Here are a few photos:

Very late spring - like around Father's Day or just before the summer solstice is the best time to repot - even in FL. Days are longest & sun most intense, so the plant is growing robustly and has already had opportunity to store some energy to push new growth after the repotting. In FL, you can safely repot through the month of Aug, but beyond that it would be better, but not a requirement, if you waited until next summer.

You're over-watering or there's a high level of salts in the soil.

If it was mine:

I'd repot - which is much more extensive than potting up, as it includes bare-rooting and a change of soil - and a soil you can water correctly w/o worry about limitations associated with extended periods of saturation or wrecked root health is much to be preferred. After repotting, I'd secure the tree(s) so they can't move in relation to the pot, and site them outdoors dappled or open shade, preferably out of the wind, and watch them back-bud. After they start pushing new growth, I'd apply an appropriate fertilizer.

Questions?

Al

Al,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I have a couple of questions:

You said you'd repot if it were yours, would you do it now or wait until late Spring? Would you separate any of the plants into a different pot, or keep them together? What kind of soil do you recommend, what should I look for when purchasing?

Thank you again!

Hi g8trgirl5 and Al! I was just about to make a thread with almost all of the same issues. I hope it's okay if I add onto this thread instead of making my own since this situation seems similar to mine. I've been reading Al's posts on watering and soil and think I probably need to repot too.

I've only had my tree (really, three different stalks in one pot) for a week and a half. I got it from Home Depot and I could see a few brown spots on leaves of one of the stalks but the rest of the stalks looked healthy. After bringing it home, I only gave it a "sip" of water as the soil seemed moist when I did the dowel test (with a bamboo knitting needles).

The browning of the leaves has spread significantly over the past few days.

This was one of the stalks 4 days ago:

Today:

A couple of the bottom leaves fell when I touched them, and the browning has begun on the other stalks. Now that it has dried out, I'm planning to water it thoroughly by flushing it out in the tub with water and tilting it to try to get this moisture-retaining soil to drain. Maybe the soil has accumulated too much salt. Should I fertilize it with Dynagro 9-3-6 after watering?

Could this browning be the plant going into shock from the move to my apartment?

I'm also worried that the browning is due to root rot from this soil. If this is root rot, should I repot it into the gritty mix or the 5-1-1 mix? I would completely get rid of the soil it is in (which looks similar to the picture the OP posted). Does it matter whether I use a clay, glazed ceramic, or plastic pot?

As for light conditions, I have it near bay windows with very bright but filtered light from the West and Northwest. I'm in San Antonio (Zone 8 - south/central Texas). Should I take it out onto our shaded walkway/balcony after repotting? What direction should should it face? It frequently reaches 100 degrees F here, so I am worried that this summer heat might be too hot.

Finally, I am also thinking to separate the three plants into three pots. What size pot should I use?

My apologies for all of these questions, and my sincere thanks to anyone who can help answer them!

Hey, I actually have a very strong and tall fiddle leaf, but recently have started picking up cheap stray fiddle leaf figs to rehab for friends that want them. I found a few at Home Depot in Houston but one had such bad root rot and the other, a girl actually stole out of my cart. So I only had one to play with. I would completely remove all of the existing soil and repot into 5-1-1. That works best for my plants. I would put it in clay/terra cotta for sure, I'm not sure what size pot those three are in currently, but I have separated my double planted figs from HD into 10-in pots (I think, it might be 12-in but I doubt it).

I would wait to fertilize until it shows signs of growth, and Dynagro is the best. Whatever you do, get it out of that soil and get it into a pot that can drain better and doesn't have an attached saucer. I'm not sure if the leaf browning is from the moisture of the soil or something else. Definitely don't give plants "sips" of water either. There's a lot on here about salt build up. Do some searching around. I wish I could help out more, but I really need to work today! ...sigh...I need to open a plant nursery!

Since I regularly work in San Antonio, and I want more strays, which HD did you get your fig from? It actually looks pretty good as far as the ones I've seen from there.

Hi Christina!

Thank you so much for your comment. After reading around on these forums about the bad state of plants from HD, I decided to just cut my losses and return the plant to the store. I did some research and decided to repot into the gritty mix, but even during the one day it took to acquire the potting ingredients, the FLF got a lot worse. I worried that the root rot/salt deposits might have been too bad, and since I'm a beginner I didn't want to invest so much money in making the new soil mix and have a failing tree. In fact, when I picked it up to return it I noticed maggots on the saucer!

However, I'm sure you could give some plants some TLC and have them recover. There were still a few FLFs available. The Home Depot was off of 281 and 410 at 435 W Sunset Rd, San Antonio, TX 78209.

When I was returning it to the store, the employee told me that all of their FLFs were in bad shape and she thought it was because they had moved the plants indoors to the middle of a big aisle where people kept jostling and bruising them. I'm sure the soil had something to do with it but she said the soil looked fine.

So...this was a disappointing foray into having something more difficult than a pothos or snake plant (my current thriving plants). However, at least I learned a lot through this forum and can repot them into Al's suggested mixes! I plan to buy a tree that's in better condition from a local nursery here.

Hey thepleiades,

I actually used to frequent that HD all of the time when I lived nearby. It was probably a better decision to return it instead of breaking your heart spending so much time on it for one of your first more difficult plants. If you're ever in Houston, Houston Interior Plants has some of the healthiest stuff I've ever seen. They're pretty pricey, but damn does my FLF look good. When I bought it ($150), I thought it was outrageous, but I went to a bunch of nurseries in Portland OR and around here and they were all much more expensive for not as well maintained trees... now I am running an FLF shelter, lol