Hi all, I desperately need help saving my fiddle leaf fig! I purchased her (Precious) about a month ago and things seemed to be going OK. Within this time she even grew three new leaves. I noticed several brown spots and thought I might be overwatering so held off. We also have had a heatwave so the blinds have been closed in the house and she wasn’t receiving as much sun. Within a few days I noticed she was covered in big brown/black spots and starting to lose leaves. I gave her a big dose of water and left her outside to get some light. With warm weather predicted I left her out overnight. Of course an unpredicted thunderstorm came though. I brought her back in as soon as I could and moved her to another room where the blinds could stay open. She lost 4 more leaves. Now the worst thing happened - my dog got to her. I came home yesterday to find the whole bottom branch destroyed. My dog is ok but Precious is not - she lost 5 more leaves today. My question now is is there anything I can do to save her? I have attached pictures of Precious when I brought her home and today. This is my first FLF so I could use all the help I can get. Thanks in advance, Ashleigh

Hello! I am very lost and in need of help! I have no experience on fiddle leaf fig trees other than the overwhelming amount of information on the website. I was given my fiddle leaf fig tree as a gift for Christmas. My husband bought it on Craigslist and kept it in a dark garage for about 2 weeks to hide it from me. Uh oh. It's been 5 months and I just can't figure out how to make my tree happy. In the past 5 months about half it's leaves, mostly towards the bottom, have turned yellow with brown edges and have fallen off. 2 new healthy leaves have grown at the top and 1 not so healthy looking leaf. It is near a NW (mostly W) facing window and gets plenty of indirect light. From reading online, I assumed the yellow leaves were due to overwatering. In the beginning I was giving it 1 cup of water a week, and have tried to adjust depending one soil moisture. I just cannot figure out a good watering schedule. Most recently I've gone 2 weeks without watering it and it seems to be still moist near the bottom about 2/3 down. I use a moisture meter and just last night checked with a wooden chopstick. This past weekend I asked advice from a local plant shop and they told me maybe the plant is too tight in it's pot and to take it out and let it dry out a little. So that is where I am now. Any help, advice, insight will be greatly appreciated. I would love to figure out what's going on and help Mr. Fig live a long happy life. Thank you!

Hi all -- I bought this fiddle leaf fig from Home Depot about a month back. Granted when I bought the tree it wasn't in the best condition (brown tips and some physical damage to leaves), but the plant seems to be looking better since. The issue is now I am starting to see brown (dry/brittle) spots along the edges. No leaves have fallen off the plant. I typically water once every 10-12 days if the top inch is dry. I am also seeing tiny brown dots on some of the leaves (not sure what it is). Any advice on how to take care of the plant. Sits away from a window in an otherwise bright room which gets plenty of afternoon sun. located in nor thern california. thx

The browned leaf edges do look like overwatering. Were they there when you bought it? If so, all you have to do is to continue to monitor soil moisture like you did today, and hold off on watering until the dowel is dry. Do be sure to water slowly and thoroughly when you do water. For the rootbound plants I still have in their old soil, I water once until water begins to drain from the pot, making sure to go slowly and wet the whole surface of the soil evenly. Then I come back with my fertilizer solution and water again about 15 minutes later. If the pot was very dry I usually find that the pot takes longer to drain the second time, probably because peat that had become hydrophobic was allowed to slowly moisten a little so it could absorb water again. My pots have holds around the perimeter of the bottom, so tilting after watering works great even without a wick. When I found these forums last September I was ready to repot all my plants, which were weak and rootbound in very old soil. Fortunately I was persuaded to proceed more cautiously and to improve their growing conditions instead, the idea being that it's better to wait until the solstice to repot unless a plant is, as Al says, circling the drain (and I did repot the one schefflera that was doing just that in 5:1:1, with good results). I flushed them thoroughly with room temperature R/O water; bought some 100 watt, 5000k (bright white) LEDs and CFLs, put them in cheap clamp-on fixtures, and mounted them on a shelf above the plants on a timer so they'd get some light; for rid of a spider mite infestation; started fertilizing with a weak solution of Foliage Pro every time I watered; and diligently monitored soil moisture and watered properly when needed. All of my plants responded by perking up, and after a few months they'd gained enough energy and their root systems had recovered enough that they started putting out new growth. I don't have FLFs, but my ficus benjaminas did the best (I listed a few before and after photos in Dave's recent "Then and Now" thread), and they were much improved by the time the weather allowed me to put them outside. Here's where things went sideways, because some nagging health issues prevented me from actually reporting this season. I was really upset when I realized it just was not going to happen, but frankly none of my plants are in better shape than they've ever been, and I've really fallen back in love with the ficuses, which love their half-day of bright high altitudes sunlight so much that they've filled every branch with shiny healthy leaves. I'm sure they'd be even happier with pruned roots in gritty mix (I'll use a modified ratio to compensate for the desert conditions), but I've gotten good enough at compensating for it that they'll keep looking good for another winter, and now that I already have my ingredients and a lot of prepared mix I'll be able to jump into it next June whenever I have a little energy to spare. Al says that if you have two plants in the same condition, repot one in the fall, and repot the other one on Father's Day 2018, the second one will have more growth next fall than the one you repotted now. Some folks will say just go ahead and repot anytime, but your plant looks great despite having a couple of slightly damaged leaves, and they'll respond much better to repotting if you care for them properly and allow them to accumulate the energy they'll need to get through it smoothly. BTW, Cassandra's description of repotting is spot on if you're not going to prune roots. If I had your plant I'd wait until the plant's energy production was at its highest to make sure it will bounce back with some vigor, but Cassandra's method sounds like it would work great. Lenore