i would be interested in seeing pix of your plants.. if you dont mind ...

otherwise it sounds like you ought to be propagating new plants ... so eventually you can get rid of your problem plants when such occurs ...

also;.... where are you.. big city name.. do you mean they are outside year around??? ... if so.. why potted then ... if they do come in the house for winter.. they will eventually get too large for the house.. so thats another reason to plan ahead ...

no plant holds its leaves forever.. so you are spot on.. with thinking that eventually yours will outgrow what you call their perfection .. sooner or later ... so you may as well plan ahead .. and use your cuttings for a future use ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Ficus+Lyrata+propagation&t=ffcm&iax=videos&ia=videos

Hi Ken

Thank you for taking the time
I live in an apartment in a warm country so the winters are mild. Im really not too interested in propagating merely just maintaining the large trees long term with pruning and root work.

Which is why i have the concern - when they reach the size i want, what will happen with it growing new leaves ?

The outfit where I used to get my hair cut had a FLF about 20 ft away from the storefront and behind a wall, think 'dark corner'. It had branches 10 ft long, propped up by chairs. I talked them into allowing me to prune it next time I needed a trim and move it to right in front of the storefront which was on the south elevation. I also fertilized and added about 8" of 5:1:1 mix to the bottom of the pot, gave them a 'tell' and told them how to water I didn't want to go thorough repotting it for free, so I 'sort of' potted up. I think I did the work in May of '19. I pruned the top back to a single node above the top branch, and each of 3 branches back to 2 nodes. When I came back in July, new branches had erupted from every node on the stubs I left as branches (2 nodes on each) and from the single node at the top.

After I pruned it, there were no leaves on the tree. They agreed it would be no loss if the tree didn't recover from the hard work, but fortunately it did. They have since closed the business, so I have no idea if someone salvaged the tree or the landlord hauled it to a landfill or dumpster, but it was doing about as good as can be expected in consideration of how root-bound it was.

In bonsai, we partially defoliate the outer edge of the canopy to allow sunlight and air movement to reach suppressed and adventitious buds within the canopy outline. This allows us to prune out the heavy branching and allow the new interior buds to grow out. It also adds taper to the branches, which adds significantly to the illusion of great age.

I'm not sure how you'll choose to manage maintaining the tree's size. Your choice is to thin the foliage to promote back-budding, or periodically cutting the tree back hard and working your way through the do-over. In all honesty, you'd have a much easier job of it if you were to choose another species of Ficus, even F elastica would be a better choice if you're sold on the big leaves. I would encourage you to try the same thing with something like F microcarpa or nitida, both of which are strong/fast growers.

Al

Hi Al! Its a shame there is no way of knowing how the plant progressed.
I think youre right its not the best plant for what i want. I already see the older leaves are looking worn out. Honestly when i bought them i had no idea i would be able to keep them alive let alone have so much success (they nearly died before finding your posts and soil mixes).

If i may ask - im trying to make the gritty mix after the success of the 5-1-1 but i cannot source turface anywhere (i dont live in the US). I can get pumice, small lava rocks and broken terracotta (unfortunately its 1-2cm). Would any be a good substitute for turface? Would i have to add more of these to make up for the fact that they have less water retention than turface?
Many thanks!

If you live in Europe, 'Seramis' is a calcined clay, just like Turface, so makes a perfect substitute. Calcined diatomaceous earth is also a suitable substitute. If you can find or screen pumice to a size range of 2.5-4mm (1/10 - 5/32") you can substitute that, but, since pumice has no internal porosity (holds less water than Turface), you'd probably need to use somewhere around twice as much pumice as you would Turface, so:

2 parts pumice

1 part crushed granite or cherrystone in grower or #2 size

1 part bark 1/8-3/8

Al

That was useful I will get on my search for Seramis now!

Btw while I am testing replacement options for the soil, what is the water retention % i should be looking for for the final gritty mix? I read somewhere you wrote around 10-12% is this still correct?