gnome]

JTred,

I agree with bonsai boy but perhaps you can take it one step further. Why not use the opportunity to prune the secondary, or tertiary, branches back a few nodes. By shortening such branches you force the new growth closer to the trunk. This will help with ramification and, hopefully, promote more uniform back budding.

Norm

[JTred]

You know what, most of the defoliation articles I read were about reducing leaf size and not increasing ramification. I'll have to give it another try come Spring. Thanks guys.

[Gnome]

JTred,

If you think about it, defoliation does reduce leaf size but only temporarily. The real benefit of defoliation comes in increasing ramification. It may not be obvious but having more leaves to support means that each individual leaf must remain smaller. So there are both short, and long, term aspects to this technique.

Norm