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I have been breeding flowers for about 10 years. During this time, many different flowers, both decorative deciduous and beautifully blooming, passed through my hands. Some of the plants come and go, some leave forever, and some stay for many years. I have grown a lot of plants in my collection from seeds and cuttings, as I really like to observe all the development cycles. For me, the main thing is not just to buy a ready-made plant and then just caring for it, to observe how it develops, but to learn how to breed them at home through trial and error.
One of my first flowers was the ficus (now I have about 20 species) Benjamin, variety "Natasha". Here we will talk about him. There were 3 plants in the pot, in some kind of incomprehensible soil, the lower leaves partially crumbled. With newly acquired plants, I do the following: the first 2 weeks of mandatory quarantine, away from the already "home" plants. Then I transplant it into a pot of a suitable size, I always take a new pot 2-3 cm larger than the previous one.
I definitely do drainage, I use expanded clay, I fall asleep about 1/4 of the pot. The soil must be suitable for the plant, I prepare it myself, I do not use ready-made ones. Since we are now talking about ficuses, the composition in my case is as follows: earth from molehills (you can take leafy ones), ready-made universal soil, river sand, cocoa soil, perlite, vermiculite, pieces of charcoal. I take everything by eye, the soil should be light and breathable. I did the same with "Natasha", because there were 3 of them, I planted everything in different pots. This, of course, could not have been done, as they say - it's an amateur, but we must remember that over time the predominance of one will begin and, accordingly, the oppression of the other.
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The plant grew and developed, watered according to the conditions in which my plant was located - in the summer 2-3 times a week, in the winter 1 time in 1-1.5 weeks. Spraying is regular, if the plant is in good condition, then without any additives, with clean filtered water, I bathe in the bathroom under the shower once every 2 weeks. I water my plants with running water, passed through a filter, in summer, water at room temperature, in winter I must warm it up. I feed with any suitable fertilizer for decorative deciduous, in winter 1 time per month, in summer 1 time per 2 weeks, for example: Agricola, Fasco, Merry flower girl, Kemira-lux. So my ficuses grew and developed, one was donated, the second grew peacefully and made me happy, but the third, which I will talk about in the future, was put into cuttings by everyone.
I was not particularly involved in its formation, where there was a new branch, it was immediately cut off for someone. So he grew up to 1.5 meters. Last winter, there was no room for him near the window, and he stood in the far corner of the room until spring. By this time, having already thrown off the foliage in order (unfortunately, the photo has not been preserved). Since it was not of particular value to me, there was one more in stock, I decided to radically cut it. In time it was somewhere in the end of May. Transplanted into fresh soil, because he had not transplanted for 3 years, and after 2 weeks she cut it off, leaving 40 cm from the ground level, the trunk in the girth of about 3-4 cm, absolutely naked. I washed off the protruding juice and put it on a light windowsill, this is the size I fit. He stood without movement for 1.5 months, and then small leaves began to appear from the sleeping buds - and this is on a bare trunk without a single branch. Then the departure was the same as I described above. Probably the only thing that was added was a spraying with the addition of zircon.
At the moment we look like this.
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