Fiddle Leaf Fig FLF Droopy after 5-1-1 soil repot - will it make it?
Hi, Gardening community. I need your help on this one.
I received a nice Fiddle Leaf Fig as a gift and repotted it after I got it. Nothing too special just planted it in its same pot with new soil. 1/2 garden soil and 1/2 cactus soil. THEN, I started noticing brown spots on its leaves. I scoured the internet and came across this forum. I realized I made a big mistake!
- I should have waited to re-pot until it was at least June. (I live in the Seattle Area)
- I should have paid closer attention to the roots and planted my FLF in a nice gritty soil, recommended by Al and lots of members of the garden forum community.
So, this past weekend - I decided to make the 5-1-1 potting soil mix in order to give my plant some breathing room in its root system. I screened Pine Bark Mulch to be about 1/8 - 1/4 inches. I rinsed it to get the dust off then strained it and waited for it to dry overnight. The next day I mixed 3 gallons of the pine bark with 1/2 gallon of Sphagnum Peat Moss and 1/2 gallon of Perlite; both from Miracle-Gro. I added 4 TBS of Garden Lime (Espoma). I decided to wait to add fertilizer until my FLF's health got back on track.
I took my FLF out of its container (two stalks), got my garden hose (maybe too cold of water?) and started rinsing the dirt off around the roots. I had to break apart the dirt with my hands since it was so root bound. By the looks of it, I really needed to make a soil change! After rinsing off all of the dirt, quite a bit of root broke off and I trimmed a little but not too much. I then re-planted my FLF back into its original black plastic pot and added some supports. I watered it slowly with room temp water and placed by my west-facing window.
My plant seemed happy...for a day. Then the next day I woke up to a droopy plant. I checked the soil and the top part is dry, but I stuck a wooden chopstick down and it seemed wet towards the bottom of the pot.
I did the same thing for some of my other plants. They look pretty good today, except my rubber tree has a few droopy leaves. I hope it survives as well!
Is there anything I can do for it? Or do I just need patience and wait it out?
Photo right after I repotted my plants: Note- my Fiddle Leaf and Rubber plant are both in smaller plastic containers which are sitting in the larger container.
Photo the next day :(
Soil:
Comments (19)
Nicole
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Fiddle Leaf Fig- repotting or potting up?
Comments (32)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...See MoreAl's 5/1/1 mix for Fiddle leaf fig/houseplants
Comments (4)"..... can anyone clarify if it's peat moss or spaghnum moss that i should buy?" It's sphagnum peat, not sphagnum moss. Sphagnum peat is dead sphagnum moss in an advanced state of decomposition, such that it's no longer recognizable as sphagnum moss. sphagnum peat ^^^ what you need - widely used in container media sphagnum moss ^^^, used for a variety of horticultural applications, but not usually in container media. "Is it true that after i mix everything together, i should wait a week or 2 before i use it for my FLF?" To a degree, it depends on what fertilizer you use. The lime you use will go through a reactive phase, during which the Ca/Mg it contains will only be marginally available. After moist soil has rested for a while, the reactive phase ceases and there is a residual phase in which the Ca/Mg is more available. I'm careful to use soil that's had some time to react when growing tomatoes or other fruit/veggies susceptible to BER, but for everything else, I don't bother - often using it same day made or next day. When you compare it to almost all soils you're likely to encounter on the shelf, the 5:1:1 will be able to provide a far superior opportunity for you to help your plants realize their genetic potential. This is primarily by virtue of the fact that it provides superior aeration and allows you to water correctly, by a wide margin over peat-based soils, because it holds a much smaller volume of excess water than soils based on all fine particulates. I think what sets good soils apart from poor soils is whether or not the soil allows you to water correctly w/o the plant subsequently suffering from long periods of soil saturation. Al...See MorePlease Help! Fiddle Leaf Fig -FLF dying!
Comments (6)Greetings to you in beautiful Prince Edward Island. I'll put my two cents worth in and say I'm virtually 100% sure the cold the fig was exposed to during the transfer home is what's 'doing it in'. (I believe 'Jean' nailed it in her first post.) You didn't mention, but I'm guessing the plant was not wrapped up at all after buying it, and it was just 'naked' as you took it to your car. Sure death. In such cold, plants need to have two kinds of wrapping: 1. lots of paper around the whole thing, including the pot, (stapled shut all over the paper wrapping) and 2. a tight seal of plastic (huge bag or well sealed sheets of plastic) around the paper layer. Even with this, the transporting vehicle needs to be pre-warmed up and waiting close to the door of the store/greenhouse when you bring it out. Two things: 1) Even the briefest exposure to real cold (particularly -21c) will effectively kill off, at minimum, all the growth above ground. The roots might have survived, as alluded to by 'Jean'. 2) The plant's ride home in a cold car continued the assault. Even if the car warmed up quite quickly, at such cold temps, the interior goes down to way below zero (celcius) in a matter of minutes when parked, so that the leaves were still freezing for a while even after getting into the vehicle. When I was in university, a fellow student lugged a HUGE, beautiful houseplant from one building to another in the dead of winter without any wrapping/protection. It wasn't outside more than about 45 seconds. Dead in a few days :( I'll add that your concerns about its welfare in your drafty old house are inconsequential in comparison. The south window sounds ideal. These ficusses (ficii?) like lots of light. Do, however, make sure there's no hot air from a furnace vent blowing directly on it. I fried one side of my 'lemon cypress' earlier this winter when I didn't pay attention that its summer position put it in the direct path of the furnace vent by that garden door....See MoreFiddle Leaf Fig Repot?
Comments (13)Sorry you're having trouble. I usually click on "Photo" on the task bar under the reply text box. The only time you see it is when you're replying on a thread or in the process of preparing your own original post for upload. When you click on "Photo", it should open your images file. You can navigate in your images until you find the image you want to upload. Click twice and it should be visible in your reply. I can see it's pretty rootbound from the image of the nursery can, so don't fret if you can't make the image upload work. "..... but just to clear confusion in my mind are you suggesting to wait til next June?" No. I meant you to understand you can skip pruning this year because there is no long lanky growth that would normally appear over the course of a winter. That long winter growth pretty much destroys anyone's hope for a full and compact tree. Most growers shoot themselves in the foot because they prune in late summer before the tree comes in for the fall/winter. What they end up doing is pruning off all the compact growth and short internodes that occur in summer, all the way back to last winter's ugly growth. If you get in the habit of removing the winter growth when you move your tree outdoors or in early June, you'll be cutting back to last years summer growth. This is VERY important to any tropical tree's eye appeal. Pinch after 2 or 3 leaves in summer. Let it grow in winter. Prune back the winter growth to last year's summer growth in late spring - probably the first week of June would be best for you. I can't tell if your tree is one of the dwarf varieties ("Little Fiddle", "Bambino", etc.). If it is, pruning won't be nearly as critical as it would be for the species plant. The downward angle of the image doesn't give a good/true read of how tight the internodes are. If it was my tree, I'd start thinking about getting everything together for a repot, and do that in the next 2-3 weeks. Al...See More
tropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years ago
Makayla Madden
5 years ago
Liz Rippe
5 years agoNicole
5 years agoHi @Liz Rippe and @ Makayla Madden I followed what @tropicofcancer told me to do and my plants perked back up over a months time. My issue happened with both my FLF and Rubber tree. I took the plants and placed them in my shower every Thursday night, then watered them with the shower handle until I saw water draining out of the bottom of the container. Waited about 20 mins and did the same thing again. I would leave the plants in the shower over night so that water would drain out and then took them back to their posts the following morning.
After about a month and seeing the plants perk back up, I added some diluted fertilizer to the plants (Dyna-Gro), after watering twice in 20 min intervals. I followed directions for the mineral deficiencies for 3 weeks.
After about a month, I had new leaves growing on both my FLF and Rubber Tree!!
One issue though, I noticed that the new growth leaves on the FLF have purple spots/lines on them. I read a little bit on the Garden Forum and decided to hold off on giving more fertilizer. Not sure what to do about this issue, but at least the plant perked back up and I have new growth. I may try to repot again in August using the original 511 mix where bark is from dust to 3/8" or 1/2".
Makayla Madden
5 years agoNicole
5 years agoMakayla Madden
5 years agotropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years agoLiz Rippe
5 years agotropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years agoMakayla Madden
5 years agoTropicofcancer, would you recommend watering if the plant looks droopy, even if the soil still seems moist? Our poor fiddle has been through a big root pruning/repot and then AGAIN we had to move him into a better mix with more bark because the Oedema was still spreading. Two bottom leaves are turning yellow and will soon fall off... I watered the 5-1-1 mix last Thursday and it is still moist... Should I water? Or wait? I don't want to give him more root rot...
tropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years agoMakayla Madden
5 years agotropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years ago
Desiree Medina
5 years ago
litterbuggy (z7b, Utah)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agotropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)
5 years ago
tropicofcancer (6b SW-PA)