During my last little week off I tackled the huge job of trying to rescue one of my most cherished potted fig tree that has graced the front of our homes over the last 25 years. I bought them not long after I lost my Mum and they have been relatively healthy all those years. They started life off as topiary trees, you know the classic ball on a stick shape, I kept the shape for as long as I could and then I just let them go wild. Over the years they have been potted on 3 times, each time into a much bigger pot, looking back I really did the wrong thing, I should have just kept them small and in the topiary shape. Anyway you live and learn don't you.
Fast forward to last August, while we were away in Alaska (only two weeks) one of the figs decided to fall ill and when we got back it had lost a lot of its leaves and I noticed that the water wasn't draining away from it. I kept watering it in the hope that it would come back, but by October it was obvious something drastic had to be done. Well, it took my another few months to find the time and energy to try and save this tree and I finally tackling it in earlier this month.
It was obviously root bound, so my original plan was to try and save the pot that it was in, even though the pot itself had two large cracks running down the sides from where the fig had blown over a couple of times during storms. During this huge undertaking I soon realised that saving the pot was out of the question as the root ball was like concrete and took a lot of time and muscle to try to firstly extricate it from the pot and then to cut it in half. Holy moly, I am not meant for hard work, such a light weight!
Here's what I did-
Picked the hottest day on record to tackle this project (over exaggeration but it was just so hot)
Stayed out in the red hot sun until midday and ended up with a bottler of a headache
Didn't really have a clue what I was doing but went ahead and did '"it" anyway
Are you ready for a laugh?
The very sick skeleton of the fig tree, you can see one of the big cracks down the side of the pot
Firstly I cut away as much of the big canopy as I could
Leaving only the main branches intact
I then used a plant saw to cut down through some of the root system
Lovely hubby then took to the pot with a hammer and chisel and it just fell away from the root ball
It was as solid as concrete
I then used another big saw to try and cut away the solid root ball, I was getting no where when hubby decided to do this-
Messy, noisy but it worked!
Now with over half the root ball cut off we took the rest of the tree out the front to pressure hose off the sour soil. It took me a half an hour to remove all the old soil
We then bought the tree and exposed root ball back into the courtyard to pot it up
I didn't want to buy another pot just incase this little exercise failed, so I used a plastic tub I had lying around, hubby drilled some holes for drainage. I then half filled it with new quality potting mix, put the tree into position and back filled it with potting mix. I gave it a really good water, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best
How did it go?
So far there is new growth on all the branches
Little tiny signs of life
Tiny, tiny leaves
And shoots
I will keep you up to date with the progress of this fig tree, I hope it was all worth it.
What would you have done? Try to save it or let it go?
Have a lovely day
💗Fi
One Year Ago-Roasted Veggie Pasta
Two Years Ago-My Favourite Tea
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