Hold an image of a soil made of BBs in your mind's eye. Now water the soil. Even in your mind's eye, you can't see water in the large spaces between the particles. Erase that image and imagine a soil of all small particles - like peat, coir, compost, composted forest products, ...... Now water it and note how much water is retained between the much smaller particles. Particle size is what drives the kind of water retention that's unwanted. Where a soil like this holds no water between the particles (except where the particles contact each other). Soils that consist of fine materials like those listed hold LOTS of water between particles. The finer the particles, the more water they support. It's not at all unusual to see a 4" or taller perched water table in pots filled with water-retentive media. What that means is, after a thorough watering 4-6" of the soil at the bottom of the pot might well be fully (as in 100%) saturated, and it's this excess water that is so limiting. How do you flush your FLF without over-watering? The easiest and best way is to make sure a significantly dominant fraction of your medium (75-80%) is chunky material, preferably in the 1/8-3/8 size range so the soil holds very little or no perched water. You can also put some simple science to work in order to trick most of the potentially excessive volume of water into leaving the pot. If you're interested, let me know. Al

Did it come that way with the mulch when you bought it? the way you described the roots, it was severely under watered. You mainly need to worry about over watering when the tree is inside and in a soil made up mostly of peat. Pebbles are not needed at the bottom and do not help with drainage. They actually keep the soil from draining as it would without them. A soil made up of 5 parts pine bark, 1 part peat and 1 part perlite would be a good choice. You should read these two links: your ficus lyrata has pretty much the same cultural needs as ficus benjamina. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1493078/ficus-trees-in-containers http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/2842847/container-soils-water-movement-and-retention-xxii?n=418

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

Tessa I don't know what the best interval would be. It needs time to regrow the fine roots and then time to replace the energy that was diverted to that. I don't know how long that would take. Maybe someone else will. On the plus side, because it came through its first repot so well, that whole process will be faster than if it had struggled to recover. So you want to have given it enough time to recover, but not so long that you're past the growing season. Check the soil to help you decide : if it's still wet deep in the pot (use a dowel) more than a week after watering, then that's no good. You'll end up watching it go downhill from root rot over the next few months (and your chances are worse repotting a sick tree in winter). If the soil is drying out well, then I'd be tempted to leave repotting until next season... Rock and a hard place! Hopefully someone who has been in the same position can help more specifically. Good luck and keep us posted!