Mother Earth’s Garden

Meet Ferdinand

by Rebecca on March 8th, 2007

This is Ferdinand. He is a five year old weeping fig tree. I had planned for this post to be about how to do a re-pot of a ficus, but alas, poor Ferdinand is in no condition to be a suitable subject. I started to do the document the endeavor, only to find upon pulling him from his pot, almost all of his roots had rotted! He had one good root about three inches long. For a tree this size, he should have more than that. I did find all of his roots when I emptied the pot. Long, good size roots by the look of them, but they had long since rotted and detached themselves from the root ball. Fortunately the root ball is still intact, and there are a lot of new little roots sprouting. I imagine that these little roots are what has been keeping him going. I finished the repot, but he will need to be carefully tended to for a while. The rotting roots were more than likely caused by poor soil drainage. Ficus trees do not like standing water in their pot, and if the soil stays saturated for too long, it can severely hurt the tree, as is the case with my little fig tree. If I had realized how badly the soil was draining I would have done the repot much much sooner, but as it is, I will have to wait until I either get a new tree, or Ferdinand is much stronger to document it properly. He will probably loose a few leaves with the shock of the repot, especially since his root system is so small, but I am confident there is enough there that he won’t die! I’ll be sure to post on how he is doing in a month or two. Since he has been rescued once before from dying, I’m sure he will bounce back. He seems to be a hardy little tree!

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