so over here i'm gonna demonstrate exactly what i did to my ficus audrey
that was able to get it to branch in under three months
hi everyone it's marianne
welcome to my wasteless life
in this video i'm going to share with you how you can get your ficus plants to branch
thank you so much for joining me today
and if you're new this is my wasteless life
where i take you along my plant and sustainable lifestyle journey
and share with you some of my tips and tricks along the way
so if you've been watching me for a while or even just recently
you know that i'm in the middle of my monstera month
but i wanted to take a little bit of pause on that
and show you how you can branch your ficus plants
i didn't plan to put out this video until later on in october
but then i thought that may be a little bit too
late especially for those who are in the northern hemisphere
and want to try it out because by then it will be the end of the growing season
so i thought i'm going to sneak this in and don't
worry i'm still going to continue my monstera series
and if you haven't seen any episodes of that yet i will link it
up here as well down in the description
but yeah so it's actually very easy to get your ficus plants to branch
for the longest time i couldn't figure it out
but there are a couple of tricks that you can do to get your ficus plants to branch
as you can see right here i have my ruby ficus elastica
and my ficus audrey and over here i also have my ficus tineke
the tips and tricks on how to get your ficus
plants to branch would work on any of your ficus plants
but i'll be demonstrating it on my ficus elastica plants
but i know for a fact that it also works for the fiddle leaf fig
in fact i saw this trick performed on a fiddle leaf fig or ficus lyrata
and it worked so i decided to try it out on my ficus elastica
but it will also definitely work well with other varieties of ficus like the figures altissima
or any type of ficus plants that you may have
so there's a couple of ways you can get your ficus plants to branch
so for example here in the ficus i'm not going to do it
because i do think this plant is still quite a bit small for me to get it to branch
but what you can do is you could see the little bud in there that's starting to grow out
you could pinch that off or if you don't want to pinch that off
you're a little bit apprehensive of just doing it by hand
you can use your pruning shears your scissors or whatever to just cut off that top
and that would encourage your plants to branch
however with that pinching method your plant is
not going to branch out the way you exactly want it to
although even with the second method there's no guarantee it would branch the way you want it to
but at least you could dictate where you want it to branch
but i'm getting ahead of myself
but with this one it would branch in many different ways and you can't really predict it
it could just continue to grow up which happened with my ruby ficus elastica
i accidentally pinched it off when it was a lot smaller but it just continued to grow up straight
so this plant getting accidentally pinched off did really make it branch out
but if it does branch out it might
just branch out one way which might not look aesthetically pleasing to you
but the best case scenario is it would branch
out at two places maybe even three and that would be great
but but like i said there's no guarantee with that if we just pinch it on top
and the second way that i'm going to show you is the method that i tried on my ficus plants
which i think is the better way to get your plants to branch the way you want to
of course it will still encourage branching in places that you didn't really intend to
but at least on the very spot that you wanted to branch it will definitely branch
like with my ficus audrey over here i did the method
in this area and it definitely pushed out a branch on this area
but then it also encouraged branching
right over here and i think it's also gonna have another branching over here
i'll make sure to insert close up so you can see a lot better
and i did the same thing with my ruby ficus elastica but i did a slightly different method
with the ficus elastica
but i think the method that i did with my ficus audrey
is a lot better and a lot faster in producing results
for this method you need a couple of things one is a box cutter or a knife that's really sharp
and some isopropyl alcohol
or anything that you could use to sterilize your cutter or your knife
so it's very important to sterilize the knife or the cutter that you're using
because you're going to be cutting into the stem
or the trunk of your ficus elastica or any of your ficus plants
you don't want to give your plant any viral disease that
is transferred from the knife into your plant
so one of the first method that i did to make my ficus elastica to branch
which is not as effective as the slightly modified
version that i'm going to show you after this one is
to basically make a cutting a third of the way into the trunk and just let it bleed
because ficus plants would have sap inside the trunk or inside the stem
and it would definitely bleed once you make a cutting to it
and actually that's a very good indication that you already cut deep enough
because you don't want to cut it all the way through or else you'll be chopping up
your entire plant or tree
so i did that method back in january of february in a couple of different places in this plant
but as you can see when i did it up here nothing really happened in this area
however at the bottom area of the plant i did the same exact
thing over here and i think also above here
but the one at the very bottom it actually did branch out
but it didn't branch out until like about six months later maybe eight months later
so let's say i did in january right now it's september
so it's a little bit like more than six months before it actually did branch out
but it only branched out in one of the places i did the cutting or the notching
but it didn't do it over here
but as you can see with my ficus audrey i was able to successfully get into branch
and this i only did maybe around summertime middle of the summer early summer
and it actually grew a branch
here and here and about to grow one over here in just less than three months
before i left on vacation i created a notch over here and i think it is starting to produce a bud
so i was just watering my ficus audrey and just an update on the notch
here's my ficus audrey i originally notched this over here and it has since grown this branch
and it also started to grow
a branch here but it had to leaf so i took out that leaf which is this one
and it's also starting to grow here to branch out here so if this actually grows like this too
then i'm gonna take out that leaf as well just to allow the branch to properly grow
so what did i do differently for this one
so over here i'm going to demonstrate exactly what i did to my ficus audrey
that was able to get it to branch in under three months
so as mentioned you need a cutter or a knife that's really sharp and sterilized
so what you're going to do is is actually cut a third of the way through
and again once the sap comes out you have already cut deep enough
and i'm just gonna wipe that off again and what you're going to do is to make another cutting
or notching right above that maybe like a quarter inch high
roughly make it about the same size or length
accidentally cut the
leaves so that's what i say you have to be very careful and make sure that your knife is sharp
so that you don't put a lot of pressure
and so when you cut it you don't accidentally cut off the entire thing
or cut off the leaves close to it
so as you can see it's leaking a lot of sap
it's best to use gloves in this one or wash your hands right away after doing this
the sap is coming out here is actually toxic
at the very least it would just make your fingers or your hands itch
at worst it could trigger an allergic reaction so
make sure you are washing your hands or wear gloves while you do this
so as you can see i'm just letting it leak out you can wipe it out if you want to
but what you're going to do now is
make additional cuttings on the side of the two notches that you just cut
and connect them to each other and also get it to be a third of the way deep
all right so you're basically going to cut a rectangle on the side of the stems
and then what you're going to do is to carve that out
and i know it feels very
nerve-wracking to do this i'm actually very concerned that i'm doing this on camera
because i don't want to jinx myself but i had bad experiences performing propagation stuff on camera
that worked for me in the past but just because i did it on camera
it no longer worked and actually damaged my plant
so hopefully i'm not jinxing myself by saying that
okay so essentially you want to remove the entire bark or the entire section
that you just carved out
but again don't cut all the way through the stem you just want to cut a third of the way
essentially just taking off the main bark of the stem or the trunk of your plant
my hands are actually getting a little bit
itchy so i'm gonna go wash my hands and i'll be right back
okay so essentially that's what you do just clean up the area if you can do it very gently
because again you don't want to break off the stem i mean if you do it's not the end of the world
but that's not what you want to happen
so it's going to leak the sap for quite some time so just let it leak it out
you don't really have to worry about it
it's okay if it gets into the soil and the next step that i'm gonna show you is very optional
i didn't do it for my ficus audrey and it branched out just fine
and like i said in under three months
but you could also use this which is the keiki cloning paste
so this one is mostly used in orchids and i've used this on my orchids to get them to re-bloom
but this one you can also use on your other houseplants
so this one is kind of like a rooting hormone but
it's not for root growth although it can also trigger root growth
because the last time i applied this to my ruby ficus elastica the first time i tried to notch it
it might not have branched out here but it did form roots on the stem or on the trunk
so what you're going to do using a cotton bud is get a healthy amount of it
and just apply it on the place where you did that notching
so at the very least what this would do is would provide a seal or a wax protection
for your ficus plant
so that you know it would prevent getting any bacteria or pests as it tries to heal
or second it could actually help trigger that branch growth
but like i said i didn't apply this to my ficus audrey and it branched out just fine
but this is an optional extra step that you could take
or use on your ficus elastica that you're getting to branch
to just help it branch maybe a little bit faster
so basically that's all you need to do and after this is just a waiting game
you take care of your ficus elastica
or your ficus plants the regular way you're not going to do anything extra to it
and you just wait for the branches or the growth points to pop up
and like i said with my ficus audrey it took about less than three months for it to happen
so we'll see what happens with this one if it branched out under three months as well
we are heading towards the end of the growing season so it might not happen
but at least if you do it now you know come springtime it would definitely grow that branch
and i wouldn't recommend doing this over the winter time or when your plant is in dormancy
because this is asking a lot or taking a lot out of your plants while it is in dormancy
so i would only recommend doing it right now if you're watching this
around september early october
i think you can still do it if you're in the northern hemisphere
if you're in australia or in the southern hemisphere
you can try this right now and your plant will do great
since the growing season is just starting in your region but for us in the northern hemisphere
i wouldn't do this if you're very close to the end of the growing season
i would just wait until the next growing season or spring to do this
so those are a couple ways maybe 2.5 -ish ways you can get your ficus plants to branch
i do highly recommend this method because this one would
almost guarantee that your plants would branch
and would branch in the places where you wanted to branch
but yeah if you have any questions let me know down in the comments
and if you want me to make a ficus elastica care video
i would definitely do it just let me know down in the comments if you're interested in that
and i'll make sure to have it up before the end of the year
if you want a fiddle leaf fig or ficus elastica care video i already did one
i would link it up here and also down the description go check it out
i have lots of tips and tricks on how to take care
of your fiddle leaf fig especially if you're struggling with yours
and also talk about giving humidity for plants in general
although i would say for the ficus elastica
they're not really craving humidity a lot even during the winter time
so if you're a beginner trying to get into ficus plants i
definitely recommend the ficus elastica first
if you don't know how well a fiddle leaf fig would do under your care
but for me personally the very first plant that i've got was the ficus lyrata or fiddle leaf fig
and i even got it as a rescue plant and it did well under my care
and it's not i have special plant powers or a special green thumb
i think it's just depends on the environment that you have
if you have the right environment for a ficus lyrata or any ficus plant
it would definitely do well under your care even if you're just a beginner
but yeah if you want a more extensive care tip video on ficus plants
especially the ficus elastica
let me know down in the comments and i'll see what i can do before the end of the year
but yes thank you so much for watching
i hope you found today's video helpful
and if you like it please give me a thumbs up
and if you're new here i hope you subscribe
i come up with house plants and sustainable lifestyle videos every week
and if you haven't yet check out these videos up here until my next one
but until then i see you i appreciate you take care of yourself and each other
and have a plantiful day bye