名媛直播

Hello 名媛直播 Empire forum,
My name is Michael and I have just started out practicing the beautiful art of 名媛直播. I have been practicing for probably a little over a month now and have some questions about my tree. A little background info...

I purchased a 'starter kit' online from one of the many "puppy mills" of bonsai. A mistake I regret making, as this lead to me receiving a very infected, but yet still beautiful tree. I recieved my tree around the beginning of May. Over the course of a month I have battled against ground mealy bugs, spider mites and I believe some kind of black/brown spot. After trying many ways to rid of the ground mealy bugs and spider mites, I ended up repotting my ficus, adding completly new fresh soil. Specifically a tropical blend I purchased from bonsai outlet, seeing I wasn't exactly sure what all I would need in a soil blend. There description of the soil is "Our soil is a mix of 100% organic double-sifted compost mulch, Akadama, Turface?, coarse river sand, fine pine bark, and Frit. Contains over 28 vital trace elements". Now I know I might get some crap for repotting my ficus during this time of the year, but I decided it would probably give the tree the best chance of survival since it had bugs in the soil and was root bound as well, plus the soil it was in was terrible and had very bad drainage. I have also read that ficus species are also very tolerant of repotting any time of the year, if proper after care is given.

When I repotted my tree I had found two centipedes that had taken up shelter in my trees root system, I assumed that is what actually got rid of my ground mealy bug problem, thank god. I have read that centipedes are actually beneficial for trees, but was wondering is this actually so? Before I looked this up, I had already removed them from my ficus. The spider mites easily dissipated when I gave my ficus's canopy a nice shower. Then sometime later, another nice shower. Water works wonders.

After all of this, the tree had seemed to be doing well. No more signs of bugs, or anything that signaled a red flag. Until, I started seeing brown/black spots. I have posted pictures of what I mean (the first 4). Sorry if they are blurry, my phone camera couldn't focus enough.









I read that I should remove leafs that have spots like that and so I did. However, I was lenient, when I saw leaves that had spots like that, but small spots, I thought the leaf could rejuvenate itself. I figured out that it obviously couldn't. Basically seeing I wasn't aggressive enough with my removal of infected leafs, it had pretty much spread to all of the trees leaves. I was in shock when I saw it all over the place, not as bad as the first 4 pictures, but indeed black dots on the underside of the leaves. I read around to see what I should do, and saw on a couple of websites that some of these spot diseases can spread from the leaves into the stalks, and then down into the brances and then trunk. At that point, it is then a very bad problem. I went pretty hardcore and removed almost all of the leaves in fear of it spreading into the stalks and eventually killing the tree, so I thought that if I could stop the disease from spreading anymore, the tree could have a chance. This is the aftermath.



I know, it looks like a wasteland. However, just recently I have begin to see a lot of blooming leaves appear. In the middle of the next picture you should be able to see the leaf emerging.



There are many leaves growing now and look to be healthy. Sorry for such the long forum post, but I feel like it would be hard to understand what I'm dealing with unless you knew a little background info. So my questions are.

1) I was watering my ficus daily until I realized that this was keeping the soil basically soaked. I started watering now about every 2-4 days. I check the soil by sticking a toothpick down into the root system, if I pull up a lot of soil with it, It is usually moist and I can actually see moisture on the toothpick. But even at day 3 or 4 I can still see a little bit of moisture, so should I water when it gets to the point where little moisture is seen? Also I have topper rocks on my soil, which I believe has also been holding in moisture.
2) The black spots in the picture I am not sure what exactly this is, or how it was caused. I know it is hard to identify with blurry pictures and but any help with what this might be and how I could treat it better and or prevent it will be greatly appreciated.
3) Ive made a spray to possibly help treat/prevent the spot from spreading, I use 100% neem oil, Dyna Grow Pro-Tekt, and non-bacterial Castile Soap. All mixed together and sprayed onto the foliage. It seems to be working but any recommendations on using something else or another treatment method would be great.

Any advice in general to help increase my chances with keeping this tree alive will be greatly appreciated. Also a little more info.
I do not grow outside where I live (KY, USA). Instead I grow indoors and use a 150w HPS grow light which pumps out 16,000 lumens, I also use reflectors to reflect light onto the underside of my trees canopy. I keep the temperature inside around the high 70s. My ficus is sitting on a humidity tray. I have a small clip fan that is aimed towards my light, cooling it right below the light. Any suggestions will be appreciated, thank you for your time and have a good day.
Michael

Do you have an update on this? Has there been any improvement? I see that no one has responded as of yet.