Welcome to this article that will be talking about how you can trim a ficus tree growing outdoors. This is one of the less popular trees to have at home, but definitely a great option for those who want a fulfilling garden.
The ficus tree will not be growing that quickly so trimming won’t be necessary more than once per year or so. The ficus tree will have pretty large leaves and the branches aren’t that large either and will be easy to start trimming.
Below we will go a little bit more in-depth into the process of trimming the ficus tree. As we said this is a great option for gardeners. It can be grown indoors even all year round and will produce some fruit.
How To Trim A Large Outdoors Ficus Tree
So the ficus tree is not the fastest growing tree out there, so trimming won’t be required that much during the year or its lifetime really. We recommend trying to keep the trimming of the tree to the last part of the season.
The tree should have already been harvested from all the figs in order to not have any waste. Trimming a tree causes stress. So in order to have all the figs ripen properly we start trimming the tree afterward.
The tree will also shed all the leaves and get ready for the colder months, making trimming now the perfect time. Depending on the look you want on your ficus tree you can shape the tree quite a lot without worrying about killing the tree.
It’s a pretty hardy variety despite not being grown that much in colder and northern climates. But we still keep some guidelines around this, the tree shouldn’t be trimmed more than about 1 fourth of its total size.
Keeping it moderate like that will ensure you have a happy tree coming back the next year too. Try to make the branches have a more bushy appearance. That’s often done by cutting the branches where new offshoots are coming out. That way we get rid of one branch, and have two new ones coming out instead.
If your ficus tree is starting to turn yellow then you need to read this article here, Yellow Ficus Tree.
What Do You Do With An Overgrown Ficus Tree
An overgrown ficus tree might not be the easiest to fix. Depending on how far the tree has grown will decide how hard we can trim it. We need to cut back the tree quite a lot in order to keep the growth in moderation and actually have a nice-looking tree too.
We recommend that you don’t cut off more than 1 fourth of the tree each year. But if it’s severely overgrown and doesn’t look that great, you can bump that up to about 1 third instead.
The time of the year that this should be done is at the end of the summer. At this point, all the figs should have ripened and been harvested. The tree will at this point start getting ready for the colder months coming.
If your ficus tree is not growing then you should probably start to read this article here, Ficus Not Growing.
Can You Hard Prune A Ficus
You can definitely hard prune a ficus tree. The tree will be growing rather slowly and to keep it in moderation we should also prune the tree enough to keep a steady growth.
We recommend not pruning the tree more than 1 fourth each year. That way We can keep the growth in line with what it should be. If you are seeing a worse effect on the tree after pruning, then note you should do slightly less next time.
