Phil

Fully agreed upon the choice of outside in cold temps. or inside under poor lighting. The cold will do them in faster than poor lighting. One question remains. Just how many years have you been keeping your Ficus under a table lamp? I would venture to say not too long. Good lighting is a must for Ficus when being kept inside. They may well indeed survive for awhile but eventually they will become weakened and die.

~Phil

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Please, always keep in mind that the typewritten word does not always convey what you wish to say, and to always treat others as you would have them treat you. Think twice-submit once.
I started out with nothing....and still have most of it.
"Its hell out there, give them hell back." ~ Prowler/Victor Gray 12/31/1943 - 11/24/2008

Prowler

Most table lamps have a label on them, the highest i have seen is 60W.
Now the fittings inside those look like brown plastic, after a while this simply goes hard and breaks off.
An incandescent light puts out a hell of a heat, but not a lot of power in fact nothing. You would be better off with a what i call a pigs curly tail, they have their own starter and superior to a normal bulb, you can buy them cheaply and far better.
Any hydroponic shop sells them. Do you have a friend that has a light system set up? if yes check it out, but for gods sake Don't !! look at the light if it is Halogen, you wont be able to drive your car for about an hour, all you will see is black dots in front of your eyes.

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subnet_rx

Been going for about 3 months now, but everything I have several books on indoor bonsai, including Jerry Meslik's Ficus book, and they all say that my fluorescent table lamp is fine with the 1600 lumens that it puts out. These same plants were indoors at Wal-Mart, so I know what bad lighting will do to them, and believe me, they perked up and sprouted new leaves about a week after I put them under these lamps.

Phil

Ah...now that is something you failed to mention. You simply said " standard table lamp" and most, I'm sure, would connect that with an ordinary incandescent light fixture. A lamp with with a 1600 lumen fluorescent light is not what one would consider a "standard table lamp"!

~Phil

__________________

Please, always keep in mind that the typewritten word does not always convey what you wish to say, and to always treat others as you would have them treat you. Think twice-submit once.
I started out with nothing....and still have most of it.
"Its hell out there, give them hell back." ~ Prowler/Victor Gray 12/31/1943 - 11/24/2008

subnet_rx

Yeah, florescent lighting is taking over the isles at Wal-mart if you take a look. It's not hard to find incandescent light, but they are definitely not promoting it. Yes, the limit is 60W, but with a "daylight" florescent that puts out 1600 lumens, it only uses 23W. On my other ficus, I have a 1200 lumen 13W light. From the lighting tables that I have, they show that a ficus needs at least 1000 lumens to grow. For about $25, you can provide that pretty easily. Add in $5 for the plug timer, and you really never have to worry about it. Costs less than $5 in electricity per month. No way the misses is going to let me put one of those huge 4 foot fixtures in the house, and I do enjoy having these plants around me at night to look at from time to time. I have something like this:

centaura

Yeah, that would be the bare minimum, but just for your reference that equates to very dense shade outdoors when considering light from a plant's point of view. I have a light meter, which registers light on a scale of A through H - H being full daylight. A 3000 lumen 4 foot shop light doesn't register at all, with the meter 1/2" away from the bulb, and an 8000 lumen 8ft florescent registers around 'B' when held 1/2" away.

Saying that, your lamp is definitely an improvement over nothing, but it is still a very weak light to try to grow something with indoors. You will, in the future, have issues with overly dramatic apical dominance and long internodes. If the desk lamp is the only thing you have space for, I'd try to find one of the huge compact florescent bulbs - I've seen them up to 2000 to 2600 lumens, though you'll probably need a socket extender to put them into a desk lamp.

-Centaura

JTGJr25

The trees health is improving! I did lose the tall center trunk section but hat resulted in me being able to place it closer to the lamp. The remaining branches are now growing. It won't be long now before I can put it outside and watch it take off.

Tom

Taicho

Getting to this thread really late...but I had a larger size ficus I am working on and I used a wire mesh tray/box thing in from the shed organizers section of home depot. It is wide and shallow. It is made of wires in a criss cross X pattern. It works pretty well. It is nice and sturdy and has built in handles.

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JTGJr25

Taicho, mine is doing quite well at the moment, it is back budding on all the spindly branches but its not growing very fast. It's not going to reach any considerable size any time soon. I will try to create a shohin out of it to cut down on time.

Tom

Taicho

Good to hear you are getting back buds at least!

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