Making a Root on Rock Style Ficus

Making a bonsai grow its roots over a rock is sometimes a good way to introduce style and creativity to a tree. It can take anywhere from a year to two to do this technique and can be done with young or old trees. Any rock or material can be used to grow the tree on, as long as it is porous or complex enough for the roots to wrap around and get a good hold.

Here is a ficus microcarpa my Grandma gave to me after she found it in her church yard. It had very little roots and took ages to become established again. This is in early 2015 when I didn’t know too much about soil and thus was keeping this one in poorly drained high organic material.

January 2016. Here it is after a re pot sometime in 2015 and some better care. It’s even growing its own sacrifice branch which will really help in the future shaping of the tree. You can see here there are also some nice areal roots growing, though the tree trunk itself is still very small. About the size of a pencil.

This is the rock I have decided to use and have tied the tree firmly in place. Over time because the tree base and rock will be completely covered, it will grow roots down all over the rock and will eventually hold itself on. These aerial roots will help to bring overall stability to the tree.

The ficus was then placed into a deep well drained container with well draining soil and is now being left alone for a good 6 months to grow its roots over the rock. In spring I will be lifting it out and seeing if it has grown fast enough or needs more time to grow around the rock. But so far it is looking really good with a long growth branch and new leaves every week. This is in late autumn now and there have been no signs of slowing growth. I have also placed it ontop of the garden so the roots can grow through the pot it is in and it can supergrow for a few months.

Ficus Microcarpa Progression

I picked this one up at a local nursery in Wollongong. It had really really nice natural taper and some branches to work with. The soil in the pot above was almost like mud. No good.

First I re potted it into a new blue pot. It’s about the size of my fist. I potted straight into this pot as I was happy with the trunk size/shape and wanted to refine the canopy more than anything else. At this point i’m starting to learn a little 😉 This was back in August 2015.

Next thing to do was wire those branches into shape and give it a good trim.

This is the same tree 😉 one week later. I follow the moon cycles when doing ANY bonsai work and have found that what they say holds true. A waxing moon is good for top growth and a waning moon is good for root growth. So I prune at the beginning of a waxing moon and most often find the shoots come back up very quickly. This is also the time of the moon cycle that all my other trees have the most growth.

Now here it is in February 2016. It has had good growth and I have been fertilising regularly over the summer. The wire had also been removed as all the new growth caused the branches to hold in their positions.

Even though I had just repotted the tree a few months ago I decided to do a complete de-foliation to speed up the ramification process.

This is the tree two weeks later with a few more branches and smaller leaves from the defoliation.

In March I decided that the soil was no good at all so I repotted it into a new soil mix of 1/3 perlite, 1/3 bonsai mix and 1/3 coco husk. It also got a little bit of a re-positioning with the left branch (below) being curved over from the right. I think this will look good once the canopy fills out.

Hard to say which is the better front?