Thank you for all the advice! Crazy enough this morning when I woke up I went straight to my fig to check the status of my leaf and it was back down in normal position and no longer bent in. I hadn’t done anything at all to it yet, so not sure what was with the tantrum. To answer your questions..My fig sits in the corner with two windows. So gets light from north and west. I live in an apartment in Chicago with no south facing windows at all. Jeanne I water in the kitchen sink with a good soaking until the water runs out of the bottom for a bit. Still I’m never sure exactly how long I should water for, it’s always a stressful moment for me. Do you have any rule of thumb of measurements or length of time to water? I definitely am going to pick up that dyna gro fertilizer you mentioned. Also any advice on the red dots on the undersides of the leaves? Another question is... ever since I brought home the fig it has had some damage on the bottom leaves. Most likely from people being careless with it at Home Depot... should I prune those leaves off? Are they harmful to my plant? I will provide photos. Eventually when it grows more I would like it to be more of a tree form than bush. Which is another thing I need to learn how to do... but baby steps here. Looking forward to any and all responses! Thank you!

Al Tapla would you be able to tell me what is wrong with mine? I've had this tree four four years and never had any trouble with it but now I am killing it! I wanted it to grow more branches so I pruned it and moved it to a sunny-er spot and added grow lights and started fertilizing more regularly. Next thing I know, it's getting yellow blotches all over the leaves and sometimes red speckles and tiny pin holes. I found spider mites on a different plant, but I couldn't see any on this one, but I hosed it off and sprayed with dish soap in case it was mites. Then the soil was soaked and wouldn't dry and a week and a half later this leaf turned black and dry in the center. I thought maybe it was because the soil was wet too long. I freaked out, so just yesterday I did a full repot (never done this before) and added perlite and orchid bark mix to potting mix to get a grittier faster drying mix. I also cut off half of the leaves. It really doesn't look too happy today (droopy leaves and soft stems and even more red speckling on new leaves) I don't know if it's been given too much light, too much fertilizer, too much water, or is infected with mites, or all of the above. Anything you can suggest? The tiny pin-holes make me think mites are one the table but I hate to stress it out more if it's not that.

Plants that are struggling seldom give you cuttings that will root, so it's a good bet that any attempt at starting cuttings would be an exercise in futility. New leaves on ficus are typically a lighter shade of green than more mature leaves, and it's not unusual for anthocyanin to express itself (the purple pigment dots) in new leaves. It will fade as the leaves mature. If the image represents the roots current condition, I don't see why your tree shouldn't recover quickly, though you might have slowed recovery down if you didn't keep roots dripping wet throughout the procedure. It only takes a minute or two for fine roots to dry out and die. Closing your tree up with only a low light source might well have caused a corky layer to form where the leaf attaches to the stem. This is called an abscission layer because it's the point at which the leaf abscises (separates from the plant). Once this layer starts to form, it's not reversible, so some of the lower leaves might still be shed. You have a LOT of leaves on the plant for the root system to keep hydrated, so you might also see additional shedding as a drought response due to a compromised root system. This would be do to the repot, but the roots drying out during the repot would add to your shedding woes. You could remove some lower leaves or just let the plant decide what it needs to do to balance the top to what the roots can keep supplied with moisture. As long as you don't over-water (moist or damp as a wrung out sponge is what you should aim for) your plant should do the rest. When you're sure it's pushing new growth, you should start fertilizing. HOW you fertilize, solution strength and frequency, depends on your soil and how you water. Key, is your choice of soil and making sure your watering habits are appropriate. If you're able to water to beyond the saturation point, so you're flushing the soil when you water. without the plant having to suffer because the soil remains soggy for extended periods, you already have half of the battle won. Al

That FLF needs TLC. High light, high humidity to kickstart growth. Also your plant looks strange like it's a cutting or something. I'm kind of puzzled by the the leaf pattern. Did it have more leaves at one point or is this how you got the plant as? If the plant doesn't have any buds that are alive you may also be out of luck. Either the meristem or auxiliary buds have to be alive for new growth to happen.