Packing peanuts tend to make water perch in the soil above the "drainage layer" and are something of a nightmare at repot time, so I'd discourage you from using them. The ballast you need should allow a continuous column of soil that goes all the way to the bottom of the pot. Notice, in the picture above, that the PWT is the same ht in every picture. No matter if the soil was 12" deep or 12' deep, the PWT would be the same ht for a given soil. Also note how the volume of soil is reduced in C and D, reducing the volume of saturated soil considerable. If you build a ballast system in the bottom of the pot so there is only a VERY small amount of soil that CAN support perched water, you can eliminate it almost entirely. If you go too far and eliminate that soil column that extends to the pot bottom, you don't get the benefit because that causes the water to perch. If you pot up now, you don't want to mix the media in the pot because you'll have parts of the soil that are too wet and parts too dry. Your main purpose for the repot is to use a little science to get rid of the excess water retention until next summer when you can bare-root/repot with little concern about the plant's recovery time, which is an issue now. Yes - the soil I use for my trees is very gritty, which is prolly why people started calling it the gritty mix. The dime is about the same size as your dime. In many ways, it doesn't matter much how you implement the concept of using materials of larger particles to eliminate the limitations imposed by saturated soils, and pumice is a useable component. I probably have 50 ficus trees, and none show any evidence of oedema or any other symptoms of too much water in the rhizosphere, and I water most of them daily in the summer - not particularly because they need it, but because I can w/o concern about over-watering. This is a ficus a week after I defoliated it in July of '14. You can see the soil ...... It grew a lot before I took it in for the winter, so I pruned it back before it went indoors. This is the tree in spring, this year and here it is after defoliation and ready to grow some more I'm not sure where to find soil ingredients in Canada. Fir bark should be easy to find, but you must be careful that you don't buy a product that was ponded in salt water. Quartzite or cherrystone is mined in MN, but I don't know if it crosses the border into Canada. Look for the grit component at rural feed stores or grain elevators that cater to rural populations that raise fowl, and don't use crushed shellfish because of the salinity and high pH. Al

I think it looks fine. I would leave it alone and let it grow. The two branches with the stick for support will not fuse together without a whole lot of training. My recommendation would be leave it alone so it makes a nice thick and healthy plant. In the future if you are adamant that you want a single branch tree...try to buy one like that. These are slow growing if you keep them indoors and sometimes drop a few leaves when they adjust to being moved. Yours looks fine and is a nice specimen. Enjoy it!

I'd do a through flush of the soil when it's ready for water (use the dowel method to check). Put the tree in the tub and add 10x the water it would take to saturate the pot. Then let it drain while tilted at 45°. Get it closer to a window and it it wouldn't hurt to fertilize at the next watering after the flush. Ficus trees are super easy once you get down the basics. I started with a small 3 foot ficus Benjamina 2 years ago and knew nothing about what I was doing. i leaned a lot from Al and now my tree is 7 feet tall, very full and healthy in an 18" pot with the 5:1:1 and does really well. Ficus Benjamina has just about the same exact cultural needs as your ficus lyrata.

Try to get information in the houseplant section.