My Large Golden Gate Ficus Specimen: How to Care and Grow

This is an in-depth post about how to care for large Golden Gate Ficus trees. In addition, I will cover everything that I have done with my large Golden Gate Ficus specimen starting from when I first received it up to now. My tree has been able to tolerate everything I have thrown at it and continues to strive. I guess that means I’m doing something right.

Summary of Care

I started my journey of discovering how to care for a Golden Gate Ficus a little over two and a half years ago. I purchased this tree off Amazon in January 2018. When it first arrived, it’s trunk was formed in a nice “S” shape, it had roughly thirty leaves, and had four main branches coming out of the top of the trunk. The listing said it was five years old when I received it, making it almost eight years old now! This was my first bonsai tree and it started everything that’s to follow.

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While caring for this tree, I have undergone two re-pottings, in-numerous leaf pruning routines, numerous branch pruning, two fertilization cycles, and one major wiring. Everything I did on this tree was my first time doing anything to a tree. I am confident in what I am doing now. However, when I first started I was certain that I was going to mess something up at some point. Luckily, my green thumb has prevailed!

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Positioning

Positioning is one of the most critical factors for learning how to care for Golden Gate Ficus trees. The Golden Gate Ficus is a tropical tree. That means it is considered an indoor bonsai and can be grown entirely inside. That is exactly what I have done with my large tree. I am not aware if the tree was previously grown indoors or outdoors, however, mine has flourished while growing indoors.

I try to position this tree in front of a south-facing window. Sometimes that isn’t available, so I place it in front of a west-facing or east-facing window. Any of these options have worked just fine for my tree. I have never had to place my trees in front of a north-facing window so I cannot comment on how well that would work for your trees. This tree also prefers full sun, meaning that your Golden Gate Ficus should be receiving sunlight for at least eight hours a day.

My large Golden Gate Ficus has also endured over ten different location changes. Every so often, a move causes lots of stress on the tree and it ends up losing a handful of leaves. This is always sad to see but luckily, my tree has been able to survive each one and bounce back.

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Re-potting

I have done a total of two re-pottings on this tree. The first one was performed about three weeks after I received the plant. I waited a few weeks because I wanted to let the plant settle into its new environment before causing it stress from a re-potting. I also didn’t know the quality or condition of the soil that was currently in the pot so, I replaced the soil with new soil that I knew would provide the tree with an abundance of nutrients.

The surprising thing I discovered while re-potting this tree was that it had almost no roots! The tree had a decently sized canopy and a long curvy trunk so I assumed that the root ball would be quite extensive to provide enough nutrients to the tree. Once the roots were uncovered, there was only one main root with a few smaller feeder roots attached to it. A few weeks after repotting this tree I gave it lots of fertilizer to encourage root growth.

Four months ago, I performed another re-potting on this tree. The roots were growing out of the pot and the draining of water was awful. My girlfriend was visiting family in Hong Kong at the time, and brought me back a new pot! It’s a black rectangular pot that’s pretty tall. No big deal though, a bigger pot gives the tree more space to grow. Additionally, I can always re-pot this tree into a smaller pot later.

While I was re-potting the tree, I pruned off about 30% of the root ball. Golden Gate Ficus trees can tolerate very heavy root pruning. Fun fact, you can safely cut up to 60% of the root ball of this kind of tree. I was also sure to keep the root ball moist during the entire process. This is an important step when re-potting trees!

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I used a mix of Pumice, Lava, and Akadama and filled the base of the pot. The mix was poured into a layer a few inches thick. This layer of loose gravel provides excellent drainage for water that drains to the bottom of all the soil.

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Fertilizing and Watering

The Golden Gate Ficus can tolerate a fair amount of over-watering or under-watering. However, it’s extremely easy to keep track of a watering routine that the tree will excel on. Personally, whenever the soil feels dry to the touch I water my trees. If you have multiple trees, this could eventually cause you to water different trees on different days. This is totally fine. Only water your tree when it needs water, but also don’t water your tree when its already had enough.

Since owning this tree, I have undergone two fertilization cycles. I use slow-release pellets that last about twelve months. To apply the fertilizer, I poke holes in the soil all around the pot. Then, I drop the pellets into the holes, cover the holes up, and water the tree thoroughly. To know exactly how much fertilizer to use, I follow the instructions attached to the bag. Fertilizer is a very important aspect of caring for bonsai trees. It provides the trees much-needed nutrients that they do not naturally.

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Pruning and Caution

One important thing to note when learning how to care for a Golden Gate Ficus is that this is a poisonous tree. Whenever you cut a leaf or piece of bark off this tree, a white sap will start to emerge to cover the wound. This sap is also in all the leaves of the tree. If you have pets or animals that will be near this type of tree, be sure to place it out of reach where they can’t reach it. If you scroll back to the top of this post, you can see my cat Astro right next to my large Golden Gate Ficus. That was his first time checking out the tree and I watched him closely. He sniffed the tree, walked away, and never went near it again. I wonder if he knows its poisonous.

Besides the caution about the sap, pruning this tree is extremely easy. It is best to prune a Golden Gate Ficus in the spring or summer while the tree is naturally growing more. Nonetheless, since this is a tropical tree it can safely be pruned any time of year. You should prune off any large leaves to encourage new smaller leaf growth. You can also prune off every two or three of every set of five new leaves. This promotes back budding on the tree’s branch. This practice, will lead to a denser canopy and make the tree look more natural. It is best to prune the new, green, growth that appears near the tips of each branch as the tree grows. If you prune off parts of the tree where soil wood is, nothing new may grow back in its place.

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Training

I let my large Golden Gate Ficus grow freely for the first two years of caring for it. About three months ago, I began to wire my bonsai tree and shape the branches exactly how I wanted to. This process was a lot of fun and it took me a few days to fully visualize what I wanted the final shape of the tree to look like.

I made all the long branches swing around the sides of the tree angling upwards. I made all the medium and small branches at the top of the tree point upwards as well. Down towards the base of the tree, there was a branch that was sticking out at the bottom of the “S” shape. This branch jutted out and had multiple additional branches attached. I angled these branches towards the ground and spread them out in a flat fan shape. I am planning that these branches will grow a lot of leaves and additional branches creating a dense canopy near the bottom of the tree. For now, it looks a little weird but I can envision what the future tree will look like and it looks awesome!

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Something that I learned from wiring my Golden Gate Ficus is that it’s important to not wrap the wire too tightly around its branches. Ficus trees are fast growing trees and if wire is left on too tightly it can scar the tree. Unfortunately, this is what happened to me and my tree has some wire scaring on its thicker branches. There is nothing you can really do to fix this except let the tree grow. As the tree continues to grow it will start to cover up these scars. Sometimes these scars can be completely hidden and other times the scarring is too deep to cover up.

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Insects

For the first two years of growing bonsai trees, I managed to encounter no insect problems. However, for the past six months, I have been dealing with a springtail infestation. Springtails are tiny hexapods that feed on decaying plant matter. They are harmless to plants and humans. While they don’t pose any danger to myself or my plants they are annoying. Their ability to jump is insane. When I run my finger through the soil these little bugs jump all over the place trying to avoid my finger. You can learn more about springtails here.

In order to combat them, I used diatomaceous earth. This is a type of rock that has been ground into a fine powder that shreds an insect’s exoskeleton as they walk through it.

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In order for the diatomaceous earth to work effectively, you have to stop watering your plant. The soil has to be completely dry for this stuff to be effective. I made it to a week without watering my plants and gave up because they weren’t disappearing. The springtails were still running rampant so I decided it was time to water my plants again. Since then, I have decided I will just have to live with them for now until I find a better solution.

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I hope you enjoyed this guide about how to care for Golden Gate Ficus trees. This is one of my favorite trees and I can’t wait for the branches to finalize their positioning and for the root ball to produce more surface roots. I will keep you updated on any developments with this tree and all my other trees so stay tuned! You can find all these pictures and more in the Gallery. Also, check out the initial post about my Golden Gate Ficus collection and the posts about my medium and small cuttings!