Have you fertilized the plant yet? It could be a nutrient deficiency.

Is there whitish deposit on the roots/lower trunk or just a photo?

Has it started to grow any young leaves and suddenly drop them before maturing?

have you fully checked for pests? Spider mites can be pretty common with these trees, but I've found they like to go after young fresh growth rather the mature leaves.

Any sticky substance on the leaves?

how do you water? And what do you fertilize with?

thanks for your advice!

It basically hasn't started to grow young leaves (or only very very little) for more than half a year or something. I check for spider mites regularly since I had some on another plant but I am pretty sure there are none on my big ficus. There is some white stuff on the roots that are visible, thats been there forever and feels dry.

From reading up on the really nice posts from tapla I think I might not have the best soil ('normal' soil, does not drain very fast), as well as probably been watering too much (just checked if the top of the soil is dry, not the bottom) and never washed the soil (also the last repot is probably 3 years ago). I guess I would start with that?

I am using some fertilizer every other week or so, special one for 'green' plants, 6-5-5

All I can say is that the white deposits are most likely salts build-up, and you probably suspect that by now. I would also agree that lack of good drainage is the problem. As for fertilizer, you probably also found out from reading Al's posts that fert. at 3:1:2 of NPK ratio is better for plants. If me, I would most likely shower whole plant, make sure all the soil is flushed. Let it dry, sitting it on bunch of newspaper or towels to help soaking away the excess water. It should be repotted, but the time may not be best to do that - I am sure you'll get better advice. It would be helpful if you add your general location or at least growing zone next to your name, it helps to give proper advice.

How much light does the tree receive? Can you take a photo of the tree showing how it's positioned near a window?

These trees need a lot of light to actually grow. Right in front of a large south facing window would do best.

If you've done nothing in the way of repotting, it's a good bet that your issues are at least in large part related to root congestion. The other advice about over/under-watering and a high level of salts in the soil or light issues aren't wrong, they're good information. It's just that root congestion is manifest in the symptom of loss of foliage proximal (toward the plant) to apices (the tips of branches where extension growth occurs).

The standard procedure for you would be to flush the soil, fertilize immediately after, then get and keep the amount of water in your soil under control until next June when you do a full repot.

If you have questions, details can be made available.

Al

thanks a lot for your help, I went ahead with flushing and fertilizing and will watch the water till a repot early next summer :) (I might get back with how best to do that, then as well as report how vital the ficus is)

I hope you DO stick around, or at least visit us from time to time with progress reports or issues that remain unresolved.

Al

Pete, I hope you don't mind a long post, but I want to share my little successes story in case it inspires you to take a few steps.

My benjamina is still in standard potting soil (until i repot next summer), and is badly rootbound and had lost all of those proximal leaves Al talked about. It had way too little light for a few years, was watered with hard water, rarely even tried to put out new leaves, and when it did they usually dried up before they grew. It was in a lot worse shape than yours before I decided to do some research about how to help it out.

After after using info from a lot of Al's/tapla's posts for a month, my poor benjamina has gone from a depressing waif to a bit of a maniac. Each branch and side branch has at least three new full sized leaves as well as two or three additional leaves that are just coming out. The new growth extends at least a few inches back from the ends of their branches, and even better, several new sets of leaves have appeared in the middle of the plant on completely bare branches and dead looking twigs. The silly thing is putting out enough growth that the soil is dry three or four days after watering, instead of the two+ weeks it did before.

Here's what I did, which took almost no money and very little time:

I flushed it thoroughly with lukewarm filtered tap water, ending with a few rounds of R/O water from a grocery store machine, drained thoroughly using the tilt method, gave it a diluted dose of MG general purpose fertilizer, and drained it again. Then I moved it right in front of a window and added 12 hours of light from bright white and daylight bulbs in movable lamps. From then on I've used sharpened dowels to tell when the soil at the bottom feels completely dry before watering, water with diluted fertilizer (but see below) until about a quarter of what I gave it had drained out, and do the tilt thing to get as much water out as possible.

AL/tapla, since we're talking about struggling rootbound benjaminas, I have a question:

I bought Foliage Pro on Amazon, and yesterday I was about to fertigate the larger benjamina and schefflera, both of which are badly rootbound, had lost their proximal leaves, and before last month hadn't had fertilizer in a loooong time, when I noticed this on the FP bottle:

"To Correct Mineral Deficiencies: For rootbound or deficient plants, use 1 tsp. per gallon of water for 2 or 3 waterings."

I thought this described these two plants perfectly, so I went ahead and gave them the stronger solution of FP. Was that the right thing to do? Should I follow the instructions and use the same concentration for the next few waterings?

Lenore

If you're flushing the soil when you're watering, it wouldn't be out of line to do that maybe every 3rd time you water. After that, maybe cut the dose in half (.5 tsp/gal) and fertilize every other time you water. I think it all depends on how often you want to fertigate. I'm still flushing the soil and using 1/4 tsp/gal every time I water during the winter, but there are other ways that would work well enough it's unlikely you'd see a difference in a side by side comparison. The key is that you use one of the several well-considered options. It's hard to go too far wrong when you're flushing the soil regularly and providing nutrients in reasonable amounts. When you're unable to water correctly is when your efforts are most likely to run off the rails.

Al

Al, I'm enough of a space case that it's much easier to do the same thing every time I water than have to remember what I did the last time, and the FP lives right under the sink where I water, so after two more rounds at the higher concentration every other week I'll fertigate at 1/4 tsp/gallon every time I water.

Here's a detail I've been confused about: When you say you flush every time you water, do you mean you water with fertilizer solution until 10-15% of it drains from the pot (in which case you'd do a more thorough flushing every month or so), flush with fresh water until 10-15% of it drains out and then fertigate, or flush with several times the capacity of the pot of fresh water before fertigating? Are they all basically equivalent? I'm fine with any of them; I just want to be sure that whatever I'm doing works for the plants!

I flush/fertigate at the same time. I use humidity trays as collection saucers on bigger plants, and white plastic dinner or salad plates for plants in smaller pots. They are set up like this:

Back to watering; I use a watering can like this:

Al

Thanks, Al, I'll stay the course and give everything the 1/4 tsp/gal solution every time, including the rootbound ones once they've had their initial treatment. All the plants dry much faster than they did before they started growing, but the soil still retains water so I'll flush all of them with plain water every month or two as a preventive measure.

I'd forgotten how happy I get when my plants are happy. I took them for granted in my old apartment, but it's hard to ignore the benefits here, where even a little work and the resulting improved greenery completely changes the feel of the place. All the extra light doesn't hurt, and the 5000K bulbs are so refreshing that I've changed out all the soft white bulbs in the living room for daylight bulbs, which I'm sure wil help with my winter blues. I'm also looking for some okay-looking lights to brighten some of the dark corners enough to support a few large plants.

I'd have to run a humidifier all day and night in a closed room to boost the humidity, so I'll just stick with plants that can live well in Salt Lake's dry summers and radiant heat in the winter. No fainting flowers for this gal!

Oh, and thanks for reminding me about the caulk nozzles. I think they'd fit my watering can's curved spout, so I'll stop by the hardware store next time I'm out.

Thanks again for all your help, Al! You da man!

well, its now been two weeks since the flushing and I did not water again, but still the top of the soil is slightly moist - is that normal? The pot has some distance to the collection saucer, sort of like in your first picture, Al. Feels like the ficus went into hibernate-mode or something...

That's not great news, Pete. Let's keep looking.

I just saw that we never found out how much light the plant gets. A big part of my plants' recovery was from moving them right next to the windows and setting up some bright lights shining on them all afternoon (when the natural light dropped off) and part of the evening. The plants started growing after the combination of changes, which also led them to draw more water from the soil.

Something else is whether there have been any changes in the plant's life (light, location, temperature, etc.) over the past year or so.

If the TOP of the soil is still wet/moist after 2 weeks, there's a serious problem. My plants are happiest when they actually need water every 1-4 days. I have all my tropicals indoors now, under lights, and they are on 2, 4, and 8 day schedules. I have a very few plants that get watered every 8 days, most (around 80) get watered every 4 days, and a very few in very small pots that get watered every other day. The 8 day plants are all succulents in larger pots that tend to like to rest during the winter.

I'd be taking steps to reduce the amount of water your soil can hold by using some of the tips you'll find if you Click This Link.

Al