Fall

As the calendar moves into Fall, it’s time to bring my trees inside. Night time temperatures are moving into the 50’s F so I’m bring them in a week early but better to be a little safe. I didn’t do much to these trees over the Summer but water and let them grow and they grew very well. Each of the trees developed a lot of new growth with the Texas Ebony really surprising me with its thick, new foliage and strong branches.

I will let both Ficus grow more over the Winter before I do any pruning and re-potting in the Spring but I am going to spend some time cleaning up the Ebony now. I want to prune back the very long shoot that extended the main, center branch and also clip back most of the branches to a more reasonable length that maintains some compactness to the tree.

Finally, I’ll do some pruning on the leaves by cutting any of them that are growing straight down and maintain the leaf pads.

Before pruning

After pruning

Overall not heavy pruning but a good cleanup that retains the shape of the tree. I'm trying to root the large center branch that I clipped off to hopefully grow a smaller Ebony. I haven't had success in the past with rooting Ebony clippings but this branch is much larger so maybe this will work.