my mom received a huge pot of miscellaneous plants for her 90th birthday 4 years ago. all others died but i managed to keep the one rubber tree plant. oh it grew but only tiny shoots with small leaves. it was in same large pot..14" i decided to uproot it all and make cuttings. I think i put cuttings in water to root. i did this successfully and gave them away in 4" pots to friends and family May 2016, keeping the top part for myself. all the ones i gave away...are looking marvelous with new leaf growth. one is my brother who is not a plant person and does nothing other than water his! Mine however is still sitting doing nothing. thinking the size of pot was making a difference. i transplanted mine from a 10" to smaller pot 8" Sept of this year. Still nothing is happening. it gets lots of lite. i watch watering carefully. should i transplant to a smaller pot 6"? when should i do this? i live in southern BC canada.
You probably just need to leave it alone and give it time. If you keep replanting it you are disturbing the roots each time and that will set the plant back some. Plus you appear to have a good sized part of the plant so the roots will take a while longer to settle in than a smaller cutting. The first few months to sometimes a year the plant is building it's root system, putting out new ones (and since they were rooted in water they need to develop the fine hairs that soil rooted plants have). The plant looks healthy so I wouldn't get overly concerned, just give it time. Also, it's a tropical plant which means it needs warmth, not just a certain amount of light to thrive. Make sure it isn't in a cool draft or right next to a cool window.
thank you for asking. my tree is still just sitting there being inactive. hopefully in spring i will see some new growth.
Just following up with good news!! My rubber tree plant has sprouted a new leaf I am so pleased. I had been away from home attending to my moms death and all the stuff that goes along with that. When I returned home I saw the new leaf!!! How memorable that as SHE passed her plant began to grow again!!! Took pic of new leaf but pic is too large to upload.
I'm sorry for your loss.. Glad to hear your tree has grown a new leaf, always exciting to see positive changes in your plants, especially the slow growing ones! I'm excitedly watching my ZZ plant sprouting a new leaf at the moment!
my rubber plant is growing tall and and i would like to have it more full. i heard that if you nip off the budding leaf at top...more shoots will come from stems. i did nip off a new budding leaf and nothing happened. another new leaf started on top shooting off from where I nipped before. how do i get the plant to be shorter and fuller rather than tall?
Lighting can be an issue when trying to encourage lower branches on young woody entities. If it is too low, the plant may just attempt to get taller, in search of more light. Nipping the growth tip will often just result in bifurcation and sometimes, as your plant showed, just one new tip. Neither of these results leads to "bushy." When snipping the tip, also remove some of the lower leaves where you would like new branches to grow. This does not guarantee what will happen, but makes it much more likely to match your goal than just waiting to see what happens without specific attempts to manipulate the growth. For more, check out a bonsai book or website.
thank you. the plants is in west facing window and gets lots of light. i will try nipping off top and remove couple lower leaves to see if that helps. just wonder how the greenhouses etc get them so bushy in planter pots they sell.
I live in an almost desert area in southern BC in Canada and it gets quite hot easily hi 20-30C (80-100F) and rarely low 40C (104F). I have a nice spot in corner back yard which gets morning sun and location gets shade late in morning. Wuld my plant thrive in those conditions and become more full?
That sounds like the conditions where I keep my Ficus elastica plants for summer. You can acclimate gradually to avoid sunburned leaves, especially since your plant does not have many. In addition to manipulative pruning (entire books are written about this,) age is a factor in regard to bushiness. At the beginning of this discussion about 18 mos ago, the plant in question was very small with just a few leaves. It could take a few years for it to get old and tall enough to make more than 1 stem/trunk. Potted plants that are bushy at a small size for sale in stores may just be multiple individuals potted together. Whenever yours is big enough to propagate a cutting, that could be an option for you too. It's difficult to offer more precise feedback without a new pic.
thanks purpleinopp i shall begin putting out plant mid to late afternoon and overnight for a day or so and see how it all works out. attached is updated picture.
