 Hi this morning we're gonna be working on my ficus elastica. It's commonly known as a rubber tree or rubber plant It gets that name because if you peel the bark off you get this white milky sap that they used to use for making rubber and It's a it's a large leaf plant It's not you know doesn't have a little tiny leaves like a typical bone side, but it has a lot of charm And so let's go in and have a look at the tree and I'll explain what we're gonna do today on it So this tree I've had for about 20 years now it started off as a plant in my wife's house before we got married and Of course I got a hold of it and I'm Turning it into a bone side tree so One of the things I've done I've got the root base sorted out pretty well on it. I Been kind of growing the trunk thicker so you can see way in here. I've got some pretty drastic pruning cuts where I've cut the trunk down it was a fairly large tree originally and I've been growing this leader way up here in order to help heal these scars and Get a transition from the thicker trunk to our top trunk So today we're gonna prune that Hi girls One of the hardest things in bone side is being patient So I've been letting the leader grow and It's getting quite big And you can see as it grows the leaf size goes from if we take this leaf here Which is pretty tiny It grows up to A leaf size here, which is enormous So these shoots as you let them grow the leaf size gets larger and larger So if we look at You know any of the branches The longer it grows the leaf size just keeps getting larger and this is probably the maximum whatever get So There's a general rule in bone side You let all new growth Grow till you have six to eight pairs of leaves and then you cut it back to the first set of leaves So I've left this grow. I've got one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen And it's starting to grow its fifteenth leaf So it's grown long enough. I The more you let one leader grow It starts taking energy away from the other parts of the tree So all your energy goes into the leader So it's time to cut it back and then we'll Try and equalize some of this energy The goal for this tree is to form a canopy on top a tropical tree canopy Our typical umbrella style or broom style and So that's what we're gonna do So the first thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna clean up the moss in the root base get the moss off the roots and Do a bit of weeding and just clean that up so again, I'm just gonna go in with the scissors and Trim the moss down Okay, I've got the moss cleaned up and You can see the lip of the pot now Which is good Because bonsai is a tree in a pot so the pot has equal importance of the tree So the next thing we're gonna do we're gonna start pruning Before we do that, I'll just talk about big leaf bonsai There is a blog or a website on the internet if you type in Largelyth bonsai or big leaf bonsai. I think you'll find it. It's kind of interesting And one thing I'm going to as I work on these trees I'm gonna start playlists for each tree so as the trees progress You'll be able to follow the progression on the playlists for each specific tree I don't sell any of my trees. This is just a hobby for me. So I'm hoping to live many years and You'll see these trees grow from a humble beginnings to Really nice bonsai. Hope So yeah, if you subscribe You can get updates on the trees and that as time goes on Okay, so let's start pruning Just want to note Old training boxes from bonsai trees Apparently make good nesting boxes because I just cut three eggs out of one And there's a chicken sitting in the old bonsai box right now Hello, thank you for the eggs Yeah, bye So the first thing we're gonna do we're gonna prune the main leader down so It's grown now really nicely So we got to find a pruning point So if we look at the If we look at the trunk line We're coming up. It kind of tilts back a bit so We do have a branch here that I think this will be like our forward trunk And this is gonna be more of a back trunk So I think what we want to do is prune to a backward-facing leaf So in future This trunk will fan outwards from the trunk From the main trunk So We can start high So there's definitely There's a backward-facing leaf right here But it's a little high up so there's another one back here Let me see come around the back here There's one here that's at a good height So I think we'll prune it back to there Sorry Yeah, so right here we're gonna prune it back to here So let's do that now Right here We're gonna leave a little extra and here we go It's gone timber Okay, let's go back to the front There's our cutting And there we go that's the main trunk pruned down now The next step is we're gonna look at these other branches Now generally you want to grow As I said, six to eight pairs of leaves before you do any pruning So these have enough now We're gonna prune them back to So these are all gonna be trunks This tree I want to grow it You know, one big main trunk And then A multitude of trunks coming up and then branches coming off the main trunks to form our canopy so When we're pruning these trunks We don't want them We don't want them going straight up. We want them to fan out from the main trunk So we're gonna prune to an outward facing leaf or bud And and grow the canopy sort of on a 45 degree angle Somewhere around there. So we'll start with this one and We'll prune it off to an outward facing leaf Like so This one it's got some branching here already So we're gonna try and keep that branching So we're gonna prune it Back to the first set of two leaves For now anyway And this one has an outward facing leaf here. So we'll just prune the tip off And over here We have Let me get in there. Hold on We have a small branch at the back here Got quite a few branches on this trunk here Which is good So I think we're just gonna prune the tip off of it So we're gonna again prune to an outward facing bud Like that And Let's go in and look at the tree now Some of these leaves some of the older leaves like this one for instance That was the original leaf I pruned this branch to and So we it sprouted a new trunk coming up here So we can remove that older leaf It's done its job And we can prune this little one in here off Here's another one we can get rid of And one in here And what this does It cleans up the canopy and gets a little more light Because you know we could might eventually get branches coming off these multi-trunks And the only way they'll get branches is if they're getting light so That's the reason we're doing that Here's another old leaf back here we can get rid of It's you know it's done its job. It's getting pretty old and ragged looking And let's just spin the tree around here And have a look So see leaves like this they're blocking out a Lot of stuff we can't really remove that one, but we can remove this one I'll just turn it around again Back here Yeah, that's probably About all we can do today Yeah, so there we go So we've got a kind of a short squat trunk and we're starting to form our canopy now This tree was repotted In winter of this year It's the first time it ever went in a shallow pot It's taken me a lot of years to get the roots even Close to being shallow and spread out in a radial pattern So the next step of this tree will be repotting it again and doing further root pruning And hopefully by then the canopy will be looking a little fuller and Yeah, that's about it for today on this tree It's You know, I think it'll develop nicely The ficus elastic It's kind of It's kind of a nice tree it gets nice bark on it If you have a look at the bark it gets you know maybe a little rougher bark than some of the other ficuses and As the leaves come out you get the sheath on the leaf is a nice red color and the leaves are nice color and the The stems of the leaf are a nice reddish color, so It's a kind of an interesting tree it'll make a good bonsai and they do get aerial roots So we might get some of those in future we're hoping and That's it so Nigel Saunders for KW bonsai We'll see you next time