Hi I'm experiencing the same thing with my fiddle leaf fig, so much new growth (6-10 new leaves this spring) then I decided to boost it up with a seaweed fertilizer (capsize of the fertilizer mixed with lots of water) since I read to only fertilize when you see new growth. Then just recently a new leaf didn't sprout up as fast like the others and stayed in the brown tip part of the plant for the longest time. After a couple of weeks I decided to pull it out and it never turned green like the rest, instead it was brown just like the picture you took. Any luck with new growth? Was it really a spider mites issue? Looking at the brown tips where new growth usually sprouts up it's all dried up vs. earlier this spring when lots of new growth sprouted it was moist and not dry. I'm worried it's because of the fertilizer? But I used this fertilizer before with success of new growth. Or maybe it's really spider mites and I want to know how to treat it without harming the plant. Thanks for your help.

Hi Eva I would like to jump on to this discussion as I have had the exact same thing happen (bought fiddle leaf in winter Adelaide, Aus and new leaves quickly dying). However my new leaves are also developing with lots of tiny red and brown spots all over them (see photos attached). I have tried everything from fertilising, moving the plant away from direct light, into more light, watering more or less - I feel deflated that all of the new leaves are dying! If anyone has any wisdom on this topic it would be much appreciated from the both of us I’m sure!

If you clean the tip of your moisture meter and dip it in a cup of distilled water, the meter will tell you the water is dry; this because the meter actually measures electrical conductivity. So if you have a given volume of water in a given soil, the higher the TDS (total dissolved solids or roughly - salts) the wetter the moisture meter will tell you the soil is. A wooden dowel, used as a 'tell' is more reliable. If I do heavy root work on tropicals, I habitually reduce the canopy by a very large fraction to keep the plant from A) collapsing, or B) from shedding branches that might be an important part of the composition I'm building. Example: From this root mass to this:You can see the huge roots I severed, and that was only the first rootwork session. Since then, I've pruned the root mass back to just about even with the soil level in the image below. We actually have a tool designed specifically for this chore, called (what else?) a root cutter. The tree is F benjamina. The foliage mass, on the same day, went from this: To this: I'm not sure what this means: There is no other location that's suitable for this big tree. Given this condition, should I supplement the lack of light with the Dyna-Gro in a month or so? You can't counter or remedy a lack of light by supplying fertilizer. In fact, you need to be careful about not over-fertilizing in low light conditions. Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is a good choice for low light conditions though, because it's nitrogen sources tend to reduce likelihood of the coarse growth that occurs when using fertilizers that get their N from urea. More about using a 'tell' please forgive the weird formatting, which happens on all the word documents I write and save to share): 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

Leave it outdoors to recover. Don't prune off the top unless you know it's dead or can convince yourself there is another good reason to do so. Most growers have more trouble with buguglies indoors than out. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first is, there are usually no predators that feed on bugs indoors, and the plant's defenses are directly related to it's metabolic rate. A plant growing robustly outdoors is much better able to defend itself against insects/diseases than plants just getting by in a low light indoor setting. BTW - what's growing at the base might appear to be no more than leaves, but you'll soon find they're nascent branches. Al