My work had two beautiful fiddle leaf figs (a five footer and an eight footer) that they were throwing out due to brown spotting at the edges of the leaves. I was pretty sure that I could save them by repotting in gritty mix. So I took the big one home two months ago for the repot, and it has been thriving. It has tons of new leaves, all shiny and green.

The little guy I brought into my office with the intention of reporting, but it took me awhile to source, sift, rinse, assemble, and transport the mix to work. (Which I did by filling a contractor bag and stuffing it into a rolling suitcase that I brought in the NYC subway. It was literally filled with rocks!)

From what I have read, it is pretty late in the season to do a repot, but this poor tree had not developed a new leaf in two months and was looking really wan. When I pulled it out of the pot and exposed the roots, I saw that the roots were heavily encircled. They had basically created a steering wheel about 8 inches in diameter that was strong enough for me to hold up the tree just by these roots. And here were almost no fine roots. No wonder the poor thing was struggling!

I had planned in pruning some of the roots, but there were so few that I was afraid to touch them and so I just put them into the new gritty mix for now. Should I try taking it out and pruning the roots? I tried untangling what I could, but the roots were sparser and wispier than Donald Trump's hair. The thing doesn't even have enough roots to anchor it into the pot, so I rigged a temporary scotch tape solution. I wish I could have taken pictures of the roots, but I did this after hours by myself, and managing the tree was difficult enough as it was. But here is a photo of the tree after. It is in a 14 inch pot