No, this isn’t Frankenstein, this is Ficus. The Royal Ficus, to be specific. 
Today I checked on the greenhouse trees and saw good results. The Royal Ficus is pushing out lots of new growth, and one of the natalensis cuttings is pushing roots out of its styrofoam cup. 

Here’s that picture:

If there is constant moisture on the floor of the setup, the roots will continue to grow. I could place it onto a pot of soil to let the roots run into that instead, but for now I’ll let them go.

As for the Royal Ficus, it pushed an aerial root long enough for me to work with. Here’s the root:

So I took a straw and cut it in half:

Cutting the straw in half is crucial because it helps you remove the straw after the root roots in the soil. Otherwise you’d have to carefully cut the straw off the root. Straws help you guide aerial roots into the soil, so I placed the root into the straw and moved it into position:

You have to be careful not to break the root. The bend I created is cutting it close, but we should be fine. Make sure you keep the inside of the straw moist so that the root can keep growing.

We’ll let that keep growing and I’ll update when it finally does hit the soil.
Ryan

I’ve been getting notifications every now and then that I would get a new follower on this blog and I’d think “Oh, that’s neat.” I checked my follower count tonight and I’m up to over 50?! You all are cool, thanks for that!

I gotta be honest with you all, I’ve been doing really well with not buying any trees, but last week I cracked and bought one. Just a small one. A little Willow Leaf Ficus with some nice flaring to the base. I’m currently in talks with the seller on eBay as when it arrived the soil was bone dry. Not an ounce of water to it. The pot was wrapped in plastic, but it’s kinda pointless when there’s nothing actually keeping the soil wet.

Here’s the little guy. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the winter, I have no lights or anything. Should be interesting…

And I am planning on chopping here at this red line IF I can get those bottom branches to come back to life. The shipping without water thing certainly didn’t help them.

It should make for a pretty sweet little shohin one day. But until then, it’s a fun little project. My first in a while….