fertilizing banyan trees?

[terracore]

We have several youngish banyan trees on our empty lot.  Now that all the ohia trees around them have died from ROD I want to encourage their growth.  The host trees have died.

Any ideas?

[My 2 cents]

I have found that they do quite well with no encouragement at all. Keeping them in check, from taking over everything or killing them when they do is the difficult part.

I'd bet that they would gobble up whatever kind of fertilizer you gave them. I would consider it a waste of time and money, but to each his own.

I know, not much help.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

I agree with My 2 cents.  My property had several large banyan trees that prevented other trees from growing properly, so I removed them.  I thought.  I'm still regularly cutting regrowth 21 years later.
Fertilizer would help smaller banyans get off to a faster star and provide shade sooner.  Again, as My 2 cents suggested, most likely any fertilizer would get gobbled up.

[tada]

I agree. Can sow other fast growing trees right around and watch the banyan wrap its tentacles and squeeze the life out of them.
I wish I could find bay leaf tree seedlings which looks something like a smaller banyan but has wondaful smelly leaves?

[terracore]

Right now the banyans are doing battle with strawberry guava. Not sure who to put my money on.

[My 2 cents]

They will act like they are competing, but it's just a ruse. They will actually be teaming up against you!

[terracore]

One of the banyan had grown on a big ohia. The ohia died of ROD and tried to fall over, but the banyan is holding the corpse up at a 45 degree angle, partly because the ohia hit a strawberry guava. I don't understand tree politics, but I know not to walk under that ohia.

[My 2 cents]

So your banyan is devouring an ohia and you still want to feed it more?  Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Banyan vs. waiwi....banyan will ultimately win the war.  Banyan will grow taller and thus shade out and strangle with it's tentacles anything under it.  Waiwi will spread from it's fruit, banyan will spread from it's root, so if left unchecked they will compete in this manner until they take over your entire property.

Banyan will provide more shade and provide a place for your treehouse or swing.  Perhaps other uses that I'm not aware of.

Waiwi - The obvious is the delicious fruit that can be eaten fresh or made into preserves or wine or other things.  The wood can be very useful around the farm for many things and when burned it has a nice non-oily smoke.

One of the worst things about the banyan is that it will send it's root very long distances to find the fertilizer in your gardens and fruit trees.

If it's a choice, I'd go with the waiwi.

ETA: If you do decide to cut the banyans down, be very careful. They are difficult to judge when and where they will fall because you never know which part of the trunk (or trunks) will be the "key". The bigger they get, the bigger this hazard becomes.

[terracore]

I don't know if I'm looking at anything that dramatic. The neighbor has a banyan tree on their property that looks to be up to 100 years old and it's pretty confined. I think the lack of soil and nutrients in OLE is self limiting. There is nice clear area around the tree, maybe 30 feet from the tree itself, then after that it's mostly junk invasives. The ohia lived outside the clear zone without any issues until ROD showed up. The area around the banyan in the clear zone was mostly full of bamboo orchids, it looked sort of like a magical place, then the pigs came in and scraped the area around the tree bare.

I'm not worried about runners, the trees are about 1000' from anything that I care about, and wouldn't reach anything within my lifetime.

[Obie]

Don't encourage them !
It's a big weed !