Long story short....I rescued a braided Ficus tree about 3ft tall. The kind you can buy in Home Depot, Walmart. It was in a office in a pot with NO holes and sitting in stagnant water. Chances are It won't make it since it has already sucked up all that anerobic bacteria. But if I can rescusitate it I was wondering how would I go about doing a Bonsai with it? Just chop off the top, seal it and wait and see?
Chopping off a braided Ficus tree
Trees don't suck up anaerobic bacteria, but the anaerobic conditions inherent in soggy soils do kill roots, which commonly causes trees to die of thirst, even in a sea of plenty.
You'd be charged with the responsibility of getting your tree into a highly aerated soil to promote healthy root growth/function/metabolism as the key to getting the tree back to a place where it has the energy reserves to withstand any kind of significant work, and a trunk chop is VERY significant work.
If things are as bad as you make them sound, it seems like an emergency repot, which includes bare-rooting the plant and pruning all roots back to viable tissue and getting the tree into a suitable soil is job 1. Getting the soil right is KEY. I can't emphasize enough, how important your choice of soil is to the o/a well-being of any conventional planting, and especially to plants in shallow containers like bonsai.
For a better understanding: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1073399/
Al
Thanks tapla! That's what I was thinking, Chopping it off will be down the line if I can bring it back from the brink. When I pulled it out of the plastic pot with "no holes" It made the sound of a plunger in a clogged toilet ewwwww! And then the stench that followed was overwhelming ewwwwwwwwww again. Good to know that trees don't soak up the anaerobic bacteria. I'll take a look at that link you provided, again thanks for responding.
Okay, pulled stinky out of his temporary office waste basket and hosed off the roots. I was surprised to see what looked like 3 skinny Ficus cuttings braided together with very few fine hair like roots coming out the sides. One of the 3 is already completely dead. Doesn't look like it will make much of a Bonsai since there is no interesting root formation, but a challenge never-the-less :)
You never know ..... All good bonsai are unique and not cookie-cutter imports. If you're able to return the tree to a state of good vitality, who knows what kind of unique trunk you'll be left with after the dead wood has been carved away or rotted away on its own. I've had lots of trees with good potential that I had to look at seriously, dozens of times over 2-3 years before the tree revealed to me what it wanted to be (how it wanted to be styled. Many of my bonsai friends have related the same story. To be honest, once you're at a more advanced level of ability, the only thing that would be important at this point are the roots and basal flare. You can ALWAYS build a good Ficus if you have those two things going for you ...... oh, and a viable (alive) healthy tree is good, too. ;o)
Al
"a viable (alive) healthy tree is good, too" yup, that is the challenge. I'll take a pic of stinky tree when I get home :)