guesskoenig

I have a goldengate ficus that I bought a few weeks ago that wasn't doing so great in the store with yellowing leaves and a hacked off limb. I've got the limb to seal up quite nicely and the tree seems to be growing strong and healthy now with lots of new foliage and buds. I am going to repot it soon to get it out of it's planter and into some new soil, but I would like to attempt a root over rock style with it, as I've read the ficus is quite suited to this. I was wondering where I might find a suitable rock for this and any tips for the process itself. For any info you might want on the style it is in a two quart, round ceramic pot that is a glazed green. I've got moss spores on the way that I plan to use as the top dressing.

bonsaikc

I'd hold off on the moss spores for a while. They rarely take on proper bonsai soil. The moss you see on fine trees is usually put there for the show.

Ficus take very readily to root-over-rock, but usually the tree will tell you if it wants that life or not. What I mean by that is, when you are repotting, you might see lots of long, thin, flexible roots that you can then attach to a rock. If you have very thick, stiff roots, you might want to try another style or work on getting rid of them over time and getting the flexible young roots you will need to fit to the rock.

I have a piece of concrete slag that looks like a natural stone with hollows, etc., and it happens to have a flat base! And others...

You just have to be on the lookout. You can buy stones, of course, but I prefer to find something nice.

As to the process, be sure you are comfortable with the whole thing before you start.

It might help if you were to post a couple of photos of your tree.

Chris

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guesskoenig

I had underestimated the ability of commercial growers to screw everything up on a tree. When I took my ficus out of the planter it had less root structure then the five inch chinese elm I have - literally. I had trouble repotting the tree as I had to soak the water before I put it into the pot because the tree could not support itself or hold the soil down for the submerge method. I've gotten it back in there and it seems to be doing fine. I've added in three rapeseed cakes around the base to give it some fertilizer to help it come back from the repotting.

Also, the spores I got are pretty awesome, they take five to six weeks to grow and you have to cultivate them indoors in a pan before applying them to your tree. I probably shouldn't have bought them but it was a learning lesson I suppose.

Mortalis

Where did you order your spores? I get tired of digging the stuff outside. I don't keep it on my trees either nor recommend doing so but sounds nice to have it.

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guesskoenig

You can get 'Kyoto moss spores' for around $4 or $5 total on ebay or amazon most of the time. They all seem to come in the same packaging, a big yellow package with a tiny little zip loc bag full of brown stuff. I ordered the moss spores as preferred to a piece of sheet moss to try for a better effect as I'm not too sure on how you would get it to look very natural using the pregrown stuff.