1) By volume 2) An entire book could be written about how to water. The best way to water is: Add enough water to ensure the entire soil mass is moist/damp. Wait a few minutes, around 10, and water again so at least 15-20% of the total volume of water applied exits the pot. The pot should not rest in the effluent because this provides a pathway for the salts you flushed from the soil to make their way back into the pot. With a pathway back into the pot, the level of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil solution quickly reaches a state of isotonicity (balance) with the level of dissolved solids in the effluent, negating your efforts to flush the soil. I set my pots up on pieces of plastic channel so they are well above any effluent that drains into the saucer. The water in the collection saucer usually evaporates within a day or two, but how quickly that occurs depends on factors like RH, air movement, and temps. 3) It depends on the plant. Some plants get divided & repotted, but for most plants I like to repot in an appropriate month (usually June) by bare-rooting, root pruning, and transplanting into an appropriate soil. For my own purposes, I consider an appropriate soil to be one I can water to beyond saturation - so I'm flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids (mineral salts) each time I water, w/o my having to worry about root rot or depressed root function over long periods (days) because the soil tends to remain soggy interminably. 4) The worse your soil is, the more advantage pots made of unglazed clay or other gas permeable materials provide. Soils like these already have excellent gas exchange due to meritable air porosity, so the advantage in using gas permeable pots is reduced, but not absent. 5) The 1:1:1 ratio should serve you well indoors/Boston. Because my focus is primarily on bonsai, I grow a lot of plants in small soil volumes. I generally water on a 4 -5 day rotation, but I have a half dozen plants I water lightly after 3 days, then again on the 4th or 5th day. Last week, RH was very high, and the heating system didn't run much, so the interval was stretched to 6 days - same this week, it appears. The fast draining soils are a big help to me in that they allow me to water on a schedule instead of on a plant by plant basis. I enjoy nurturing and doing creative things with plants, but the thought of having to keep track of a watering program on a plant by plant basis isn't appealing to me. I noticed that you're 'following'. I appreciate that - thank you. Al

Pictures would help a lot; include the whole plant and one of the pot and soil. What did you do when you put it in the 17 inch pot? Put the existing rootball in the pot and surround it with fresh soil or remove the old soil and replace it? What kind of soil was it in and what kind of fresh soil was it? Was it rootbound? It's possible the new pot is too big, making the soil stay very wet for too long, causing roots to suffocate for lack of air to pull oxygen from. If so, the easiest remedy would be to put it back in the old pot and wait until June to repot in a faster draining highly aerated soil that would be harder to overwater. Meanwhile, check out the posts upthread about watering, using a dowel to check soil moisture, and the kinds of soil and light conditions lyratas do best in, and start to water only when the soil at the bottom is the pot is dry. Lenore

Some things to consider: * I don't know what USDA zone you're in, but your plant is right next to the radiator. As the radiator warms the room air, the relative humidity of the newly warmed air drops precipitously, so much so that the air becomes drier than the air in the Sahara Desert ...... and this holds true even if you have a humidifier in the room. So that's a problem. * Your plant is in a cache pot. If you're not emptying the cache pot every time you water, your plant is sitting in the salt-laden effluent (waste water) that exits the drain hole. This is a problem on several fronts. It causes soil saturation that leads to drought stress; it causes an increase in dissolved solids (salts) that makes water uptake and movement throughout the plant difficult; it raises media pH; and it compounds the low relative humidity issue in the immediate vicinity of the radiator. At a minimum, your plant's pot should sit above any effluent collecting in the cache pot. * Dave asked, "How often and how much are you watering? How are you insuring its time to water?" The question is so important it's worthy of repeating, so I'll ask that you answer, too; and, I suggest you read about using a "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water. More on that below. * The symptoms aren't consistent with what minor stress might be associated with a move. Generally, leaf loss due to a new home is related only to the leaf loss that might occur as a result of diminished photo load (light intensity, or in some cases - duration of exposure), though a move during cold weather can be immediately damaging such that leaf loss might occur within 1-2 weeks. Low temps and especially sudden exposure to cold drafts often causes leaf loss within a week or two, but usually leaves are still green when they fall - unless they showed necrotic areas before exposure to chill. This should be helpful (click link). 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 air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It 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'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends 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 comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

I have a healthy fiddle that I've had to repot twice now. It's now in a mix of roughly half Ocean Forest Fox Farm potting soil and half pine bark fines. If I were to redo it I would do the 3-1-1 that my Japanese Maples are in - 3 parts partially composted pine bark fines (with the sap wood stuff picked out), 1 part Ocean Forest potting soil, and 1 part perlite. Then I add about 1 Tbsp organic garden lime per gallon of finished mix, and Osmocote time release fertilizer per instructions on label. Personally, and I may be wrong here, but if your fiddle is pushing new growth then I would feel perfectly ok with repotting it at that time. I've had that issue before where new leaves seem susceptible to bugs and disease. I drench all the leaves in neem oil when that happens. But I think that leaf being puny indicates something else - maybe that it's time for a repot? Also, and take this with a grain of salt, I hack the roots when I repot. I'm not very judicious about it, taking about 30% to 40%. I use my super sharp garden scissors that I sterilize with Lysol (yes, aerosol Lysol). I cut away a certain amount mass-wise, then take care to also cut any wrap-around roots, "hooked" roots, and portions of thicker roots (to encourage growth of feeder roots). I do try to keep my hose sprayer on mist while I'm working and mist the roots pretty frequently but only to keep them moist. I work fast. Then I put it in the new pot and start filling with my mix. I pull the tree up slightly after every few scoops and try to make sure the root area doesn't have any air pockets. When I'm finished I water to eliminate any pockets I missed. I err on the side of caution and don't put soil around the root crown. Two things: I would take that small tree at the base out if possible. You can plant that in the current pot and see how it grows. If it's attached to the actual root of the larger tree (if it's just another node and not a separate tree) then I don't know, I'd probably keep it attached. Also, I would start pruning the canopy now. You can make more fiddles from the cuttings. I just plop my cuttings (of about two leaves) in moistened peat moss, put them in a well lit but protected shady area, and keep them moist. They will root. I dip them in rooting hormone first to make myself feel better. I usually do cuttings of about two leaves at a time like this. The benefit is that you will get branching from your main tree if you prune it, which is what you want. Mine started off like yours and now I have a real canopy. I'm about to prune at least four or five branches this month when the weather gets more consistently warm. I like to prune fiddle branches when I can leave the branch with two leaves and have two leaves to plant as cuttings. If your fiddle is pushing new growth I wouldn't time my repot by when I fertilized it last. But I wouldn't fertilize again for two weeks after the repot. Let the roots grow first into the new mix. Personally I'd go larger than an eight inch pot for the repot. I've included some pics of mine. It's about four feet tall and, like yours, started out as a single trunk tree. I've also included pics of several of the branches that I intend to prune in the next few weeks. Tomorrow I will post pics of a fiddle I'm trying to save. You'll be surprised. I hacked literally every single leaf off of it to get some back budding. Hopefully in a month I will see some results. It's nerve racking but I thought, why not try it?