F. benjamina is an upright plant with pendulous/weeping branching, which is why its common name is 'weeping fig'. If it is laying over in the pot, it could be one of 4 things. A) It was somehow allowed to establish in the container while it was leaning. B) There has not been enough light for the tree to grow with enough vitality to lay down cells in the cambium as it was extending (not enough light to grow fatter as it was reaching for more light), which could cause the tree to 'flop over' due to a thin, weak trunk. C) There is a root problem - roots dying/rotting so the tree is poorly anchored in the soil. 4) Mechanical damage or purposeful removal of the main leader, forcing a secondary scaffold branch to attempt to assume the role of new leader. In any of these cases, you should NOT "... add soil around the base and firm it up." I wouldn't take the time to mention this if it did not carry with it the potential to damage or kill the tree. The root epidermis and cortex is similar to bark and cambium, except the epidermis/cortex is adapted to conditions underground. Bark is not. Adding soil that covers the basal flare (where the tree fattens as roots start appearing and disappear into the soil) can cause bark to rot, exposing the cambium & destroying the vascular connection to the canopy. It also invites any one of a number of cankers and sets the stage for invasion of Pythium (damping off) and Phytophthora (crown rot) diseases. Assume none of these things are good. ;o) Al

@JMJ 4Life Really sorry to learn about your tree. I assume some part of the root mass is fused, so the soil/root mass remains intact like so: If the answer is yes, unpot the plant and set the root/soil mass on a stack of newspapers, rags, old towels, dry sponges - something that will PULL excess water from the soil. Allow it to rest on the wicking material for an hour or two before returning it to the pot it fits. Use a wooden "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water, because with no water loss from foliage, the plant will require very little water. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips in order to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions - which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma and creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

As a comercial propagator I always look for methods that will produce a great number of plants with the least time spent per plant. in the case of these two plants division & cuttings are time effecient so I have not been interested in production from seed. If it is curisity only motavating the use of seed then both are tropical/subtropical plants. therefor not likely to have a required cold period. soaking seed in water MAY help. covering the seed & soil temp 75-80F MAY be needed for germination. let us (me) know the conditions for germination if you have any luck.

I have a bottle of neem oil just in case. I used that for thrips one time and it worked very well. i also did carry the tree the same way you speak of. im aware it'll lose leaves, but, to be fair, since the sun has been shifting, it's lost a bunch of leaves already. All older leaves on the inside. At the beginning of summer, it got 10 hours of direct light. Now that the sun has shifted, it's only getting about half that as the house blocks it the rest of the day. It's kind of light it's slowly being acclimated to less direct sun in preparation to return indoors. the window it'll be in front of again faces the south. It's just grown so bushy that there's no way for the light to penetrate the opposite side. I'm hoping the added lights help. I'll still continue to rotate 1/4 turns weekly though.