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When is it time to repot my fiddle leaf fig?

6 years ago

Hey all! I've received some great advice on here about how to care for my fiddle leaf fig. He's sprouted a few new leaves since I got him and I'm feeling pretty good about caring for him all around. One question I have is when should I move him to a bigger pot? Ive not put him in a new pot since I purchased. I feel like he should need a bigger pot soon but I dont want to do it too early. And how much bigger of a pot should I get? Is there a soil I can purchase to fill the extra space in the new pot? Any info would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for all your help :)

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Comments (3)

Dave
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
If you're in the northern hemisphere, you should look to repot in mid/late June.

Repotting is what should be done. That means you'd remove the tree from the pot, remove ALL soil from around the roots, untangle and trim any circling or problematic roots and then place in the same size or slightly larger pot with a fast draining mix.

NOTE: you MUST keep roots moist during the process. If the fine feeder roots dry, they will die.

I (and many others) use the 5:1:1 mix.

5:1:1 is 5 parts sifted pine bark fines, 1 part peat, 1 part perlite with some dolomite lime.

This is a homemade mix. Store bought mixes tend to be overly water retentive and will not do as well.

i grow all of my ficus Benjamina's in this mix. They have the same exact cultural needs as your ficus lyrata (aka fiddle leaf fig).
raymond_diezynski
6 years ago
If you want to keep it roughly the same size repot. Removing that much soil from the roots is likely to shock the plant and result in leaf loss followed by limited growth. Potting up would be less stressful and result in more growth.
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Hi, Just bought a fiddle leaf fig about 1.5 months ago. It is roughly 5-6ft tall, in a small pot, and has two branches. The leaves are getting brown spots RAPIDLY! It looks worse every day. I determined that I was likely overwatering, so I put it on a watering schedule. I also moved it from the dim back corner of the living room, to in front of our (only) living room window! I live in Los Angeles, so things have been HOT and DRY. I have been wiping down the leaves periodically, but it is still browning, despite new growth on the top of both branches! HELP! I spent too much for this plant to die on me. It looks pretty awful. I have been considering repotting, as the pot it is in is quite small and the soil and roots seem very compacted. However, the internet tells me that the best times to repot are June and July. Would it be okay to root prune and repot now? It is still roughly 90 degrees daily here in LA, and we are getting lots of sun! I want my tree-baby to thrive! Would love any feedback!
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Shawn, the plant's condition is a huge factor in deciding whether to repot now, when its energy reserves are low. How does it look? A picture of the whole thing would be very helpful in figuring out what's going wrong. The rule, as I understand it from Al's writings, is to wait to repot until June unless the plant is declining enough that it will fail before then. Repotting is stressful, and repotting when the plant has low reserves means slower recovery and growth. It would be better if you did what what you could to improve its condition so it can build reserves over the winter.
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I wish whoever ran this forum would post at the top that this section is for edible figs. Newcomers and people new to plants would obviously have no idea since their tree is nicknamed “fig” and this section is also for figs. This part of the forum could be set up to be less confusing to some
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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.
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tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
6 years ago
I strongly disagree. A full repot is actually REQUIRED if your plant is to be given full opportunity to function as close as possible to its genetic potential. The effects of repotting are short lived, so even though a repotted plant can be expected to sulk for a week or two before it resumes a much higher growth rate and level of vitality than its potted up counterpart, by the end of summer the repotted plant will have far surpassed the plant potted up in growth, and it will be healthier - all else being equal.

This is F benjamina in the process of being repotted. It's been growing in a nursery can for a few years, so needs an extreme root reduction and flattening of the root system over time to allow it to fit in a shallow pot.

^^^ You can see by the large pile of soil under the plant that a good deal of soil/perimeter roots have already been removed and the solid mat that was the bottom 1/3-1/2 of the root mass has been removed and discarded.
^^^ After removing most of the soil, I'll remove the large roots that serve almost no purpose (other than plumbing and anchorage). Under this mass, as you'll be able to see from the next image, are some VERY thick roots that I'll remove with very little thought about the process.

^^^ End result. In 1 or 2 more repots, the large roots under the trunk will be 'gnawed' off with a special tool designed for that purpose. Eventually, all roots will be radiating horizontally from the widest point of the trunk flare.

Please note: I'm not suggesting that everyone should adopt root pruning to this extreme as a habit. I don't - you shouldn't. It just serves as a good illustration of how much root work a healthy tree is able to tolerate. After performing several thousand repots, I've gained a sense of what a tree will handle. For tropicals, it's based on how well they over-wintered indoors and their current level of vitality and growth rate when I repot in June. For temperate deciduous trees, the determination re how much root mass can be removed is based on their condition in late fall as they approached dormancy. I can say though, that when I do repot, the volume of roots removed would always make someone uninitiated to the practice unnecessarily fear for the tree's well-being.

Al

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